Page 181 - Family History

Letters, Postcards, Clippings
Newspaper Clipping – Fisher Pharmacy Closes
[Note: From Port Angeles Evening News, Thursday April 29, 1943.]
Fisher Pharmacy, City’s Oldest
Business Establishment, Closes
By Jack Henson
A saga of pioneer days, that began on the
beach here in 1888, fifty-five years ago, was
ended a few days ago when Mrs. George
Taylor turned the key in the lock of the
Fisher Pharmacy, 118 West Front street to
signal the closing of Port Angeles’ oldest
business establishment.
Since the death of the founder, E.E. (Pete)
Fisher, in 1934, the pharmacy was operated
by George Taylor until his death several
weeks ago. His widow carried on during his
illness and for several weeks after his death,
but recently sold the stock and closed the
business.
The story of the Fisher Pharmacy started
when E.E. Fisher moved a stock of drugs
into a shack at 121 East Front street in 1888.
The one-room building faced a trail-like
road that meandered along the beach. There
were no show windows in the shack but
pinned on the roof was a sign that read
“Drugs.”
Young “Pete” Fisher had come to Port
Angeles a couple of years before with his
parents, the late Mr. and Mrs. Herman
Fisher, and had cut wood and done most
everything while waiting an opportunity to
go into the drug store business for which he
had been trained. The senior Fishers lived a
couple doors east of the new business
establishments.
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The Puget Sound Co-operative Colony had
settled at Ennis creek in 1887 and quite a lot
of folks moved in and lived there, but there
was only a handful of people along Front
street, then known as the west end. In front
of the new drug store was the weather
bureau flag pole to which ranchers tied their
horses when they came to town and across
the street was the weather bureau. Along the
street were a couple of grocery stores, the
Merchant’s and Central Hotels and the
Morse dock at the foot of Laurel street.
PIONEER DOCTORS
BROUGHT BUSINESS
The drug store was the only one in the
city. Pioneer doctors Lewis, Lull and Vail
brought the prescriptions that had previously
been compounded in their own offices, to
Pete Fisher to fill and amount the yellow
prescription files in the ancient
establishment are many mementos of the
old-time doctors dated back to 1888.
Along came the early 90’s and with it a
boom incidental to opening up of the
townsite to settlement. New buildings
started to spring up along Front street, the
city was incorporated as “squatters” poured
in and Pete Fisher loaded his stock and
fixtures in a wheelbarrow and moved across
Front street where there was a new building
that had show windows. Soon the green and
red globes, indicative of a drug store,
appeared in the new establishment about
where the Duck Inn now is located. To the
west was the new City Hotel, three stories
high. East on the corner of the block the
city’s greatest civic improvement, the town
pump, had been put in where the Eubanks