Centennial trail North access - Nakashima barn

Our walk on Saturday took us to the newly opened Centennial trail north access. The trail head access begins at the Nakashima barn parking lot, located in Snohomish county north of Arlington off of Hwy 9.

As you can see they've done a wonderful job with the parking area. 

They even have Sani-cans and trash cans.

At the beginning of this trail access is a nice marker telling the dedication date

Just after this marker you cross a little bridge that crosses a small creek, from there the trail heads due south. With distance markers every mile.

The trail starts in the town of Snohomish, Washington. and now it's been completed a bit more that 29 miles as you can see by the trail marker. just a few miles north of the town of Bryant. Wow, 29 miles of continuous paved trail!

I have blogged about the trail before once for a bike ride - http://hearsdifferentdrummer.blogspot.com/2012/04/biking-northen-section-of-centennial.html,
another time when I ran my official/unofficial marathon - http://hearsdifferentdrummer.blogspot.com/2012/10/inaugural-centennial-trail-marathon.html
and yet again when I heard of the opening of the northernmost access to the trail - http://hearsdifferentdrummer.blogspot.com/2012/10/grand-opening-of-north-end-of-snohomish.html. and here's the HereldNet article on the grand opening -http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20121102/NEWS01/711029888#Centennial-Trail-completion-a-cause-for-celebration

If you haven't figured it out yet, I love this trail!!!!!!

As we walked along we heard the wings of what we thought must have been a very large bird and sure enough we spotted it in a tree just off the trail.

Bald Eagle in tree top - click to enlarge the photo

Bald Eagle in tree top - click to enlarge photo

Pilchuck bridge just north of Bryant

 As we were heading back there was a nice view of the parking area -

I found some interesting information on the Nakashima barn in an old newspaper article.
Here's the link -
Barn lost in WWll internment proposed for historic registry HeraldNet - local news
- if you chose not to click on the 2007 newspaper link,  here's a few quotes from the article:

"Built by relatives of the founder of Seattle, the barn has withstood the internment of its Japanese-American owners during World War II. It has lived through the modernization of the dairy industry and, more recently, it has survived a decade of abandonment. - Now the barn is poised to become one of the first on the state's new Heritage Barn Register, and is the only one being considered to have been owned by Asian-Americans. The barn also is being nominated for the National Register of Historic Places."

"Though county records date the barn to 1920, Tallman believes it was built 12 years earlier by Daniel Waldo Bass when he converted the land six miles north of Arlington from a logging camp to a dairy farm."

"Anti-Asian land restriction laws and citizenship restrictions prohibited Japanese immigrants from owning property. So the Basses were unable to sell Kamezo and Mije Nakashima the farm. In 1936, they transferred the deed to one of the Nakashimas' sons, Takeo Nakashima, who was an American citizen and around 24 years old at the time. Five years later, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor blasted apart the peaceful life the Nakashimas had built on the farm. Shortly after the attack, Kamezo Nakashima marched into City Hall and turned over guns and a partial box of dynamite, said Kraetz, whose mother graduated with one of the Nakashima girls. It wasn't enough to save their farm.With internment imminent, the Nakashimas were given just 10 days to sell more than 1,000 acres of land that spanned Snohomish and Skagit counties, and included a barn, a farm, and dozens of registered Guernsey cattle. They sold it all for around $10 an acre to a man who visited the farm looking to buy a bull, according to Tallman."

"Snohomish County bought 83 acres of the former Nakashima farm in 1996 and plans to begin transforming it into the north trailhead of the cross-county Centennial Trail in fall 2008, said Tom Teigen, the county Parks and Recreation director. While the county's first priority is getting the trail laid, it's also considering developing the barn for visitors."

Here's some pictures I took of the historic barn -

my husband and our Malamute "Lexis"

The photos on the barn show the Nakashima family and the barn when it was a functioning diary.