When Washington State College (now WSU in Pullman) rapidly expanded after WWII to accommodate the influx of G.I. Bill students, the university desperately needed to attract and house top-tier researchers and professors. The Turner-Wexler Addition was platted on the northeast edges of College Hill to create a quiet, prestigious residential enclave tailored specifically for WSU faculty families.
Now, in my own words. 3 dead end streets constituted the addition. It is a small piece of private land, wedged between what eventually became two large dormitory projects.
While I'm normally not a fan of dead end streets, the little streets in that neighborhood had no place go, by car at least. They led to the property line of big dorms.
Through traffic continued, around a bend and into the university, farther to the east.
Pedestrians could take an easy walk from that neighborhood to the campus. Dad often walked over the hill and through the dorm complex at the end of our street on his way to work.
The neighborhood was originally part of a farm that was later subdivided into both university and private properties. There was an apple orchard, among other things on that farm.
A little stream ran through the farm which was covered over by placing it into a large culvert. When the university built dorms, parking lots and playfields, the land was reshaped.
It wasn't until I got to Bellingham that I made a connection in my mind. One day, while I was sweeping stairs at my custodial job, my mind made a connection between two streams in childhood memories. One was out by the university golf course and the other was through the back yards of folks on my paper route. Those are the same creek separated by the large underground culvert.
Willow trees, but actually the branches of one willow tree. Buried under regrading to build the culvert and the dorms. Branches pointing toward a common trunk.
This little grove is now gone as yet another new dorm has been built.
The original Wexler farmhouse is still in that area. It's life story used to interest me, during childhood. It went from being out on a farm to being in an urban setting, surrounded by other homes and large buildings.
Today, the houses in that neighborhood, are mostly student rentals as faculty tend to live in other parts of town these days.
During my childhood, most of the houses were occupied by faculty families with some rental apartments for students in a few homes.
At one end of our street was a small house rented to a grad student. This many years later, I met someone at a discussion group here in Bellingham who lived in that small house. I met her here in Bellingham, where I now live; some 400 road miles from Pullman. Another one of those small world experiences.
Regents Hill is university property, but basically it was our neighborhood park. We had Fourth of July picnics there. It served as an ampatheater for folks watching kids set off little fire works. I remembr many neighbohood kid slumber parties, in sleeping bags, up on that hill.
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