Tuesday August 27 2013

Tuesday August 27 2013

Started to tell you about Midden Harbour yesterday.  Maybe too much detail on the bit I did, so maybe an overview would be better at this point.

Beecher Street is a good place to begin.  It’s the main street I mentioned yesterday, the one at the end of the alley from the marina.  Beecher street runs north to south, and the alley runs into it from the east.  The cove where the marina is lies east as well.  The Pacific is to the west and to the north.

As the spit on which the town sits broadens out to merge with the mainland, several things happen.  The run of commercial buildings that dominate Beecher stop abruptly, and there are a couple of side streets with the beginnings of Midden’s residential section.  Then the street turns east and heads inland. 

Before it starts to climb into the coastal mountains, there is one final paved road, off to the left heading North.  This is Cannery Row.  Not Steinbeck’s Cannery Row but Midden Harbour’s.  It’s a dead end that run’s part way along the inside of the cove, ending at a cluster of large, old grey buildings.  This is the sawmill, the business the employs most of the town’s workforce, and is the mainstay of the economy.  The reason the road is called Cannery and not Mill comes from the fact that that cluster of buildings, most of them anyway, were originally built to house a fish processing plant.

After this, Beecher stops being a street, stops being paved, and becomes a sandy, washboard road.  It also stops being flat and starts to climb up into the coastal mountains.  On its way it pauses for a wending mile or so and lies flat across a bench.  Here, unlike the beaches below and the cedar studded slopes above, the ground is cultivated into fields. On both sides, long narrow driveways lead to homesteads.  The first of these, running north (left) ends at a massive house.  It’s the kind of house that would be considered a mansion in any other setting.  The kind of house that would be made of cut stone in the old country.  This is the Snow home. 

I’ll tell you about the Snows later.

Beyond the bench Beecher becomes a forestry road and disappears into the mountains.

That’s it; the large picture of Midden Harbour.  Hope you’ll get to know it better over time.