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closeNew street sign honors Lawrence family name
Historic street marker one of first for peninsula
Susan Schell
of the Gateway
Astreet sign in Purdy once again bears the Lawrence family name. Last week, Carl Campen watched state workers erect a heritage road sign at 154th Street NW, more than two years after he began the legal process to have the sign placed.
Campen orchestrated the placement of the historical marker in honor of his mother, Josephine Lawrence Campen Roby.
“My mother was the last child in the (Lawrence) family,” Campen said. “When she found out I was going to get the sign put up, she loved it. She couldn’t wait.”
The street originally was named Lawrence Road, but that changed when Pierce County switched to a numbered grid system in January 1997.
“My mother was really upset,” Campen recalled. “They established the grid system for emergency vehicles. A lot of old streets lost their names for numbers.”
Henry Morris Lawrence, Campen’s grandfather, moved his family to Tacoma from Cleveland about 1906. They relocated to Purdy about 1912.
The family later built a general store, “HM Lawrence and Sons,” at what is now 66th Avenue NW, just south of where Cenex CHS, Inc. stands.
The store featured a service station, sandwich shop and a park stop where weary motorists could rest overnight.
“The roads were so bad, autos would constantly break down,” Campen said. “When people stopped overnight, my grandfather would allow them to go down to the Burley Lagoon and pick up as many oysters as they wanted.”
The store burned down in 1933. The only items salvaged were a flour bin and a sales ledger.
Campen has since donated both items to the Harbor History Museum in Gig Harbor. His mother married Lewis Campen and lived in the family homestead across the street from the general store until 1936.
Three years ago, Campen was driving through Puyallup when he saw a brown heritage road sign, and that gave him an idea. He learned that historical sites can have signs that name old roads, in conjunction with the current street name.
“I looked online and found out there was a way to get back the Lawrence name without residents having to change their addresses,” he said.
In February 2007, Campen filled out a Historic Road Sign Application, which eventually turned into Ordinance 2008-46, in order to have the sign placed. He had to pay for the signs, which had to meet certain size and design specifications laid out by Pierce County.
The sign’s proposed location also turned out to be a problem.
“It was located on a state spur,” Campen said. “The county told me they could not place the sign, and it was now in the state’s hands.”
Dealing with the state wasn’t a rapid process, Campen said, as it only had one sign crew for the Pacific Coast and he had to work with their schedule.
Campen’s mother never lived to see the sign — she passed away in June 2006.
“I still wanted to get the thing done,” Campen said. “In April, they told me that when the sign crews checked the area, they said the stop sign, the post, everything else out there had to be replaced. Everything is brand new out there now.”
When the sign was placed, Campen was surprised to learn his was one of the first heritage road sign to be erected in the Gig Harbor peninsula area.
“I know of other old roads that had family names that were changed to numbers,” he said. “But a lot of the families have passed on or moved away. Hopefully this will inspire others to have their historical markers placed.”