Erwin Forbes
Erwin Forbes, who carries on general farming as an extensive landowner of Palo Alto Township, dates his settlement in Jasper County from 1866. His residence is situated on Section 17, where he has provided himself with comfortable buildings. He was born in Steuben County, New York, October 3, 1844, and is the son of Moses and Abigail M. (Redfield) Forbes, who were also natives of the Empire State. When Erwin was a lad of six summers, he removed with his parents to Bureau County, Illinois, locating nine miles south of Princeton. The family were early settlers of that community, where our subject was there reared to manhood, amid the scenes of pioneer life, and assisted in developing a new farm. He received his education in the common schools of that neighborhood.
In February 1865, he left home to enter the service of his country, becoming a member of Company K, 148th Illinois Infantry. He was at once sent to middle Tennessee, where he was engaged principally in patrolling railroads. He was honorably discharged in October 1865, and returned to his Illinois home.
The following winter Mr. Forbes attended school, and in the spring of 1866, he came to Iowa, locating in Jasper County. At that time he settled upon his present farm, and has made it his home continuously since, devoting his time and attention to its cultivation and to stock, of which he is an extensive raiser. He has been very successful in his operation, and now owns several hundred acres, the greater part of which is now under a high state of cultivation. He began life empty-handed, possessing about $1,000.00 when he came to Jasper County. February 22, 1872, he married Alwilda McDonald. She was born in southern Iowa, and is the daughter of Wm. J. McDonald. Mr. and Mrs. Forbes are the parents of six children: Pearl, Eugene, Jay, Lee, Don and Ida. The children have been provided with good educational advantages, Mr. Forbes being a staunch friend of the public schools. Standard Historical Atlas of Jasper County, Iowa. The Huebenger Survey and Map Publishing Co.,Davenport, Iowa, 1901. Mound Prairie and Palo Alto Townships, Part III - Page 34
Erwin R. Forbes
Born: August 16, 1903 in Newton, Jasper Co., Iowa
Died: March 4, 1990 in Newton, Jasper Co., Iowa
Buried: Newton Memorial Park Cemetery
Married: Helen Brodersen on June 3, 1933 in Newton, Jasper Co., Iowa
Children: Ronald and Joanne Whitney
Parents: Eugene and Estella (Ramsay) Forbes
Erwin R. Forbes
Funeral services for Erwin R. Forbes, 86, of 317 E. 8th St. N., a resident of Newton since 1925, will be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, March 7, at the United Presbyterian Church.
The Rev. Scott Coulter, pastor of the church, will conduct services. Burial will be in Newton Memorial Park Cemetery.
Friends may call at Reese Chapel until 9 a.m. Thursday. Visitation with the family will e held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. today.
Memorials to Hospice of Jasper County or the United Presbyterian Church may be left at the funeral home.
He died Monday evening at the home of his son, Ronald, in Newton of cancer.
Also surviving are a daughter, Joanne Whitney; six grandchildren; a step-grandchild; nine great-grandchildren; four step-great-grandchildren; and three sisters, Thelma Pirkl of Dodge Center, Minn. Hazel Lindstrom of Casson, Minn., and Irene Swanson of west Concord, Minn.
He was preceded in death by his parents and his wife, Helen, Nov. 19, 1989.
Mr. Forbes, a member of the United Presbyterian Church, Jasper County Senior Citizens and Palo Alto Grange, had been a gravel and lime trucker and was a delivery and repairman for Forges Office Equipment in Newton for 10 years prior to his retirement.
The son of Eugene and Estella Forbes, he was born Aug. 16, 1903 in Newton.
He was married to Helen Broderson June 3, 1933 in Newton.
Mr. Forbes had resided in North Dakota from 1919 until moving to Minnesota in 1922 where he lived until returning to Newton. ~ The Newton Daily News, Newton Iowa, March 5, 1990
Dorr Forbes, Brother of Erwin Forbes
Juanita Beach Park
Juanita Beach Park, located along Juanita Bay in Kirkland, has been a popular summer destination for most of a century. Originally settled by Dorr and Eliza Forbes, the park blossomed as a resort in the 1920s under the guidance of their son Leslie and his wife Alicia. In 1956, they sold the park to King County. It remained a county park until 2002, when ownership was transferred to the City of Kirkland.
Dorr and Eliza
The Juanita Beach Park property was homesteaded in 1876 by Dorr and Eliza Forbes, who planned their move west soon after getting married in Iowa in 1874. After traveling by train with their newborn son Ray to San Francisco, they headed north and briefly lived in a log cabin near Hillsborough, Oregon, where they had a second son, Leon. From there, they continued on to Puget Sound.
Once in Seattle, Dorr scouted around and eventually decided to move his family to a small bay on northeast Lake Washington. They hauled all their belongings onto a boat at McGilvra Landing (later Madison Park) and traveled from there to their new home, where they would spend the rest of their lives.
The hills near the bay were heavily forested, and Dorr set to work clearing his land and building a shingle mill. At first, their closest neighbor, Martin Hubbard, lived a mile away and delivered the mail. As more settlers moved nearby, the community chose the name Hubbard, but later changed it to Juanita.
Pioneer Life
Before others moved to the area, the Forbes family had the bay to themselves. Once, when Dorr and the boys were out logging, Eliza was surprised when a group of Indian women opened her front door and walked in. Afraid at first, Eliza soon realized they were cold and hungry. She fed them and had them stand next to the fire. Afterwards, they left peacefully.
In an attempt to upgrade his sawmill, Dorr added a kiln, but the night after it was installed it burned the mill down. Then he attempted to grow cranberries and took up a preemptive claim on Forbes Lake (now Lake Kirkland) a few miles southeast of Juanita. Unfortunately, beavers kept eating his berries, and he gave that up too. But Dorr was a jack-of-all-trades, and found work at other mills and on other farms.
Eliza gave birth to two more sons -- Allen and Leslie -- and also became the first female Justice of the Peace in King County, and possibly in Washington state. She began this job in 1887, when Washington was still a territory, but had to relinquish her duties in 1889 when it became a state. At that time, women still didn´t have the right to vote.
Eliza, a staunch Republican, remained active in politics, but mostly lived out her life as an archetypical pioneer housewife. Even into her 90s she would fish in the nearby stream, pick nettles and dandelions for salads, and sit on the porch shooting robins in the cherry trees. Robin breast, dressed and cooked correctly, was a delicacy.
Leslie and Alicia
As some of the older Forbes boys moved away from the homestead, Leslie helped his father more and more. During the Klondike Gold Rush, Dorr and Leslie brought crates of pickled eggs to Alaska to sell to the sourdoughs. They discovered that if they had brought phonograph records, they could have made a fortune, as these were what many miners wanted the most.
In 1905, the Forbes lost their home and possessions in a fire, and built a new house. At the time, the shoreline of Juanita Bay was peppered with many structures. Crossing the east side of the bay was the Juanita Slough bridge and steamer dock, built with timbers donated by Dorr Forbes. West of the Forbes property was the Urania Dock -- named for the ferry Urania -- and the Urania Club House, a meeting place for Scandinavian families who lived on nearby Finn Hill.
Just south of their house the Forbes built a dance hall. It was here that Leslie Forbes met Alicia Stuart, stepdaughter of Sherm Stuart. The Stuarts lived in Houghton, south of Kirkland, where Mr. Stuart was the superintendent of Anderson Shipyards. As a young girl, Alicia had christened the ferry Atlanta. Leslie and Alicia fell in love and were married in 1910.
The Sands of Time
Leslie and Alicia's first home was in a small confectionary store connected to the Juanita Slough bridge, but they later moved to a room in the dance hall where they had met. They eventually raised five children -- Dorris, Joyce, JoAnn, Elizabeth, and James. In 1918, the dance hall burned down and they lost everything they owned, but an event from two years earlier soon added to their fortune.
In 1916, the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal caused Lake Washington to drop 8.8 feet, as the body of water sank to the level of Lake Union. Most lakeshore dwellers had to deal with thick, smelly goo in their new backyards, but at Juanita Beach the receding waters exposed a vast expanse of fine white sand. Not only that, the shelf extended far out into the water. Almost 500 feet from shore, the water was only 5 feet deep, unlike elsewhere on the lake where it tended to go deep fairly close to dry land.
Recognizing the business potential of owning such a rare piece of Lake Washington property, Leslie capitalized on it. In 1920, he and his partner Ed Nelson opened a concession counter for the growing number of Seattleites who were crossing the lake for weekend getaways. A year later, he bought some property from his mother -- Dorr had died in 1919 -- along with adjacent strips that gave him a total of 100 feet of beachfront land.
His first task was clearing sunken logs and cleaning up the park site. Then came the construction of restrooms and a 20 by 30 foot bathhouse. In 1921, Juanita Beach opened for business.
On The Beach
It became a huge success. Thousands of people traveled to Juanita each summer for fun in the sun. Leslie and Alicia were living with their family in a small house where the dance hall used to be, and they soon turned part of it into a small store that sold groceries and had a lunch counter with ice cream and soft drinks.
Leslie worked in Seattle as chief clerk for Judge Rhea Whitehead, so Alicia managed the beachfront business during weekdays. Dorris Forbes Beecher remembers her mother as having "an astute sense of business, great energy, and keen foresight." Alicia always kept ahead of her times, and was one of the first women in Juanita to bob her hair -- quite daring in the 1920s.
By 1925, the Forbes built an open-air kitchen with tables, a stove, and hot water. In 1928, they built a larger, two-story bathhouse -- which also had a jukebox and dance floor -- and offered swimsuits for rent. They planted 150 cottonwood trees, some of which to this day cover the neighborhood with white fluff during the spring blossom.
Award Winner
Initially, admission to Juanita Beach was free and the Forbes charged only 25 cents for picnic table rentals. When they found that some visitors were subletting the tables at a cheaper rate, they started charging by the carload. After noticing the number of people who were parking outside the gate for free, they started charging 10 cents a head to go to the beach. Some grumbled at this, but even during the Great Depression, a day of swimming, picnicking, and general gamboling was quite a bargain for one thin dime.
In 1931, the Washington Outing Resorts Association designated Juanita Beach as the most modern, clean, and convenient resort in the Northwest. In 1933, a re-enactment of the signing of the 1855 Point Elliott treaty brought members of many Indian tribes, as well as thousands of celebrants to one of the largest cross-cultural Indian celebrations ever held in King County since the arrival of the first white settlers in 1851.
The Forbes operation was not the only resort on Juanita Beach. Nearby were the Shady Beach and Sandy Beach resorts, and Pop Bergeron ran a business called Juanita Park, which had a dance hall with entertainment provided by Milt Gootee and his band. All resorts operated well throughout the 1930s, and they all saw a decline in attendance after the start of World War II.
End of an Era
In 1937, Leslie and Alicia moved back into the 1905 Forbes house -- which they expanded -- to be with Eliza, then in her 80s. Eliza was still active, especially in politics. She always found a way to make it to Republican Party meetings in Seattle, mostly through rides from family members. When she reached the age of 90, the family decided it was unwise of her to travel that far, but she defied them and hitchhiked to town. Eliza passed away in 1942 at the age of 92.
On Line History of Washington State History. http://www.historylink.org/_output.cfm?file_id=4009