A historic house, once home to a trailblazing politician in picturesque Cathlamet, Washington, is not for sale at any price. But the former lawmaker’s son is willing to give away the 13-room abode at no charge to an entity that will preserve the heritage home and open it to the public.
The Julia Butler Hansen House could become Washington’s newest state park property if the Legislature chooses this winter to accept the donation. However, the proffered gift comes with a six-figure repair, upkeep and staffing tab, which alarms the state parks administration.
“Please help us save this house. It’s for everyone in Washington,” pleaded Cathlamet Mayor David Olson to budget writers on a legislative committee last Thursday. “The Julia Butler Hansen House is easily the most valuable and the most threatened unprotected heritage house in the state.”
The cash-strapped state parks department countered with a litany of reasons for why the state should politely decline the property donation. In short, the agency already owns a lot of historic buildings that it is having trouble maintaining and argues it cannot afford to add to that inventory.
“Taking on another facility when we have a significant maintenance backlog will come at a detriment to current state park projects,” said Owen Rowe, legislative director for the Washington State Parks Commission.
Julia Butler Hansen’s significance as a pioneering woman in Washington politics is not in dispute. The white, two-story clapboard house that dates to 1867 was her home base for a nearly five-decade career in public service that achieved many firsts.
She was the first woman elected to the town council of Cathlamet along the Columbia River in 1937. She went on to represent southwest Washington in the state Legislature for 21 years. Then in 1960, she became the first Democratic woman from Washington elected to the U.S. House where she would become the first woman to join the elite ranks of House Appropriations subcommittee chairs who control the federal purse strings.
Her legacy – and specifically what to do with her very old home – is now coming to a head through legislation that would force the state parks system to accept the Julia Butler Hansen House and operate it as a public heritage center.
Hansen was a proud Democrat, yet the chief sponsor of the bill to make her home into a state park is a reliable Republican, state Rep. Joel McEntire.
“Julia Butler Hansen was a figure like none other,” McEntire said in an interview.
“I feel very close to her in spirit,” despite the difference in party affiliation, McEntire added. “She could reach across the aisle.”
McEntire hails from Cathlamet but said he never met his esteemed predecessor because he was just a baby when Hansen died in 1988.
McEntire’s bipartisan proposal has a list of 35 co-sponsors spanning the state. It’s also attracted celebrity endorsers such as three-term GOP Gov. Dan Evans, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and award-winning nature writer Robert M. Pyle.
Wahkiakum County has no state parks within its borders, so McEntire’s legislation makes an equity pitch that creating the heritage center would also mean the small county is less “underserved.”
But the absence of nearby state parks in the lower Columbia River region is a drawback from the state agency’s viewpoint because it makes sharing park rangers difficult and would require hiring new local staff.
What was so special about Julia Butler Hansen?
In a biography of Hansen published in 2020, author John Hughes filled chapter upon chapter with stories about how she smashed through a series of glass ceilings during her half-century in politics.
“Famously, she could cuss like a logger” when riled or patronized, Hughes wrote. “She was also a skilled practitioner of personal persuasion.”
Equal rights, education, timber supply, tribal self-governance and highways were her passions, according to Hughes. He marveled at how she won 42 consecutive elections during her career, including primaries.
“One of the few battles she ever lost was a plan to span Puget Sound with a series of floating bridges,” Hughes wrote. Hansen presided over a “golden era” of highway construction in the 1950s and is credited as a catalyst for construction of the Astoria-Megler Bridge across the mouth of the Columbia River the following decade.
The five-bedroom home at the west end of Main Street in tiny Cathlamet is said to be the oldest standing in Wahkiakum County. The 157-year-old house has been expanded and modified many times over the decades. An acre of gardens surrounds the house and there is a lily pool by the front door.
Practically every surface in Julia Butler Hansen’s home office on the first floor is bedecked with photos, congratulatory letters and telegrams from famous people, including four presidents with whom she served: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Costs give legislators pause
The state parks department estimated start-up costs of more than half a million dollars to make repairs and install interpretive exhibits at the Hansen house. It pegged ongoing operating costs of $325,000 per year, with admission charges bringing in a minimal offset due to low projected visitation.
House Capital Budget Committee Chair Steve Tharinger, D-Port Townsend, has not scheduled the Hansen house donation legislation for a vote even though he agreed to be a co-sponsor on the bill. Tharinger said the estimated expenses for the state to acquire the house represented an unacceptably large hit on the budget.
“It’s a work in progress, but we’re really concerned about the initial cost so we can have visitors in there and then there’s the ongoing costs,” Tharinger said by phone from the Capitol.
State lawmakers are under the gun to make an initial decision by next Monday, Feb. 5. That’s the Legislature’s self-imposed cutoff for winnowing bills with budgetary impacts.
McEntire, Olson and Wahkiakum County commissioners are now scrambling to cut the price of saying “yes.”
Mayor Olson told the Washington State Standard that the state’s cost estimates were grossly overinflated. He predicted “the hit on the state will be very, very modest” once a planned visitor center on an adjoining property is postponed to the future and other upkeep costs are perhaps covered by outside grants.
State Parks suggested that the local historical society take over the Julia Butler Hansen House. But Julia’s son David Hansen said the all-volunteer Wahkiakum County Historical Society lacks the resources to do so. In general, Wahkiakum County has a limited tax base and philanthropic capacity due to being the third smallest county in the state by landmass and population – just 4,500 people live there.
If the state accepts the offer, it would not be the first time David Hansen, 77, has donated his mother’s home.
The Wahkiakum Community Foundation took ownership and operated the house as a museum and visitor info center for about a decade beginning in 2004. But in 2017, the foundation went belly up and Hansen reluctantly bought back the family home for a nominal $1,000 fee. Soon, he and the mayor started looking for a new custodian for the place.
The former congresswoman’s son is an only child who is retired in Vancouver, Washington. David Hansen said his two daughters don’t want the old house.
Hansen said he does not have a plan B if the Legislature follows the state parks department’s advice and turns down the house. His goal is to make certain the historic property is preserved and reopened for others to enjoy. In an interview, the heir said he is against putting the family home up for sale.
“I would never sell it,” David Hansen said. “I wouldn’t want a stranger living there.”
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