Charles and Anna Davis came from Broken Bone, Nebraska, in 1905 and bought about 25 acres in Elgin, including land where State Route 302 and 118th Avenue NW are now located.
They built a little log house and raised six children there, including Helen Skahan's mother, Margaret. After Margaret married, she moved just across the road from her parents.
Helen, born in 1918, and her brother, Laverne, attended the Elgin school–seven grades with one teacher. The building is still there on Creviston, but is now a private home.
Helen lived on the land where she was born, but in a different home. She and her first husband, Burton Day, built a small house there. Day worked at the Minter Creek fish hatchery and they had to move over there when he was promoted to superintendent.
When Day died, Helen was left with three small children and asked her renter to leave so she could move back to her own home.
After Helen married Elmer Skahan in 1949, the two built a brush shed at the corner of their property, now divided from the house by SR 302. Elmer, Helen's son, Verne, and her stepdad, Alton Gross, all picked brush. She enjoyed doing it, too, but was the one who managed the shed. She bunched the huckleberry and salal, wired a bunch, weighed and trimmed the stems, put 20 bunches into a bale and tied it. She wore the tread off the bottom of her boots in about a month working on the concrete floor.
Elmer died in 2009. Helen remained in the home until her death in 2015.
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