MAP/REFERENCE #3 (LINK)
Compiled by Barbara Sargeant– Please note, some of this information is from personal memories, some from these books.
Francis Island was transferred from the Crown to Francis Drury of Cleveland. The Drurys built the huge main lodge with a gigantic fireplace that would have held about 7 people, high on the cliff. They sold to an architect F. R. Walker (who designed the Catholic church).The Walkers built a house for their caretaker on the northeast part of the island. The Walkers sold to Jack and Eleanor Pierce of Cleveland.
The Pierces lived in the caretaker’s house and used the main lodge as a hunting and fishing lodge called Peirce’s Moon River Lodge. One night they came over to Tim and Barb’s for dinner and told us some of the history of their life up here. They were not originally locals but they decided to live up here year round. Jack had been an engineer and Eleanor was a nurse. She kept the rattlesnake anti -venom for the area and was the person you would go to if you got a fishing hook in your finger. It took the Pierces a long time to get accepted by the rest of the local population. Before electricity came they had to take their bread mixes to bed with them in order to get the bread to rise. In their first winter, Jack had to learn to cut ice and even though he was an engineer he did not get nearly as many as his very small partner because he tried to muscle the ice out of the water instead of rolling it on tongs placed at the fulcrum. The resort had a huge main porch with a magnificent view. It was their lodge that the Leman’s used to come to before they bought Island B 58. Unfortunately the main cottage was filled with bats. Eleanor would shoot the bats in the attic and their little dog would grab the bat in its mouth and go and dump it over the cliff. The cottage never had a septic system in those days and just dumped its sewage over the cliff. They told us that in the early days in the winter the mail was delivered by a little plane. The plane would not land, it just dumped a mail bag out the plane door. The lodge used to have a big workshop down by the water, and two large boathouses all of which have now disappeared. In the 1970s, Jack died and Eleanor closed the lodge because she could not get help. She had the part with the caretakers cottage severed off from the rest and lived there alone. She sold the rest of the island to Herb Johnson. In 1977 Mr. Johnson subdivided the island. The old main cottage fell in one year and all the bats disbursed themselves around the bay.
Woods Bay Community Association