Fall City Will Send a Steelhead to Ike
Within a month, a Snoqualmie Valley
steelhead will be on its way to President Eisenhower’s
dining room table in Washington, D.C.
“A steelhead for Ike!” is the battle cry sounded
this week by the Soap Box Derby committee in announcing this brand new Fall City project. The
fish, so highly honored as to be made a gift to the
president of the United States must be caught in the
Snoqualmie River somewhere between the Falls and the mouth
of the Tolt river. (The committee has special plans
for anyone who catches a steelhead ABOVE the
Falls.) And this fisherman must be a resident of
the Snoqualmie Valley, Upper, Lower, middle upper
or middle lower.
All fish will be tagged with the owner’s name
and license number, complying with Washington
State game department rules; dressed weight will be
the only weight entered.
It will be a big day when the biggest fish
is selected and the man (or woman) who caught it
is acclaimed as special fisherman to the president.
The fish will make a one-way trip to the White House
via Northwest-Orient Airlines while the fisherman
sticks around the Valley and gets his picture taken by
the Associated Press and other interested parties.
In charge of this Steelhead-For-Ike Committee
is Marion Whipp, a fisherman who is getting punchy from catching so many of the lunkers on his own.
He will verify each entry and make arrangements for
the storage of the fish until March 15, when the
largest will be selected, “gift wrapped,” and airmailed to
the nation’s capital. All fish will be weighed at
Skip’s Café in Fall City, glazed in ice, stored, and except
for the one sent to President Eisenhower, will be
returned to their owners immediately after March 15.
The Steelhead-For-Ike project is a preliminary
to Fall City’s annual all-out blow-out June 19, the
Soap Box Derby, which last year drew a crowd of three
to four thousand people.
The big day will include another Indian
salmon bake, again with Chief Hishka of the Neah Bay
tribe in charge; last year 600 delighted people polished
off plates of delicious baked fish, salad, rolls and
coffee. There will be another outstanding old-time
parade, featuring automobiles of early makes occupied
by local residents of more or less equal, uh, tenure.
And of course, there will be a Soap Box Derby, the
event which started the whole thing a few years ago.
Reprinted from the North Bend Record,
March 18, 1954
The Winner!
Winner of the “Steelhead for Ike”
contest sponsored by Fall City’s Soap Box Derby
committee is Marvin Turple, a son of the Dewey Turples and
a Fall City boy from the day he was born. Marvin
was trying out the schoolhouse riffle last Sunday when
he caught the winning fish. It weighed 14 pounds,
five ounces, or 10 pounds, 14 ounces when it was
dressed out.
