The following short items have been culled from the archives of The Leader and the University of Washington Library. Text and style appear verbatim from original printing, including any errors.

Dec. 6, 1917

Packing Firm is Prosperous — Cannery Started on Shoestring Now Important Concern

Best Plant of Size in North — Hoonah Company Will Always Be Regarded as Local Concern

The remarkable success achieved during the past six seasons by the Hoonah Packing company of Hoonah, Alaska, will prove interesting to many local people, despite the fact that this company is no longer controlled here, the majority of the stock having been sold by E. A.  Sims last spring to the Pacific American fisheries company. Several local people still retain stock in the company, including Judge J. M. Ralston, Lieutenant Wilmot A. Danielson, Charles F. Goodrich, Horace E. Sims, and J. J. O’Connor, and it is expected that a good-sized dividend will be paid as a result of the past season’s operations, despite a considerable sum paid out for improvements and the high war tax and other possible contingencies due to the federal regulation of the industry. During the past season the salmon run, a failure in some parts of Alaska as well as on Puget Sound, was the greatest in the history of Icy Straits, the territory from which the main plant drew its supply.

November Warm Month — Exceeded by Several Degrees of Temperature Average Figures

The record of the weather for the month of November, compiled by Local Observor Plummer, shows that the month was both warmer and drier than the average. Since 1807 but four similar months have compared favorably with the figures. The detailed report is as follows:

Mean, 47; Average, 45. Maximum, 52.7; 1916, 46. Minimum, 42.7; 1916, 37.

Dec. 5, 1979

Port Townsend’s Budget Approved: Worth $3.2 Million

It took the Port Townsend City Council only three hours to review and approve the 1980 budget worth $3,218,388 Monday night before an audience composed of a half-dozen citizens and all the city’s department chiefs. The citizens had little to comment about, leaving the department heads to bid for their respective budget requests. …The 1980 fiscal budget for the city is $103,736 above the 1979 budget, an increase of 3.3 percent.

A Real House…36” High

Bill Amburn has a building obsession. For example, he just built a miniature house, “basically because I like to build houses. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it now. Next, I think I’ll build a barn.”

Port Townsend Garden Club, however, has plans for the Victorian house. The club will place the one-inch-to-1-foot scaled house in the Commanding Officers’ house at Fort Worden when it holds its annual Open House and Silver Tea, scheduled in the afternoons of Dec. 8-9. Amburn’s house is a beauty, painted blue with a shake roof. He wasn’t interested in furnishing the house, but a neighbor helped fill the inside of the house when she talked him into placing the structure in the Commanding Officer’s home. “It’s built just like a real house,” Amburn says, “It has studs, 500 of them, sheathing, siding, everything just like a real house.” There are hard oak floors downstairs and soft wood floors in the attic and the second floor.

Dec. 6, 2013

What’s Shaking? A whole lot of (minor) quaking

Earthquakes come and go in this region, but a flurry of underground activity has shaken more than a few East Jefferson County residents. More than 40 tremors, mostly minor, have occurred in seven days around Pulali Point and Point Whitney along Hood Canal just north of Brinnon.

Dec. 9, 2014

PHOTO: CHS band at Pearl Harbor

Chimacum High School Marching Band performed Thursday, Dec.  4 at the USS Battleship Missouri Monument at Peal (Pearl) Harbor, Hawai’i. “A very moving experience,” reported Garth Gourley, band director. “There are a lot of remembrance ceremonies occurring on the base right now, including one on the ship.” The CHS band, which thanks to fundraising efforts has fulfilled an invitation to perform at Pearl Harbor, closed its performance with “Requiem for a Solider (Soldier)” the title theme to the HBO series, “Band of Brothers,” about U. S. Army Airborne troops during World War II. The band returned Monday night.

Dec. 4, 2019

Black Friday shoppers look for local treasures

People were in lighthearted moods and tills were ringing along Water St. on Black Friday, the traditional start and busiest day of the holiday shopping season. “It’s a fabulous day, the sun is shining and people are in fabulous moods,” said Chris Dewees, who works at What’s Cooking. “Life can’t get any better.” Many merchants said it was too early to know how this Black Friday will compare to year’s (years)  past, but most agreed it was on track to meet expectations.

— Compiled by Deborah Hayes