Month: June 2015

It’s a perfect time to “stop and smell the roses” at the Burton C. Ross Memorial Rose Garden in Hoquiam.

Located on the grounds of the Polson Museum on Riverside Avenue in Hoquiam, the garden’s iridescent blooms have a story all their own. Chapters include the Grays Harbor Rose Society, community involvement, volunteerism, and a Civil War monument.

The Burton C. Ross Memorial Garden was planted in 1978 by members of the Grays Harbor Rose Society. Fourteen members donned rain gear and shovels and “labored in a downpour of rain such as only Grays Harbor residents can understand,” writes GHRS member Haidee Ross Douglas in 1980. Ross-Douglas continues, “… when they had finished that day, the first 75 roses had been planted in the bed to be named the Burton C. Ross Memorial Rose Garden –a tribute to a deceased Hoquiam member.”

The “deceased Hoquiam member” was Haidee’s husband, Burton C. Ross. The garden bears his name. Ross’s family contributed some of his own award-winning specimens for the garden.  Read more here:  http://www.graysharbortalk.com/2015/06/10/polson-rose-garden/

The Lady Washington is most recognized as the ship, the HMS Interceptor, in the film “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” but its cultural and historical significance to Grays Harbor is much more than just something seen on the silver screen. In the late 1700s, the original Lady Washington was the the pride of our young nation, flying the stars and stripes in parts around the planet for the very first time.

Named for Martha Washington, President George Washington’s wife, the original ship sailed the world, becoming the first American ship to round Cape Horn and make landfall on the Oregon coast. In the 1790s, the original Lady Washington was the first American-flagged vessel to visit Japan, Honolulu and Hong Kong. For a decade, the beautiful boat sailed the oceans and rivers of the world before wrecking off the Mestizo River in the Philippines in 1797.

For nearly 200 years, the Lady Washington was lost until a replica was built in 1989, just in time for Washington State’s Centennial celebrations. Often docked in San Diego, or other ports along the west coast, the ship returns home a few times each year, giving those living in Captain Gray’s namesake harbor a chance to travel back in time and sail on a tall, wooden vessel.  Read more here:  http://www.graysharbortalk.com/2015/06/21/lady-washington-tour-cruise/

By Margo Greenman

Seattle’s Pike Place Market is known for its famous flying fish, but if you ask a tourist where that fish came from, do you think he or she would know the answer?

West of Seattle is a region rich in native fish species, heirloom vegetables, and traditional, local foods found only in the Pacific Northwest. With miles of shoreline and acres upon acres of farm and forestland, Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and the Grays Harbor region are a gastronomic haven brimming with restaurants, wineries, markets and farms all stocked with fresh and local foods.

From heirloom Ozette potatoes to the coast’s prized razor clams, the region’s bountiful offerings are twice as toothsome when prepared by the hand of experienced food producers and chefs. Steve Shively, Membership and Marketing Director for the Olympic Culinary Loop — a unique group that represents the four counties united by the Olympic Peninsula and celebrates Olympic coast cuisine and the traditions that surround it — says the outstanding foods that are found in Grays Harbor are made even better thanks to the local experts and rockstar chefs who take these foods one step further. Shively says Taylor Shellfish and Brady’s Oysters are two good examples of this, as their outstanding selections of shellfish have developed a reputation that is respected not only by Pacific Northwest palates, but by the appetites of shellfish lovers across the globe.  Read more here http://www.graysharbortalk.com/2015/06/01/grays-harbor-culinary-tour/