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"After a new route for Aurora was graded here in the mid 1920s, Echo Lake resident Theodore Millan built the two-story roadhouse in 1928 on its triangular lot squeezed between the new Aurora and the old Echo Lake Pl. N. Here the latter leads to the canoes, tents and new beds of Scotty’s short-lived Paradise. With the uncorking of prohibition in late 1933, Millan rented his flatiron to Carl and Jane Melby, for their Tavern." (PatDorpat.com)
Melby's Tavern c.1938, WA State Archive via pauldorpat.com
Seattle Times March 13, 1932 Via Vicki Stiles and PaulDorpat.com |
"Vicki Stiles, the helpful and scholarly Executive Director of the Shoreline Historical Museum (nearby at 18501 Linden Ave. N.), had heard rumors that the florist Carl Melby had more than liked his booze during prohibition as well. The sleuthing Stiles discovered that Melby had been arrested at least three times transporting mostly illegal Canadian liquor. (We follow below with several Seattle Times clips on Melby’s career.) One night at Sunset beach near Anacortes he was chased into the Strait of Juan de Fuca up to his neck, collared and pulled ashore." (PatDorpat.com)In the 30s, before I-5 came rolling through, "Aurora Avenue" evoked the northern lights as it was part of the main local link in a route that ran from Mexico to Canada. Roadside resort cabins and motels to house the increasing numbers of people adventuring out from Seattle and any number of other towns as the automobile boomed. But by the time I moved to Seattle in the early 80s, Aurora had experienced at least a couple decades of decay, known more for cheap, crime-ridden motels, porn shops, small casinos, and chains of tattered strip mall businesses. "Aurora" connoted the sketchy part of town, not a romantic, natural light show.