One of the pioneers who helped shape the early economic fortunes of Washington state also helped lay the foundation for what would become the community of Federal Way. His name was Henry Bucey, a man who made himself wealthy through a strong entrepreneurial spirit and an insatiable desire to succeed in the face of great adversity.
He was born in Ohio in 1847 and spent his childhood mostly engaged in farm labor and had little opportunity to acquire an education. After a period of time operating a restaurant in Iowa, he opened a nursery in Kansas in 1870, which was destroyed by a plague of grasshoppers in 1874-75.
After this disaster, he arrived in Portland, Oregon in June 1876.
“He was in very poor health and was financially depleted,” historian Joanne Scallon said.
According to a 1936 obituary of Bucey by the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce, he soon purchased a homestead in eastern Oregon. He worked to make improvements to this land until he was caught in the middle of an 1878 uprising of Native Americans in the area. His land was destroyed.
In spite of his misfortune, he soldiered on, with a particular focus on obtaining the formal schooling he had never received. According to Scallon, he saved $400 to enroll in the Bishop Scotts Grammar School of Portland, where he studied English and Latin. He then learned the legal profession in the office of a state senator and then, with a partner, opened his own law office in Pendleton, Oregon. He married Nellie Walker, his partner’s sister, and together they would have three sons.
In 1885, four years before Washington became a state, he moved with his family to Tacoma. He opened a law and real estate practice. He also pursued his lifelong interest in the nursery business, becoming the first president of the Washington State Horticultural Society and co-published the Northwest Horticulturalist, a monthly periodical.
In 1890, he, Lafeyette Rogers and other men purchased land in what is now the Federal Way neighborhood of Buenna. They donated land on which was constructed a schoolhouse for the neighborhood and built houses to attract settlers. Bucey desired that Buenna become a city and railroad hub, but this did not happen. According to a family story, the name for the community was suggested in 1890 by Bucey’s then infant son, Harold. As Bucey and Nellie discussed during a meal what to call the land they had just purchased, Harold, then able to pronounce only a few words, pointed at a nearby banana and indicated that he desired it. He pronounced it “bu-en-a.”
From Buenna, Bucey commuted regularly to his office in Tacoma. Scallon describes the means by which he launched his commute in Poverty Bay towards Tacoma: “At first he rowed to Tacoma in a flat-bottomed rowboat … Later he traveled in the forerunner of the outboard motor: a naptha-powered one cylinder engine motor boat. Still later, he would row out to a float, leave his rowboat and catch the steamer ‘Argus’ into Tacoma.”
Bucey was known as an innovator in economic development during the early years of Washington State. One of his major activities was founding and managing the Northwest Industrial Exposition, which ran for several months each year in Tacoma from 1890-97. The exposition, which changed its name to the Northwest Interstate Fair in 1894, was designed to attract settlers and advertise investment opportunities in the Pacific Northwest. Participants in the fair were not just from Washington State, but British Columbia, Alaska, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. In 1894, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reported that Bucey had reached out to John McGraw, who had become Washington state’s second governor in 1893, for assistance when, beset by various difficulties, the future of the fair’s operation was in doubt. The assistance offered by the governor appears to have included advice and encouragement, making an appearance at the fair to dedicate it, and issuing an official proclamation to call public attention to it.
Unfortunately, the wooden building housing the fair burned down in September 1897, effectively ending the fair’s operation for good. The building was without insurance.
As he had during the struggles of his younger years, Bucey rebounded from this disaster and threw his energies into a new enterprise. This was the construction of an electric rail line between Seattle and Tacoma. In 1898 Bucey formed a corporation which, the following year, received a 25-year franchise to build the electric railway. Before it was complete, the railway project was purchased by Puget Sound Traction, Light & Power, a Seattle subsidiary of the Boston firm Stone & Webster. Calling itself Puget Sound Electric Railway, it began operation in September 1902 and lasted for 26 years. Many farmers in what is now South King County greatly appreciated the opportunities the railway opened up for much faster transport of their produce.
After Bucey died on Dec. 28, 1935, the Seattle Times obituary proclaimed him to be “another of that fast vanishing race of pioneers who founded an empire in the northwest wilderness.” While the traditional American narrative of the wholesome and entrepreneurial pioneer settling the frontier is based more on legend than fact — and tends to ignore the presence of Native Americans — it cannot be denied that Henry Bucey’s life realized the ideals of that narrative more than most.
Chris Green is a member of the Historical Society of Federal Way.
