(Excerpted from “Baker’s Corner – Early Days on Whidbey Island” by John Baker.)
The Pope and Talbot logging camp on Holmes Harbor was described in the previous post about schoolteacher Julia Mackie.
“According to Austin (Deke*) Marshall, who worked in the Classic logging camp prior to joining the Army in 1918 the name Classic was selected as follows:
Mr. Brockman the camp superintendent told his daughter Glenola Brockman and (camp schoolteacher) Julia Mackie to select a name for the camp. The crew, upon hearing this, wanted to be a part of the naming. So the two girls decided to put all the camp’s personnel names in a hat and the name drawn would have the honor of naming the camp, subject to the superintendent’s approval.
Now there was a well dressed dude in camp who everyone called ‘Classy Claude’. Sure enough his name was drawn and the crew decided to call the camp ‘Classy’. Julia Mackie decided that was not a suitable name and changed the name to Classic, which the superintendent approved.
Like all logging operations, they come to an end. Classic hotel was moved to the public landing at the Greenbank farm. Alex Engstrom was the storekeeper and Postmaster at the Greenbank Farm store. The Greenbank Farm livestock developed tuberculosis and the entire operation shut down, The store and school was moved up on the hill close to the present store.”
*Baker maintained that ‘Deke’ Marshall actually spelled his nickname as “Deak”.
