This building occupied the northeast corner at Four Corners for over 60 years. Grace & Eddy’s café was leasing the structure at the time of this April 1973 photo. It was taken for a real estate appraisal from where Dairy Queen now sits at the intersection of Highway 169 and Kent-Kangley Road. The image looks northeast to the present location of the Maple Valley Town Square monument fronting the Fred Meyer complex of stores. To the far right is the Summit-Landsburg Road which previously intersected Four Corners diagonally from the northeast. To the left was a real estate office operated by Kenny Marshall who owned several nearby properties including the Four Corners Tavern, previously featured in this column.
This structure was moved to Four Corners from Durham by Palmer Coking Coal about 1939 for use as the company’s mine office. Beginning in the late 1960s the building hosted a series of restaurants over the next 30 years. The first was Spencer’s Drive-In (late 1960s); Grace & Eddy’s (early 1970s); E-Z Eatin’ Café (mid 1970s to early 1980s); Summit Inn (1987-1994); plus other restaurant operators until about 1999. Spring Rain Toys opened a retail business in the early 2000s, followed by Nollies, a sporting goods store. The building was torn down in June 2006 to make way for intersection improvements along Highway 169. Image enhancements were completed by Nick Haney, a commercial photographer with an extensive education at the Brooks Institute of Photography.
