8th Finglish trip June 2009 #39
The Winlock Egg was listed as the world's largest egg by Ripley's Believe It or Not! in 1989. The current structure is the fourth reincarnation of the original egg. The first egg was built for a celebration of the opening of the Pacific Highway Bridge over the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon. The idea of an egg came from John G. Lawrence, the manager of the newly formed egg and poultry co-op as a way to represent the growing industry centered in Winlock in the 1920s. During that time farmers in Winlock were shipping as much as a quarter million cases of eggs to market a year.
"The first Finnish settlers came to town in 1903, quite by mistake. There were a lot of Finlanders working in the coal mine at Carbonado. A few of them decided they wanted to get out and get a little ranch somewhere. They had heard that Boistford valley was good farm country, so Nick Lolanen, Charles Martalla and Henry Pistenen went down there in the early part of 1903 to look it over. They found the good farms there in the valley too expensive for them to buy. They had walked out to Boistfort from Chehalis, but it was a little closer to walk over the hill to Winlock to catch the train back, so they came here. They had to stay overnight here, and they learned that the logged off land here could be bought pretty cheap, so the three of them bought tracts.
On returning to Carbonado, others were interested. They sent Gust Nisula to Winlock to see about buying some of that cheap logged off land. On arriving here, he scouted the area and learned that the old Ainslie Lumber Company had quite a lot of logged off land near their old mill site, and their buildings were being liquidated. Gust bought 500 acres on the spot. He returned to Carbonado, and in May 1903, he, together with Henry Koski, Nick Salmela, August Puranen, Jacob Orni, Elias Turula, Arvid Pakkala, and Carl Laakso returned to Winlock and divided up the 500 acres between them."
A History of Winlock, Washington, Written by C. C. Wall, 1952.
There are still few roads with Finnish names in Winlock, Finn Hill Road, Kakela Road, Martala Road, Nikula Road, Wepsala Road and Wirta Road.
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