Juanita beginnings: Hubbard Post Office opens on June 20, 1881.

  • By Greg Lange
  • Posted 12/07/1998
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 450
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On June 20, 1881, the Hubbard Post Office is established on the east side of Lake Washington just north of Kirkland. The town of Hubbard is named after the Hubbard family, and Martin W. Hubbard (1850-1887) is the first postmaster. Hubbard will be renamed Juanita on April 30, 1886. 

A Logger Delivers the Mail

At the time of the name change, Martin W. Hubbard remained postmaster. He distributed mail from his residence. Primarily a logger, he built a wharf and took mail to Seattle. It is not known why the community changed its name to Juanita, but the name was chosen by Mary Jane Russell Terry of Seattle, whose husband Charles Terry owned land along what is now Juanita Bay. On May 28, 1887, Hubbard drowned in Lake Washington off Rose Point (then called William's Point) just south of Juanita Bay. He was 37. He is buried in Lake View Cemetery on Seattle's Capitol Hill.


Sources:

Guy Reed Ramsey, "Postmarked Washington, 1850-1960," Microfilm (Olympia: Washington State Library, February, 1966), 575; Lucile McDonald's Eastside Notebook, ed. by Lorraine McConaghy (Redmond, Marymoor Museum, 1993), 224.


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