The House on Wheels Departing for the Sun
A Port Angeles man constructs a custom 'prairie schooner' to transport his family south in search of warmer weather.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A rig more resembling a 'prairie schooner' than anything else started from the City Dock yesterday afternoon on a long journey southward. M. F. A. Lasley, of Port Angeles, rode in front and drove a team of horses. Mr. Lasley had been living with his family in Port Angeles for several years. He turned his personal property into a unique outfit: a small house built on wheels. Using a foundation of two 2x4 fir scantlings, Lasley constructed a very light but comfortable house of cedar, roofed with canvas. It contains several small windows and a two-part door to keep the children safe. He carries tools for repairs and intends to do his own work along the way, not bothered if he only travels five miles a day. His wife was much more anxious to start than he.
“He said yesterday that he had turned his personal property into the rig he now had and had started for some country where the sun shone more than it did here.”
Long before the modern 'van life' movement, Pacific Northwest residents were innovating mobile living to escape our gray winters. This family's slow trek south represents an early, rustic precursor to the regional exodus that still occurs every autumn.
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