A Home on the South Fork

An Early History of Acme—A Northwest Washington Community

Margaret A. Hellyer

Coast Salish people were the only occupants of the Northwest corner of Washington State for millennia. They retained their unique reign over the land until the mid-1850s when European Americans arrived on the shores of Bellingham Bay. Those early businessmen, adventurers, and settlers seeking a new beginning would forever change the Northwest landscape.

Washington Territory had not yet become a state and the land was not surveyed by the federal government when the first outsiders arrived. Once the small towns lining Bellingham Bay began to grow, a handful of settlers traveled inland to stake land claims. The pioneers who made their way up the South Fork of the Nooksack River faced immense hardship and extreme isolation as they established homesteads and put down roots in the wilderness of Whatcom County.

This is the story of those settlers and the small town they built in the South Fork valley of Whatcom County. Their stories are told through records, interviews, letters, and a wealth of early images that document their lives and progress as they transformed their corner of Northwest Washington wilderness into a community called Acme.

A Home on the South Fork traces the earliest history of Acme starting with the first land claims in the 1880s, and contact with the Nooksack Indians—the first people. An early map of the community details the first businesses, school, and church sites, and locations of many family homes. A brief history of other valley communities is also included.

The back of the book contains twenty-nine years of school census records, lists of Acme school teachers from 1888 to 1930, and the earliest Acme school district officers and directors. Complete source citations and an index are included.

Watch author Margaret A. Hellyer discuss her book, A Home on the South Fork, at the Whatcom Museum–a Whatcom County Historical Society presentation.

"Margaret Hellyer's book, A Home on the South Fork, is much more than the detailed history of a small community in a wooded valley of northwest Washington State. Her extensive research of almost two decades and access to descendants of the original settlers provides a model of how local history should be done. In addition to the text, the myriad of photographs, most never before published, illustrate everyday American life a century ago—not only in that place, but in every small town across the country. Many show the clothing, pastimes, homemaking equipment and vehicles of the time as well as workplaces. Her book will be a valuable resource for many kinds of researchers in the future as well as being a grand read for its own sake."

–Candace Wellman, author of Peace Weavers–winner of the 2018 WILLA Award for scholarly nonfiction, and a second book, Interwoven Lives.

After reading A Home on the South Fork: An Early History of Acme by Margaret A. Hellyer, it is easy to conjure the wild place this river valley once was: ancient cedar and fir trees growing tall in fertile soil; the south fork of the Nooksack River running thick with salmon, crossed by logjams of old growth. . . . Hellyer’s text is replete with excerpts from letters, journals and newspaper articles that reveal the character of the times. The book can be opened at any place and the reader will find something of interest. . . . It is fascinating to see the pictures carefully reproduced on each page and understand the impact made upon the landscape in just a few decades—the town of Acme springing from the forest with the stumps of the giant trees in the background. . . . It is this history Hellyer so beautifully lays out in A Home on the South Fork, published by South Fork Press in 2018. The book is lovely in its outlay, large in format, and studded with photographs. . . The book forms a bridge to the present and enriches the sense of place for those of us that live here, and it will be a resource and a joy for anyone with an interest in Whatcom County history.

–Katrina Carabba, Whatcom County Library System, Cascadia Weekly

Old documents, newspapers, diaries, and family lore inform and illuminate a vibrant and fascinating history of a small town in the Pacific Northwest—Acme, in the County of Whatcom, tucked along the South Fork of the Nooksack River. Recommended.

–Chanticleer Reviews