Wenatchee’s 117-Year-Old Jail Revealed By Construction Project

Sometimes the present can reveal shades and echoes of the past in more ways than one, and since about a month ago now, that maxim certainly holds true for at least one of the buildings surrounding a fabled intersection in the city of Wenatchee.

It's here, at the corner of South Wenatchee Avenue and Kittitas Street, that the nascent excavations of a construction project have turned up a new perspective on an old relic.

When a wrecking crew working under the direction of Kirkland-based Weidener Apartment Homes leveled the old structure at 238 South Wenatchee Avenue into rubble, it also served as an undressing for the eastern facade of a building which has been standing in the Wenatchee Valley for well over a century.

The two-story, all-brick, Prairie Box-style assembly was built in 1908 and served as Wenatchee's first jail under the vigilant watch of the city's third-ever sheriff, J. Edward Ferguson.

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The old pokey's second level was once connected via catwalk to the first Chelan County Courthouse which had stood just to the east before being demolished by the crews from Weidener in February, although it hardly looked the same when the wrecking ball came crashing down since it had gone through a number of aesthetic renovations over the years.

The courthouse was built 15 years before the jail went up, in 1893, and was originally the Clark Hotel before being repurposed at some point around 1900.

When the new (and still in use) Chelan County Courthouse was constructed at Orondo Avenue and Washington Street in 1924, the old one was sold and turned back into a hotel, along with the jail, whose barred cells that once held drunken scallywags and lawless tumbleweeds were converted into guest rooms for weary travelers.

Fast forward another 15 years and the hearty brick edifice, now 31 years of age, was done serving as the annex portion of the Doneen Hotel, along with the rest of the property, which was leased to the Signal Gasoline Company for the installation of a service station in 1939.

Signal stripped the main building's top story-and-a-half but kept the one-time jail largely in tact so it could serve as an apartment that was once rented to the daughter of the Doneen Hotel's owners in the 1950s.

The filling station operated on the small town's bustling corner until the early 1960s, after which a series of auto repair shops came and went before Keyhole Security moved in sometime in 1983.

The locksmith quartered there and, much like several tenants before them, used the old jail for storage purposes until 2016, when the business bid goodbye to what was the two constructs longest-standing residency in its now century-plus-old history.

Today, some 86 years after its upper confines were cleaved to make way for the gas station, the foundational stones of the old courthouse have also finally been razed, but the brick-and-mortar curio just to its west has withstood all of the potential huffs and puffs that the big bad wolves of land development might have brought to it.

Rumor has it that the timeworn two-pint which has housed everything from rubberneckers and yardbirds to motor oil and key sets during its 117 years in the Valley, is actually being spared by Weidener, who intends to again redesign its purpose in some way, shape or form. Perhaps it will become some thriving part of the seven-story apartment complex the company plans to complete at the location within the next few years.

Whatever the case might be, it's only certain that time relentlessly marches on as we humans continue making all of the changes which help to create the notion of its very existence at all. So knowing how many things the aging brick pile has already been, and how quickly it will no doubt disappear into the fabric of whatever future establishments await it, let's just enjoy a view of its humble glory that residents and passers-through have never seen in quite the same way before now.

- My very special thanks to an old friend and brilliant local historian, Chris Rader, for providing most of the critical information needed to write this piece. Thank you, Chris :-)