Heritage House

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Heritage House

The Vashon –Maury Island Heritage Association is dedicated to the Preservation of our Island History.

 The museum covers our History from the earliest settlers to our present century.

Heritage House
Open 1-4 pm. Wednesdays, Satuday and Sunday
10105 S.W. Bank Rd.

Special Showing

July 2nd - September 30th 2010

Oliver Scott Van Olinda
Island Chronicler – Newspaperman, Photographer, Author

Oliver Scott Van Olinda (1868-1954) came to Vashon in 1891 and remarked on his first arrival recalling his walk from Langill’s Landing up to Center,  "I came from the great prairies of Nebraska and, as I walked up to Center in the gathering dusk of a mid-August evening, giant fir trees towering three hundred feet above me on either side of the trail in an almost impenetrable wall and flanked by great banks of ferns, the beauty of the scene was overshadowed by the thought that such environment simply must harbor hoards of bears and catamounts. I marveled at the folly of man, in thinking he could ever convert such material into a farm, a garden, or even a home.  It was truly a stupendous task to contemplate."

Van Olinda edited the first newspaper on Vashon, Island Life, from 1895 to 1897, and was an original faculty member of Vashon College in 1892, where he taught stenography.  He moved to Stanwood, Washington in 1897 where he edited the Stanwood Press newspaper for three years.  In 1900, he moved to Whidbey Island and edited the Island County Times, a Coupeville newspaper.  Upon his return to Vashon in 1910, he worked as a photographer and writer and then, in the early 1930s, began to write his History of Vashon-Maury Islands, which was published in 1935. The Van Olinda House, “The Ram Pasture”, still stands where it was built on SW Van Olinda Road, above Glen Acres.

Van Olinda served for eighteen years as historian for the Vashon Pioneer and Historical Society, which was formed in 1923.  In 1927, the organization was renamed The Vashon Pioneer Society and on November 11, 1927, the Society erected a monument to the first Euro-American settlers on the islands at the foot of what is now called Monument Road.  The Monument was dedicated 63 years after the first permanent settler, Mathew Bridges, came to Vashon-Maury Islands, and 50 years after the Sherman-Gilman-Price extended family settled on the islands.

As a newspaperman and photographer, Van Olinda documented much of the early life on Vashon-Maury Islands.  His extensive collection of photographs in the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections are available to view on the University of Washington Digital Archives web site at http://content.lib.washington.edu/vanolindaweb/index.html

This summer, island photographers Terry Donnelly and Ray Pfortner are curating an exhibit of Oliver Van Olinda photographs, which opens on First Friday July 2 at the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum, and remains on view until mid-September

go    to: www.vashonheritage.org for more information and driving instructions.

Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Association

Mailing address:
PO Box 723,
Vashon Island, WA 98070
206-463-7808