Straight From A Fairy Tale

It happens sometimes, not very often, that you ride on the usual road and everything is ordinary or almost ordinary, and suddenly you see something from another age.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them. Just look at those long-legged wooden supports!

You shout to your driver "Stop! Stop!" and get out from the car, go back and can't believe your eyes:



Small little building with a mossy roof and a water wheel straight from a fairy tale.

You read the sign and learn that this waterwheel was brought to Dalby creek by Ed and Ethel Dalby by boat from Seattle in 1924. It had been used in the Seattle cable car system, most likely on Queen Anne hill. Ed and his father, Will Dalby, mounted the wheel and attached dredge buckets which had been used on the Denny re-grade in Seattle. When the massive wheel was assembled, it produced electricity for the Dalby home and several cabins on their property until the 1940's. Though no longer providing electricity, the wheel has continued to turn throughout the decades, adding to the pleasure of many a passerby.
The first wheel, built in 1922, was a wooden cultivator wheel that broke during a heavy winter two years later.
In 2003, SR 106 was realigned, and the Dalby Waterwheel was left out of public view. The family of David H. Dalby, the son of Ed and Ethel, donated the waterwheel and this land to the Hood Canal Improvement Club, which, with the generosity and hard work of many people, relocated the waterwheel to this site in 2005.

Then you ride further, back to the future, to the normality of everyday life, thinking if anything will be left after you that will stop people and amaze them.

Thank you Ed and Ethel!