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Home / Washington Business - November/December 2006 / Community Profile - Stehekin: Peace, quiet and clean water |
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Community Profile - Stehekin: Peace, quiet and clean water |
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Written On: November/December 2006 |
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Written By: by Ron Dalby |
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Living in Stehekin, you don’t really need a car. A reliable boat is much more useful. Your own two feet — perhaps supplemented by a bicycle or maybe a horse — are about all you’ll need for getting around town. After all, you really can’t drive anywhere from here, and it’s a chore to call home and tell people where you are — there’s only a single telephone in the entire town.
Located at the head of Lake Chelan in north-central Washington, there are only two ways to get to Stehekin — by boat or by floatplane. If you have a fairly seaworthy boat that can go fifty-plus miles on a tank of gas, you can do it yourself. Otherwise, if you’re headed for Stehekin, you’ll likely find yourself at dockside in the town of Chelan at the south end of the lake, buying a ticket to ride the 110-foot M/V Lady of the Lake II on its daily run to Stehekin and back. The trip takes about four hours each way, with stops at isolated places along the lake shore where a few people live for at least part of every year. Stehekin is about as remote as it gets in this part of the world. In the summer of 2006, the round trip boat ride cost $38, plus a $2 fuel surcharge.
"Getting away from it all — that’s the key," according to Linda Cooper, a National Park Service seasonal ranger handling queries from behind the counter in the North Cascades National Park visitors center in Stehekin. Cooper works in Stehekin about four months each year, drawn to the area because of its beauty and solitude. Besides working behind the counter, she also gives various programs and leads hikes in the immediate area.
Stehekin is just south of the North Cascades National Park boundary and is a logical starting point for exploring one of the more secluded national parks in the nation.
"I think the majority of people come here to hike," Cooper said. A look at a free map provided by the Park Service suggests there is good reason for this. Trails lead up through nearby mountains and along the lake shore, and there are no RVs to contend with in the campgrounds. When you go camping near Stehekin, the only equipment available what you can carry on your back.
Hikers and other outdoor recreation tourists pretty much define Stehekin’s major industry. There are a few places to stay in town, a modest store, a gift shop, a lodge locally famed for the meals it serves, a shop to rent bikes and kayaks, and a post office.
Boat mail
Adele Bingham is the town’s postmaster. Her busy time each day is during the two hours when the Lady of the Lake II is tied to the dock a short stroll from her office. The boat brings in the day’s mail, which she has to distribute, and then she has to scramble to get all of the outgoing mail bagged and ready for the boat to take back down the lake. Minutes before the boat leaves, Bingham can be seen hustling from the post office building, pushing a two-wheeled cart toward the dock. On the boat, members of the crew are waiting for her near the stern and load the mail on board with other cargo headed down the lake.
Like the mail, life in Stehekin tends to revolve around the comings and goings in the harbor. Anything and everything you want to purchase comes in either via the Lady of the Lake II or a barge. At least two companies operate barges on the lake to deliver large items — like vehicles — and one is based in Stehekin.
Tourists
The primary cargo crossing the docks in summer, though, is tourists. Some come only for a couple of hours so they can say they have been here. Some come to hike, and still others come to stay at the lodge and explore the surrounding area.
For those only up for the day, a bus is waiting at the dock when the Lady of the Lake II arrives to whisk visitors off to visit Rainbow Falls, a short distance down the town’s only road and one of the prettiest spots in the area. The bus driver will get you back to the boat in time for the return trip to Chelan.
Exploring the town on foot can be even more fun. How else would you find The House that Jack Built, a gift shop up by the information center? It’s run by Paula Fitzpatrick, who probably thought she was moving to the big city when she came to Stehekin four years ago.
Fitzpatrick’s husband works for the National Park Service. His previous assignment was in Gates of the Arctic National Park, and they lived in Bettles, Alaska, a dot on the map smaller than Stehekin and even more remote. You can’t even get to Bettles by boat, only by airplane or overland by snowmachine in the winter after the ground freezes. Stehekin must have seemed almost urban when Fitzpatrick arrived after years of being isolated in Bettles.
A top-notch school
Three blond, blue-eyed children run in and out of the store, which isn’t very busy on this particular day. Her children point to a key reason Fitzpatrick likes living in Stehekin — a K-8, one-room school with a single teacher who has taught in Stehekin for 30 years. According to Fitzpatrick, there are some families that actually move to Stehekin in the winter just so their kids can attend this school, which is reputed to be one of the best in the state. When children advance beyond the eighth grade, though, they have to be home-schooled.
Almost everybody you talk to in Stehekin who lives year-round in the community talks about the school and the teacher as one of the town’s greatest assets. The old school building, in use until just a couple of years ago when it was replaced with a new facility — this one with a real gym — is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is a tourism draw in its own right.
Visits can last for years
Darlene Reinvold first showed up in Stehekin more than four years ago. "I came up as a visitor," she said, "and met the bus driver." Now officially a couple, they spend every summer in Stehekin. "I even stayed over one winter," she said. Reinvold works at the Stehekin Valley Ranch, a lodge famed for its meals featuring homemade pies and breads.
The family that owns the ranch has roots in Stehekin reaching back a century or more, and if you want to be a guest for dinner, you’d better sign up early. By mid-afternoon one day late last August, hand-lettered signs were up in several locations saying that all tables were reserved that evening and anyone else wanting to dine at the ranch was just out of luck. According to Reinvold, if you do just one thing in Stehekin, you should have dinner at the ranch.
Besides the bus driver, a big attraction for Reinvold is the clean water. "I drink out of the lake and out of the streams," she said. When asked what she liked most about Stehekin, Reinvold looked toward Lake Chelan, pointed to it and said, "That lake, right there."
It is, after all, the lake that gives the town its charm and its character and, in a sense, protects it from the outside world. At the same time, it’s the lake that ties the town to the rest of the world and provides such a strikingly beautiful setting for this remotest of Washington’s communities.
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