I'm trying to track down the date of publication of an article that I
believe appeard in Sunset Magazine in the 60s.

We recently purchased a second home that was originally built by
friends of the family.  My mother believes that the house was featured
in Sunset magazine while she was growing up in the 60s.  The owners
names were Floyd and Ole (or Ola) Johnson and the house was located on
Blakely Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington state.  The house
was completed in around 1964, so I'd imagine that the article would
have appeared around then.  My mother seems to recall that it was
featured because it was all electric.  We've recently remodled it and
discovered, it was clearly state of the art at the time -- central
vac, built in blender/food processor, dropped celings and lovely
dressing rooms.  This was particularly unusal because the island was
extremely remote.

I've already contacted Sunset magazine directly, but they were unable
to help me.  I was thinking that maybe one of the big archive services
like Lexis Nexis may have cataloged stories that far back.  Any help
in directing me to resouces or the actual issue date would be
wonderful!

Figuringitout --

The on-line services generally don't have good indexes before about
1985; often later.  To do this search properly, one needs access to a
library just to find the likely articles.

A search in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature between March,
1961 and Februrary, 1976 turns up nothing for Blakely Island -- but
does have four likely articles from Sunset and two more from similar
magazines, Travel and Holiday.

Here are the Sunset articles:
"Pig War was a One-Shot War," Sept. 1965
"Into the San Juans by Mail Boat," April, 1961
"On Puget Sound, Charter Boats," May, 1969
"Exploring the Border Islands," July, 1971

In case it was a picture magazine with a similar format, you might
also want to check:
Travel, May, 1970, "Exploring the San Juan Islands"
Holiday, April, 1971, "Music to the Gourmet's Ears, Puget Sound"

Now, as for finding them.  The Sno-Isle Library District has been very
helpful at getting photocopies of many old publications for me in the
past, so you might try them if you have a residence (or a friend) in
that library district.

Or of course, there's your library district for San Juan County:
www.sjlib.org

Now I have a question for you: what's this "island was extremely
remote"?  Did they move it last week?

Google search strategy:
Sno-Isle Regional library (specifically the Lynnwood branch) has
Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature back to 1900.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA
Mukilteo, WA

---

Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 04 Dec 2002 13:34 PST

Figuringitout --

I didn't realize that I'd done work for you before; now I'll have to
check!  I hope that you proceed to check the articles -- just because
they don't mention Blakely or the Johnsons doesn't mean that they
aren't in one of those articles.  Indeed, I suspect that they are:
it's just that the Reader's Guide wouldn't index below something major
-- like the San Juan Island group (and my best bets would be the 1965
or 1971 articles.)

I'm pretty familiar with Blakely, having sailed and flown into the San
Juans (my plane's based at Paine Field).  My daughter spent a couple
of summers on Canoe Island at the French Camp.

I have a group of books on the San Juans and I'll check to see what I
find in them.  Oh, and take a look at this Google Answer:
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=93878

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Thank you for trying to track that down!  I really appreciate it.  I'm
disappointed that we were unable to find an actual article -- but my
mom may be remembering incorrectly.  I'll check out some of those
resources.

Regarding "extremely remote" -- since you are local, you have a pretty
good idea of the San Juan's and may even know some of this better than
I do.  From my understanding -- Floyd Johnson was the original
developer of Blakley.  He picked the lot and built his house up there.
 So, at the time, there were only a few homes -- and like today, no
ferry service.  It is nicknamed "The flying island" because most of
the home owners were also private pilots and flew up there.  Most
homes did not have phones either.  In recent years, service of
multiple small airlines and the advent of shuttle boat services have
made it a bit less remote.  Additonally, more phones and internet
access have helped a lot.

So, my reference to levels of remoteness refers to as much the
psychological feeling of connectendess and nearness, as the physical
location.

Long answer.  :-)

Thanks again for your help.  You've been great.  And, I just checked
my work google account and realized that you've done a great job for
me before.  Keep it up!

Thanks again!