
Part 2 of two parts. You can read part 1 here.
With the formal opening of Alderwood Manor, there was a fanfare of advertising orchestrated out of each of the Puget Mill offices.


Excursions ran daily from Seattle over the Seattle-Everett Interurban Railway, stopping at the Alderwood Manor station, where prospective visitors disembarked and walked two blocks to the Demonstration Farm.
The tour of the Demonstration Farm allowed the visitors to see the poultry houses, the large incubator/hatching facility that could produce 55,000 chicks every 21 days, a deluxe community center, the newly erected elementary school, as well as model homes. The tour then continued into the orchards and vegetable gardens, where visitors were able to converse with horticulturists.
Then prospects were taken around the property in horse and buggies to look at the 80-acre subdivisions, which had 16 of the 5-acre tracts platted out, so they could potentially pick out a property to purchase.



Special Collections Division)
After the official tour, the prospective purchasers were also able to visit newly established farms and talk with owners as well as poultry and orchard experts.


Once the tour had been completed, prospective purchasers enjoyed a meal and then were escorted to the community center/meeting hall where W. A. Irwin’s sales staff used all the techniques of high-pressure sales to close the contracts.
The initial sales program worked well. The number of new settlers was enough to warrant Puget Mill building a new schoolhouse in 1919, as well as a two-story Tudor grocery store to supply the community with necessary supplies.


In addition to the Puget Mill Company’s continued investments in building infrastructure for the community, a large Masonic Hall was built in 1919-20. A blacksmith shop and a lumberyard were also built at about the same time.
Despite the fact that the Puget Mill Company advertised that it would provide all the necessary poultry and feed at below-market prices, it appears that the company might have not been able to meet the demand for new chicks at various times.
An article in the April edition of the Edmonds Tribune-Review recounts the fact that the local mailman, Dave Crockett, delivered 1,000 chicks that had arrived in the mail to farms in the Alderwood Manor area. However, the delivery was made only after some of the chicks got loose and had to be rounded up before they were delivered.

By the end of 1919, the population of Alderwood Manor — less than 25 in 1917 — had grown to 609. The following year proved to be an even bigger banner year, according to Puget Mill Company’s growth records.
The statistics that Puget Mill Company provided prospective purchasers at the start of 1921 in regards to Alderwood Manor’s growth in 1920:
Families settled: 210
Population, Jan. 1, 1920: 609
Population, Jan.1, 1921: 1,463
Increase in population: 135%
Egg production: Jan. 1, 1920 — weekly 70,000
Egg production: Jan. 1, 1921 — weekly 172,800
Fruit trees, Jan. 1, 1920 — 780
Fruit trees, Jan. 1, 1921 — 5,604
Average wealth per family, January 1920: $2,150
Average wealth per family, January 1921 $4,500
Alderwood Manor’s poultry farmers joined the Washington Co-op and sold their eggs directly to the association on a daily basis. The eggs were in turn sold to Seattle’s and Everett’s marketplaces and also boxed up and shipped as far away as New York. The East Coast markets in the early 1920s appeared to have an endless appetite for the high-quality eggs being produced at the Alderwood Manor farms.
By the start of 1921, the price of a 5-acre tract in Alderwood Manor had risen to $1,850 from the original $1,000 price in 1917. Although Puget Mill Company discouraged “speculative” buyers from purchasing property in Alderwood Manor, properties were sold in late 1920 for $2,100.
1921-1930
In the early to mid 1920s, Puget Mill continued to improve the infrastructure and services to the Alderwood Manor community. Major improvements were made to the roads within the property.


In August 1921, the Demonstration Farm hosted attendees from the American Poultry Association Convention. After attending an educational session and touring the farm, the delegates recognized the Demonstration Farm as one of the greatest poultry centers in the country, further enhancing the project’s mystique.

By the end of 1922, residents enjoyed electricity, phone service and 154 miles of roads within the property. Egg production in Alderwood Manor was second only to Petaluma, California.

Puget Mill’s 1922 sales materials stated that the members of the Alderwood Manor community were living a bucolic life and raising chickens that earned them financial independence. It was stated that the average hen would result in a $2 profit per year ($37 today).
Author’s note: it was recommended that farmers with 5 acres have between 400 and 600 hens. Five hundred hens would have generated $18,500 today.
Puget Mill Company continued to be successful in selling “a dream” throughout the 1920s. As one new family of “Little Landers” wrote:
“We were first impressed with the fact that the sale of the land was secondary, it was the life of the open, the sweet contentment, the happiness of the great ownership of the out-of-doors that was most important.
Secondly, that money was not the aim of living, but rather the production of that which besides giving money provides other comforts, chief among them one’s peace, the pleasure of one’s own home, and comfort of one’s own garden and little farm.
Third, the consciousness that in becoming a poultryman one was challenged by the requirements that might well arrest the interest, intellect of a thinking man, and the originality f one who loves to do. To plan one’s home, to make plans for one’s future, to work those plans…this is a call worthwhile.
Fourth, the vision that lay before Alderwood – the prospect of a great dream realized – to become one in a chain of mighty producers with something that smacked of a positive assurance that in the days to come their’s would be something worthwhile and in its possession a feeling in which happiness and peace were akin.”
Despite all the hype and dream weaving there were definitely ups and downs. The federal government began subsidizing poultry farms in the eastern portion of the United States to help struggling veterans returning from World War I. The subsidies resulted in new competition for the larger East Xoast markets, and fluctuating prices that the co-op received for their eggs, and in turn pay for the farmers.
Furthermore, it proved difficult for many of the “Little Landers” to earn enough solely by raising chickens even in the best of times. Many of them diversified, growing fruits and vegetables for sale, growing nursery stock, dairying and/or holding down jobs in Seattle or Everett.
As one descendant of an early farmer said:
“In looking back, I feel sorry for my parents. My father had to get up before dawn to clean the chicken sheds, feed the chickens and gather the eggs. Then he cleaned up and caught the interurban to work.
In the meantime, my mother fed us and got us off to school. While we were gone she had to clean and grade the eggs, package them up and take them to the co-op every day, while still tending to all her household chores.
When we got home from school, we helped pick greens from the garden to help feed the chickens and helped out in the garden and orchards as needed.”
Early 1930s and the Great Depression
When the Great Depression hit in the early 1930s, the price that the Washington Co-op was receiving for a dozen eggs dropped from around a dollar to a dime. Part of this steep drop was due to the fact that hundreds of thousands of eggs were found to be in cold storage and available for consumption and those eggs flooded the markets.
As a result, the farmers no longer could afford to purchase grain even at reduced prices from the Puget Mill’s granary to feed their flocks. Many of them abandoned their farms and moved elsewhere, forfeiting their work and investment. By 1933, Puget Mill Company said it also could no longer afford to keep the Demonstration Farm open, resulting in the abandonment of the community members.
Puget Mill late that year leased 5 of the central acres of the Demonstration Farm to Norm Collins, who established the Washington Breeders Association. Collins took over operations of the incubators and hatching facilities, upgrading them later. His lease also included the main poultry sheds plus the granary. Collins subsequently successfully operated the Washington Breeders Association until the early 1970s. The remaining 25 acres of the Demonstration Farm were subdivided into 1 acre parcels and eventually sold off by Puget Mill. Over the years the remaining stump farm properties were also sold by Puget Mill.

For those who had stayed through the Great Depression, the Alderwood Manor area in the mid 1930s appeared as if it might become a desirable suburban residential area. But when the Seattle-Everett Interurban Railway shut down in 1939 due to the advancement of automobiles and improved roads, Alderwood Manor’s easy accessibility and desirably faded.
As time passed, many of the Alderwood Manor-area businesses moved west into the emerging Lynnwood area centered at the crossroads of 196th Street Southwest and Highway 99, the latter of which had been completed in 1927.
Ultimately, with the expansion of Interstate 5, which cut through the heart of what was once the Demonstration Farm, the I-5 and 196th Street Southwest interchange became one of the most congested interchanges in Washington state. With it, the dream of a bucolic farm setting was gone forever.
The Remains of the Puget Mill Demonstration Farm today
Fortunately when the Environmental Impact Statement for the new interchange between I-5 and 196th was drafted in 1997, the original superintendent’s cottage, the water tower and the Wicker’s grocery store were able to be saved and moved to Heritage Park in Lynnwood.

Today, the Demonstration Farm’s superintendent’s cottage is the home of Lynnwood-Alderwood Manor Historical Museum. The property’s water tower sits to the northeast of the cottage in Heritage Park, and Wicker’s two-story Tudor grocery store sits directly south within the park.
In addition to the three buildings, a refurnished electric train car from the Seattle-Everett Interurban Railway is on display within the park’s grounds. Heritage Park — located at 19921 Poplar Way in Lynnwood — is definitely worth the visit.
This article was researched and written by Byron Wilkes. Thanks go to the Sno-Isle Genealogical Society, the Museum of History and Industry, The University of Washington Digital Collections, the Edmonds Historical Museum and especially Cheri Ryan and the Lynnwood-Alderwood Manor Heritage Museum for their assistance in researching this two-part article.
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