Skagit pioneers made Good lives on Fir Island

There are about 200 families living full-time on Fir Island. The Goods, this year’s Skagit County Pioneer Family of the Year, were among the first of those to put down roots, arriving before Washington was a state.

There have been Goods on the island since the 1870s, when settler Edward Eady Good came from New Brunswick to farm some of the richest soil on the continent.

“He bought up claims and owned almost all of Section 14 on Fir Island,” says Laurie Good Olds, a descendant who has collected, preserved and studied much of the family history.

Other members of the family knew a Good thing when they saw it as well.

Thomas Good came to Skagit County in 1891, clearing his land using explosives, cables and teams – the technology then available. He was no stranger to hard work, having earlier in life unloaded vessels in eastern Canadian harbors and logged in the thick woods of Wisconsin.

In 1894, Thomas Good is said to have waded in water up to his armpits to get to the barn to feed his stock. That was but one part of the battle. He also had to transport his hay over a mile by canoe.

Diking the low-lying 10,000 acre island, nestled between the two forks of the Skagit River and Skagit Bay, was a must for those who sought to earn a living by farming. Thomas Good proved equal to the task, taking an active role in construction of the dike along the Skagit River from Fir to Skagit City.

Having reclaimed his land from flood and forest – the island takes its name from the fondness settler Charles Mann had for the large fir trees that grew on his homestead – Good secured a post on the dike commission.

Lou Good Lovelace was told that at one point, trees were so thick there, that horses had to be unhitched for their wagons to be turned around.

The Goods literally became synonymous with the area now served by Dry Slough Road. Its original name, of course, was Thomas Good Road.

“I always felt sorry for the mailman at Christmas and holidays,” recalls Lovelace, 91, who now resides in Bellevue. “It had to be hard for him to keep track of cards and gifts because there were seven Good families living within a mile and a quarter.”

The Great Depression, a time when she and her brother, the late Pat Good, were growing up, brought yet new challenges. There was little money in circulation. Their dad, Ronald Good, earned $30 monthly – a dollar a day – as a dairyman. She and Pat helped around the farm, chopping and stacking wood and carrying water.

Fir Island farmers were quick to help one another, she says, often sharing the workload and equipment.

“If somebody was sick,” says Lovelace, “their neighbors would pitch in to help with the harvest. The women would fix meals for the threshing crews all around the island.”

During World War II, before she was old enough for a license, Lovelace was enlisted to drive pea trucks to vining stations. The stereotype of the laid-back rural lifestyle, later made popular on TV sit-coms, did not apply.

“You worked sunup to sundown as fast as you could go,” she says.

There was a brief time, in the late 1940s, upon enlisting in the U.S. Navy, when Pat Good sought a break from farm life. But by the time his tour in San Diego was over, Lovelace says he was eager to return to Fir Island.

“I think, for him,” says Lovelace, “it was the difference between having to do something and wanting to do something.”

Pat Good not only wanted to farm, but he cultivated goodwill through supporting a variety of service clubs and organizations. Proud of his Skagit heritage, the Skagit County Pioneer Association joined those at the top of his list.

Lovelace was not surprised when her brother offered to barbecue salmon for up to 300 people attending the annual Pioneer Picnic on the first Thursday each August in La Conner.

“Nobody was more giving of himself,” she says. “He was just that kind of person. He would get up in the middle of the night to help someone who was having car trouble.”

The torch has since been passed to his three daughters, Kim, Virginia and Patsy – fondly dubbed “The Good Girls” – who now prepare the main course of the Pioneer Picnic luncheon served by La Conner Civic Garden Club members. They, like their father, have also been active in public service across Skagit County.

Nor does that surprise Lovelace. After all, the Goods are intensely loyal to their generational home.

Consider her experience. Lovelace moved to Bellevue decades ago, when it was relatively small, its population under 20,000.

“For me,” she stresses, “Skagit County is still home. Whenever I’m at the top of Conway Hill on I-5 and I see the (Skagit) valley in front of me, I know that ‘this is home.’”

As it has been for the Goods going on 150 years.