It may cost money to tour the King Agriculture Museum, but memories are the real currency of exchange at the downtown Centralia shrine to the tools, and toys, of hard working men and women.
Although agriculture is in the name of the museum, the labyrinth of display rooms tucked inside the impressive confines of the old Lewis County Lumber company building are chock-full of relics from Washington’s lengthy logging, maritime and craftsman’s histories as well.
The staggering collection has been carefully curated by Dave King with the help of his longtime partner and self-professed “significant other,” Aunnita White. King, 70, grew up in Onalaska and says that the wheels of fortune rarely brought him to the big city of Centralia. But on those rare and cherished occasions that King did make it to the Hub City, he remembers that he loved to ride his bicycle on the paved city streets. He even remembers riding by the old railroad roundhouse, as well as the former Lewis County Lumber company that now houses his prolific ode to the past.
Before King purchased the decaying building in 2006, he said he asked the city if there was anything he should know about the property. According to King, the city told him they were going to have it demolished due to its deteriorating condition if he didn’t wind up buying it. Already interested, King could not bear to see the historic building fall victim to the cold wrecking ball, and the rest is history.
“I’ve had this place for 10 years and I’ve been working on it ever since,” said King with a laugh.
In the lengthy interim, those restorations have come a long way and the new museum, which opened to the public back in 2015, is a marvel to walk through. Still, even after reroofing the building, gutting it down to the baseboards, and filling the renovated space with antique tractors, buck saws and potato diggers, King says he has lots more in store.
“The inside of this building is just perfect for what we’re doing here. It’s just the right era,” said King of the museum’s shell, which was originally constructed in 1916.
In fact, during the ground level work, King and his crew of helpers wound up pulling planks from the floor that had originally been planed at the old Carlisle Mill in Onalaska. The boards had been cut to size during their extraction and were sitting in a pile and destined to become firewood before a telltale identifying stamp was noticed on the underside of the boards. Now, those historic planks are displayed prominently in the storefront display room of the museum.
Next on King’s ever-growing to-do list is the completion of his nautical room. Last month, he poured the concrete, and he recently installed the room’s special entrance. That entryway is none other than one of the hulking hatch doors from the historic Kalakala ferry that formerly plied the choppy waters of Puget Sound between Seattle and Bremerton. King picked the hefty door up at an auction, but he didn’t wait his turn.
“I talked my way in a day early,” said King. “The guy running it liked what I was doing, and that it was going to be available to the public.”
King takes his craft seriously and refuses to exhibit anything until the item has been cleaned up and an appropriate display has been created.
“Otherwise it just looks like my barn,” joked King. He has so many ideas and projects percolating that the blue collar museum man admits, “Time is my enemy.”
King added, “I’m getting old and slowing down, I know it, but when I’m working on a display that’s going to make people happy, that’s what does it for me. That’s what keeps me going,”
Visitors to the museum vary in both variety and frequency, but King says a lot of the patrons are parents who are bringing their kids into show them how things used to get done.
”Anything of local historical significance I’ll try to get in,” said King. “This is our country’s history. That’s what you’re seeing in this building.”
King grew up in rural Lewis County on an 80-acre family farm raising pigs, cows, chickens and horses, so he comes by his fascination with local rustic history quite naturally.
“Plus as a kid I would work for all the neighbors,” added King. “When I was old enough and worth my salt I worked putting up loose hay in the barn.”
The collecting component of King’s passion did not begin to take shape until the late 1980s, though. He started off with old fashioned tools because they were all that he could afford. Now he’s moved his way up to one-of-a-kind tractors, saws and lumber trucks.
“When you’re a collector there’s no limit,” said King. “Some people tell stories. Some people play music. Well, I’ve got this little quirk that tells me I should be holding onto this stuff.”
The expensive hobby of collecting and curating pays dividends for King when one of his exhibits strikes a chord with a museum visitor. “The people that come in here and appreciate what we have, they’re just kind of in awe,” said King. “Everybody who comes through picks up on something significant that sometimes I don’t even give a second thought. Usually it’s something to do with their past.”
King says that helping people reconnect with the diesel and grease scented recesses of their past is exactly what his museum is all about. “I’m trying to create something here where people will come in and feel good,” he said.
One of King’s current projects that has already brought warm and fuzzy feelings to the masses is the restoration of the kids train that used to make the rounds at the old Twin City Drive-In Theatre. The red and yellow train could haul about 30 tykes in its day, and King is working hard to make that a reality once again. Last year he brought it to the Southwest Washington Fair in Chehalis. Even as a non-operational display item King says the train was the star of the show. It even made a few people cry. “They could not believe that they were seeing the same train that they rode on as kids,” said King.
King’s tractors make up the meat and potatoes of the museum’s presentation. All told, King says he owns about 90 antique tractors and 70 of them are on display at the museum. “There’s a variety there that you won’t be able to see anywhere else,” boasted King. He says that the staggering assortment helps to make sure that everyone bumps into something that touches them personally. Usually the machine that piques the patrons’ interest is the one that grandpa used to drive.
King has a favorite tractor as well: A propane powered Case 830 High Crop. The lifted tractor is designed to ride high above field crops for midseason cultivating and King says there were only 13 of that particular model ever made. The tractor sits so high that, “When you’re parading people will say, ‘How’s the air up there?’” said King.
The oldest tractor in the museum is a 1918 Universal. It is a colossus of a machine with cement in the wheels to lower the center of gravity after rollovers proved common. The museum collection also includes a few tractors and a crane dating back to the 1940s. King noted that machines from that era are extra rare because of the nationwide iron shortage caused by the country’s efforts in World War II.
There is even an olive drab 1951 Air Force tractor, a Minneapolis Moline model ZASI, on display at the museum. A similar model made for the Army owned by King is currently on display at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis.
“I’m the one who brings the antique tractors to the fair,” said King. Last year he was also the grand marshal of Centralia’s lighted tractor Christmas Parade, and he always makes sure to bring out his crowd pleasing tractors for the fourth of July parade in Chehalis and the Onalaska Apple Bloom Festival.
The King Agriculture Museum gladly accepts donated items that have historical significance to the area and King’s attention to detail mandates that the displayed items always list the previous owner as well as the craftsman who did any restoration work to the piece.
“This isn’t a get-rich-quick thing. That’s not what this is. It’s a passion for me,” said King.
