Archives West Finding Aid

Guy Selwin Allison was born in Pike County, Missouri, in 1883. His family moved to Washington in 1889 and lived on a farm near Spokane. The family returned to Missouri in 1891 but maintained connections to Washington. Allison moved west again in 1906 to attend the Washington State Normal School at Bellingham (now Western Washington University). Editor of the school’s monthly publication, The Messenger, he won the Interscholastic Debate in 1907. He later studied agriculture and pomology at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1909, Allison abandoned his career as a school principal in Tacoma to take a job with the Pacific Fruit and Produce Company. He established his own produce shipping business in California in 1918. Retiring in 1938, he divided his time between Glendale, California, and Ocean Park, Washington, where, in 1912, he had constructed a summer cottage out of logs salvaged from the Pacific Ocean. Named “The Wreckage,” the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Allison was an enthusiastic amateur historian with a particular interest in the Mayflower, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. His syndicated newspaper column, “Bypaths of History,” ran to more than 6,500 articles and was published in Southern California newspapers from 1936 to about 1959. He also wrote longer historical articles for various newspapers and magazines. In 1918, Allison published Poems of the Pacific, a collection of verse. “Beautiful Bellingham Bay” is dedicated to the author’s alma mater.

Guy Allison died in 1968.