In the past twenty years we have seen a complete transformation of Stone Way from a light-industrial area to an avenue of modern apartment buildings. There are still a few old buildings. Coast Carton Company at 4133 Stone Way, was built as a box factory in 1912 and the building now has retail storefronts.
In 1906 James L. Norie of Pennsylvania traveled with his father-in-law, Joseph Kaye, to explore the timber resources of the State of Washington. They had read newspaper accounts that major timber companies such as Weyerhaeuser and Laird-Norton had left Minnesota and moved to Washington in search of new forests of trees. Joseph Kaye was also in the lumber business and wanted to try to find a new supply. He bought a lumber mill in Pilchuck, a mill town near Arlington in Snohomish County, about 40 miles northeast of Seattle.
A few years later, J.L. Norie brought his family to the Pacific Northwest and operated a lumber mill in Sedro-Woolley, Skagit County. Next, the Norie family moved to Seattle. Instead of working directly with timber, in 1912 Norie set up a secondary business: the making of paper boxes from softwood trees such as pine and fir. Norie built a box factory at 4133 Stone Way (southwest corner of 42nd Street).
All of James Norie’s family, his parents and siblings, moved to the Pacific Northwest as did those of his wife Martha Kaye Norie. James & Martha’s son worked at Coast Carton as did James’ nephew Robert, Robert’s wife Lena and daughter Katherine.
James Norie outlived two wives and continued to manage the box factory until he was in his seventies, in the 1950s. In 1964 at age 86, Norie attended a reunion at the old ghost-town of Pilchuck, Snohomish County. He took sick and died in Seattle, two weeks after the Pilchuck reunion.
Sources:
Genealogy listings including Find A Grave.
Plat name: the notation “Elders Orchard” on the Coast Cartons property photo, is the legal description of the plat name. The photo was taken circa 1938 in a survey of all taxable buildings in King County, for property tax assessment.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 8, 1937, page 19: J.L. Norie’s first wife, Martha, was killed in a car wreck.
Seattle Daily Times, October 25, 1964, page 98: Lucile MacDonald column about Pilchuck, a vanished town in Snohomish County.