(EDITOR’S NOTE — This version corrects the granddaughter’s name — Noreen Frink, not Noreen Frank)
PORT ANGELES — Noreen Frink of Seattle visited the North Olympic Peninsula last week intent on photographing the Elwha Dam, an imposing edifice that bears her family imprint.
Frink, 71, saw the 11-story dam for the first time in person Wednesday.
Her grandfather, Thomas T. Aldwell, spearheaded its construction nearly 100 years ago as head of the Olympic Power and Development Co.
Frink and her traveling companion, childhood friend Sharon Eshom of Seattle, took what Frink called an “adventure” to Port Angeles solely to visit the dam.
She knew she was running out of time, she said.
The 108-foot-high Elwha Dam, completed in 1913 about five miles upstream from the mouth of the Elwha River, and the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon Dam, built in 1927 about 8.5 miles upstream, will be torn down beginning in September 2011 to restore the waterway’s once-copious salmon run.
Frink drove down narrow, winding Lower Dam Road on Wednesday to their destination.
“Look at this,” Frink said a little breathlessly when her grandfather’s halcyon accomplishment peeked through brushy trees.
“This is very impressive. I can’t believe all the work and all the men it would have taken to build something like this.”
Glines Canyon Dam, higher up on the Elwha River, was not accessible.
Olympic Hot Springs Road was closed from just beyond the entrance to Altair Campground to the dam while slide damage was repaired. Pavement work is expected to keep the road closed for a while longer.
An amateur photographer and Seattle community volunteer, Frink made the trip to photograph the 108-foot-tall concrete structure for a Garden Club of America contest on environmental restoration projects.
She also will create a Christmas photo album for her — and thus, Thomas T. Aldwell’s — family, she said.
“They know so little about my grandfather,” she said, adding she had been reading Aldwell’s autobiography, “Conquering the Last Frontier,” published in 1950, to prepare herself for the trip to Port Angeles to see the dam.
Frink doesn’t recall her grandfather ever discussing the dams — and doesn’t know why he never did.
Still, few men loom larger in the history of the largest city in Clallam and Jefferson counties than Thomas T. Aldwell, known to her simply by the family endearment, “Gowie.”
Born in Toronto in 1868, Aldwell was a bank clerk before he immigrated to the North Olympic Peninsula in 1890.
During his lifetime, he was an elected two-term Clallam County auditor, chairman of the Republican County Committee, deputy collector of U.S. Customs and a commissioner for the Port of Port Angeles, which he helped form and where he served as board president.
He was instrumental in bringing Rayonier, Crown Zellerbach and the Spruce Railroad to Port Angeles.
Add Chamber of Commerce organizer, president of the Rotary Club and president of the Port Angeles Board of Realtors — along with his participation in the Christian Science Church and Peninsula Golf Club — to the list and you realize Aldwell had a huge impact on Port Angeles.
The Elwha Dam, perhaps Aldwell’s greatest accomplishment, powered the cities of Port Angeles, Port Townsend and Poulsbo, and the Navy yard in Bremerton.
Lake Aldwell formed on the lower Elwha River behind the dam.
A real estate baron, he championed timber interests and was a vocal opponent of a larger-than-expected Olympic National Park.
“I knew he had been a founder of Port Angeles,” Frink said.
“I knew he had been pretty successful, but what success meant to me at that point was sort of hard to express.”
Frink’s father died of a heart attack at age 47 when she was 2, and her mother, Norah, 41, never remarried. By then, Aldwell was in his 70s.
Frink said Aldwell was generous toward her mother and her late sister, Lloys, sending both to private schools in Seattle.
“I was well taken care of. I went to good schools, yet I was a child of a single parent, so I knew how to be frugal,” she said.
Frink was more familiar with her grandfather’s homes at Lake Crescent and at 10th and Oak streets in Port Angeles as a frequent visitor during summer vacations than with his battles with President Franklin Roosevelt over Olympic National Park.
She recalled more clearly the tiny pitch-and-putt course at her grandfather’s Lake Crescent retreat and their regular visits to Marymere Falls more than Aldwell’s fame as a mover and shaker.
On Easter and Christmas, Aldwell visited his daughter and granddaughters in the Madison Park neighborhood in Seattle.
The irrepressible Aldwell would walk three to four miles from the tony Washington Athletic Club, where he was a member, to Madison Park, talking along the way to all who would listen.
“He would talk to everyone,” Frink said.
“He would go through African-American neighborhoods. He was always talking.”
No fish ladders
Several years ago, though, Frink said she became upset after learning her grandfather built the Elwha Dam without fish ladders.
Glines Canyon Dam was built in 1927 — also without fish ladders.
“I was just appalled,” Frink said. “My mother did not talk about that very much. She was embarrassed.”
A state-approved hatchery Aldwell built to circumvent state law that required fish ladders was abandoned in 1922 after it proved unsuccessful.
Aldwell was in his 80s when he wrote “Conquering the Last Frontier.”
Frink’s mother, Norah — Aldwell’s daughter — edited the book, Frink said.
Frink was a 15-year-old high school sophomore when “Gowie” died in 1954.
He was 85.
Her mother sold his land and many of his possessions, including — and unknowingly — several prints by the famed Seattle photographer of the American West, Edward Curtis, Frink said.
After that, Frink visited the Peninsula sparingly until about six years ago, when she began coming to the Port Angeles area more regularly, often for photography classes at Lake Crescent Lodge but never to the dam.
Several years ago, Frink went to the site of the Lake Crescent house that’s locked in her memory far more than the dam that “Gowie” built.
“I burst into tears,” she recalled.
The house had been sold to a Lake Sutherland resort, then was sold to the National Park Service.
In place of the compound and its pitch-and-putt course stood plain housing for park rangers, Frink said.
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Senior Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
