Editor’s note — This is the second in a four-part series about the Sequim Prairie Garden Club and Pioneer Memorial Park. The club celebrates its 75th year in 2023, and invites the community to join them at an event to commemorate the milestone from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday, July 29, at the park, 387 E. Washington St. The event will feature exhibits, live music, refreshments and a presentation from gardening guru Ciscoe Morris. — MD

From the log cabin, to the clubhouse to the pavilion, the structures at Pioneer Memorial Park each have their own history, allowing people to get a glimpse into the past of the park and the Sequim Prairie Garden Club (SPGC).

Pioneer log cabin

According to the SPGC and Pioneer Memorial Park book, the log cabin was built in 1893 by Joseph Reyes, the log cabin was one of the first log cabins in Clallam County and that it had no electricity or running water, club historian Priscilla Hudson said.

She said that this cabin was one of the first log cabins in Clallam County and that it had no electricity or running water.

The Nason family was the last to live in the cabin they bought it in 1909, club records note. The family had seven children and lived in the cabin for nine years.

“The last family that lived in it, there are still people alive who were born and raised in that cabin,” Hudson said.

The Earl C. Barrett family bought a piece of property on Chicken Coop Road in 1965 with the cabin on it and gave the cabin to Pioneer Memorial Park, according to the club.

The cabin was moved to the park on July 19, 1966. Hudson said that when they moved the cabin, they had to raise the electrical wires on the road.

Former garden club president Vina Winters said there are a few things club members would like to remodel on the cabin — one of which is the logs that are rotting because of water exposure.

“It would be nice to have original windows [and] put in doors,” Winters said. “When you drive in the front side, there was actually a door there and that would be nice to restore as the doorway.”

According to Winters, the original wallpaper in the cabin was made out of newspaper.

“It really should all be stripped off and cleaned and make it look like it did when the family actually lived there,” Winters said.

Clubhouse

The first seven members of the garden club met at each other’s houses when the club was first formed in 1947, according to Hudson.

The garden club got an old mill house on October 15, 1960, to be used as their clubhouse. The original clubhouse was 20 feet by 24 feet, according club records indicate.

Sequim Gazette photo by Megan Rogers / The original Pioneer Memorial Park clubhouse was an old mill house. After many renovations, none of the original mill house stands.

According to Hudson, the women at the SPGC convinced the mill house to give the building to them.

“They must have been really convincing because there’s a quote in one of the old newspaper article that the guy talks about how he couldn’t turn down that many determined women,” Winters said.

The clubhouse has received a lot of renovations over the years and none of the original clubhouse still stands, Hudson said.

“One [renovation] was to enlarge it, so it was big enough for a larger community meeting home and then there was a second remodel, revising the kitchen and adding bathrooms,” she said.

Pavilion

Cy Frick, a local pharmacist in Sequim, donated a Native American canoe to the park in 1966. Half a century later — on July 16, 2017 — the canoe , made by Viola Penn Riebe’s uncle William E. Penn in the early 1960s — Riebe and family, and moved to the Olympic Peninsula’s West End.

Sequim Gazette photo by Megan Rogers / The pavilion was gifted to Pioneer Memorial Park after Sequim Prairie Garden Club members returned the canoe to Viola Penn Riebe and family.

Hudson said that the tribal members felt bad that the canoe was taken, so they gifted a pavilion to the park.

“It’s [this] humanoid structures with their arms up,” Hudson said. “The end posts have Seawolf heads on them. It’s very nice. A lot of people sit there, read poetry [or] just think.”

For more about the Sequim Prairie Garden Club, visit sequimprairiegardenclub.org.

Sequim Gazette file photo by Michael Dashiell / As Vince Penn sings, tribal members bless a canoe before it’s removed from Pioneer Memorial Park in Sequim in 2017. The large, hand-carved canoe was made by William E. Penn in the early 1960s and after decades in the Sequim park was moved closer to Penn’s family members on the West End.