Course Information
Participating Teachers
Dean McCoy - Oakland Bay Junior High School
Exploring Our Places: Dean's Narrative
Our small community, Shelton, was and still is to a lesser degree a forest product based economy. The community has somewhat struggled to transition to a new economy since 1980. The slowdown in the logging industry was painful for the community as a whole, but like many communities with economic bumps in the road the town survived and now has a more diverse economic base. Our economic base is still heavily invested in the extraction of forest products such as lumber, brush, and Christmas trees, but have started to transition to other sectors such as shellfish and gambling. Looking back on the change it wasn't’t necessarily bad, but a more appropriate comment would be to say it is different. Even our high school mascot is a blast from the past…a Highclimber. Most students don’t even know what a highclimber is. This is especially true since the high school gym was recently painted and they painted over a great mural of our mascot…shame on them. It must be some sort of hidden message. Even our annual festival is struggling to survive – Mason County Forest Festival. Our best attended event is Oyster Fest; an eating festival centered around seafood.
We are often viewed as a bedroom community for Olympia since many Mason County residents commute there for employment. An agent of change is our two Native American casinos. The casinos have brought much needed economic prosperity not only to the Squaxin and Skokomish tribes but to Mason County residents in general. Demographically our county is mainly Caucasian (88.5%), with a small percentage of Native American (3.7%) and a fast growing Hispanic community (4.8%). The fast growing immigrant population of today mirrors the county’s early days when there were complaints about too many immigrants destroying the status quo and “sponging” off the hard working. In the 1800s the complaints of too many immigrants were many (Mason County Journal) and we often hear the same complaint today.
