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Welcome to San Juan County Washington |
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Welcome to San Juan County Washington |
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Three Meadows
Three miles down Roche Harbor
Road from Friday Harbor stood large wooden
gateposts signaling the entrance to Three Meadows. Opposite were tilted
mailboxes with wildflowers and weeds growing at their feet. The dirt road
meandered past Bill and Jeanne Cox's bounteous garden and silvery pond on
the left and a large grazing meadow with sheep, cows and a couple of lazy
horses on the right. An enormous red barn sat beyond the meadow next to the
marsh. Broken, rusty farm implements dotted the grassy barnyard. The
tranquil marsh was home to bass, mallard ducks and trumpeter swans. Tall
cattails and a myriad of water lilies abounded in the still waters hiding
the occasional muskrat and making canoeing slow going. The road wound
around the marsh and through the woods to another set of grass covered hills
before it let out at the back to Egg Lake Road.
Three Meadows was originally three dairy farms that had been combined to
make a community that had been sub-divided into 30 five-acre plots and 250
acres of common land. The five-acre plots were scattered throughout the
property and all had use of the grazing land, the barn, the marsh and the
woods. Their youngest son built a two-bedroom home for Bill and Jeanne with
an attached shop and then he built a geodesic dome on his plot, which was
located through the woods from each other.
Bill was a self-taught artist, who had been drawing and painting for 50
years. He was a mining geologist who specialized in gold and silver mines.
His work took him all over the world. He would investigate claims, usually
for a government - in Mexico, where he was fluent in Spanish or Nigeria or
Portugal or Alaska. Bill and Jeanne Cox had both been born in Seattle and
had met attending geology classes at the University of Washington – where
they both graduated in 1940, marrying that September. After moving around
the country with Bill’s work, they eventually retired on San Juan Island and
formed Three Meadows.
San Juan County Coordinator
©2005-Present
Linda Simpson