BLYN — When the holiday season rolls around, it’s easily the biggest light show on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Jerry Allen, 7 Cedars Casino general manager, calls the lights of Blyn the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe’s “give-back to the community.”
Six years ago, the tribe used about 35,000 lights to deck the casino and tribal offices.
Today, the tribe’s Northwest native-style buildings are covered in about
1.5 million multicolored Christmas lights that glitter and glow along both sides of U.S. Highway 101.
Visitors can get a better view of it by pulling over at the tribe’s Blyn rest stop on Highway 101 between Sequim and Port Townsend and walking around for photos.
Patrick Walker’s light display installation has been going on for nearly two weeks and was completed Friday night when the last lights were switched on.
Walker — whose excavation, landscaping and Christmas lights company is based in Port Orchard — figures the displays have grown to seven miles of extension cords and at least 100 miles of lights that he carefully stores in large trash cans stacked to the ceiling of a 24-foot-long trailer.
He tows the trailer to Blyn each year, along with two other pickup-truckloads of lighting supplies and equipment.
The spectacular display is known to slow nighttime traffic that might otherwise zoom through the tribal village by Sequim Bay.
“It’s been something that’s grown with us for some time,” Jerry Allen said.
“My brother, Ron, has got great passion for this as well.”
Jamestown S’Klallam Chairman Ron Allen has publicly called the lights the tribe’s holiday gift to the community.
“Why do we do it? It’s because we feel good about the give-back on that,” Jerry Allen said.
The tribe has invested at least $100,000 in lights and equipment, and it costs about $30,000 in labor to install each year, Jerry Allen said.
Compliments from those who appreciate the lights have “kept the energy going,” he said, and today, all the tribe’s buildings in Blyn are lit up like candles.
Power costs to keep the lights burning have gone down since the tribe began converting to low-emitting diode, or LED, energy-saving lights.
Also decked out in lights during the dark winter months are the buildings at the tribe’s Cedars at Dungeness 18-hole golf course, along with its bar and restaurant on Woodcock Road.
The tribe’s medical clinic building on North Fifth Avenue in Sequim also is decorated by Walker’s lighting crews, who can have from two to 13 working on an installation.
One of the maple trees fronting the casino can take eight hours to wrap in lights.
Jerry Allen approached Walker after seeing some of his work in the Gig Harbor area.
“This is the biggest job I do every year,” Walker said Thursday.
He was taking a break from placing lights on the trim of the tribal center while Scott Reynolds, who is normally a medical technician, worked the controls in the basket of a cherry picker about 20 feet up.
Walker started putting up Christmas lights with his father in the landscaping off-season when he was 10.
He said he services about 100 accounts — from homes to shopping centers to car dealerships — beginning in October.
“When I first started this for the tribe, I only did the casino and five maple trees and the lights on the community center,” said Walker, now 30.
“Now I am told I am going to die here,” he joked.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
