Valley Historical Society

08/14/2026

If you didn’t get a chance to visit the soon-to-be Valley Museum, come see us on Sept 12 - 1-4. We’ll be having a small art, antique and misc sale as well. Come & see all the beautiful vintage cars!!

08/11/2026

08/09/2026

WE HAVE A WINNER!! The Valley Open Schoolhouse raffle was won by Sheila Metlow —Congratulations!!!

SINCERE THANKS again to our generous raffle sponsors: Lane Mountain Inland Empire Beef Setys MK Coffee Station 395 Coffee All those who purchased tickets

Your kind support allows all-volunteer, non-profit Valley Historical Society to continue working toward the Valley Museum and history preservation.

06/29/2026

Thanks to everyone involved with this project! The Independent (Chewelah, WA), The Heritage Network and Lynn Wells' family for providing the funding. And to the Digital Newspaper Program through the Washington State Library, part of the WA Secretary of State services. We appreciate it!

The Independent (Chewelah, WA), Chewelah Historical Society, The Heritage Network, Clayton & Deer Park Historical Society, Valley Historical Society, and Northeast Washington Genealogical Society will soon have digital copies of The Independent. They were digitized under contract with the Washington State Library with permission of Jared Arnold, publisher of The Independent. They will go online at the State Library's historical newspaper collection late this year, but in a month or two, each of these The Heritage Network members will receive JPGs and PDFs of the newspaper. The Independent and SCHS will additionally have the TIFs. A 4TB external drive is needed to include the TIFs. I will identify each folder by year, since A60000838407 isn't particularly descriptive. I will also OCR the PDFs for searching. Looking at the 1907-08 images, I suspect little will OCR, but a human will be able to figure some of it out. Special thanks go to the family of Lynn Fackenthall Wells, who allowed Lynn's donation to The Heritage Network to be used to pay for the digitization. The image is a December 25th, 1908, edition of the paper showing the Yale Hotel is open. www.facebook.com/SETYSACE/

12/14/2025

Season's Greetings from all of us at Valley Historical Society!
We thank everyone for all the support this year. If you would like to make a gift to Valley Historical Society this season, we are a nonprofit so it is tax deductible for those end of year (or any time of the year) gifts. Link to our Go Fund Me and mailing info in comments. Thanks all and have a wonderful rest of 2025!

12/13/2025

Check out this great documentary just released by Patrick Donohue about the history of magnesite in this area. "Washington's Magnificent Magnesite" is the name of the documentary, and it features experts including Geno Ludwig, lots of great photos, video footage and information. Well done, thank you for making this wonderful documentary Patrick!

Washington State has a rich geological history, including some nationally important ore resources. Come learn the story of Washington's Magnesite with three ...

12/11/2025

Great photo of a man riding a bike customized for the railways through Valley in 1908. The former AOUW Hall can be seen in the background of the photo as well as the house built by either John Collins or the Jarvis family (John was married to Dora Jarvis Collins around 1897), which that house was built likely sometime in the 1880s, and still stands today next to the present day Valley Fire Hall.
There has been differing information about if the house was built by John Collins or the the Jarvis family. If anyone has info on that house please let us know, like who built it or the exact year. It used to be a white house and now the color of the house is brown from the weathered wood.

Man riding a rail bike in Valley, Stevens County in 1908.

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