Water Removal in Marysville Needed? Call SERVPRO!

11/25/2020 (Permalink)

SERVPRO donates to the Marysville Food Bank and protects your home from water damage with rapid removal.

How a late-night call could save you thousands in restoration costs on your Marysville home

You might be surprised to hear this, but Marysville used to be a rough-and-tumble prospector town, without any of the prospecting. Surrounding our town are a few wonderful strawberry farms, and while they may add a bit of country character to our town, they do not show much of their history. Marysville used to be one of the biggest strawberry-growing settlements in the world, and for a while, our town seemed to be whipped into a frenzy about those delicious little berries.

Pioneers and Tulalip Build a Town Together

Like many Western settlements, Marysville started out with just a few industries keeping it afloat. Lumber was an important one, with much of the surrounding forests cleared away over the years, but thankfully these areas have rebounded into the wonderful natural areas we know and love. After the forests were cleared, settlers put their heads together to figure out what the best use for the rich land might be. Within a few short years, strawberry farming had taken root.

Some of the earliest strawberry farmers came from the local Tulalip population. While the berries were first brought in by pioneers from the east, Tulalip farmers quickly recognized the suitability of the crop in their soil and used the town’s long-established trading post to sell their crop for cash. In addition to Tulalip entrepreneurs in the lumber industry, these families represented some of the wealthiest inhabitants of early Marysville.

Prospecting Berries, Not Gold

By the 20th Century, our town was starting to grow quickly. Saloons, sheriffs, and other staples of Western prospecting lined our streets. But it was not gold or silver drawing people here – it was (on top of the wonderful environment) the lucrative berry farming that was starting to explode. Around this time, product advertisements had made strawberries a highly sought-after commodity in Chicago, New York, and other big cities around the country. At the same time, a co-op organization helped local farmers connect with these markets and achieve success. As the fields expanded, the value of their products soared ever higher, and Marysville became an increasingly attractive place to former miners, homesteaders, and anyone else coming out to the West.

But, with that prospective population came some caveats. While most of the farmers were gentle, family-oriented folk, the city began to develop a downtown area that became increasingly rowdy. In the 1910s, the town was ahead of its time in paving sidewalks and streets to facilitate vehicle travel. In those days, nobody knew how to drive, and some of the earliest attempts at traffic control were even met with violent vandalism. The onset of the Great Depression greatly hurt the town, fueling burglaries and robberies among desperate individuals. Thankfully, these effects soon petered out, and by the 1940s, Marysville became less of a frontier settlement and more of the comfortable, welcoming community we know today.

In those days, excitement could be hard to find in a farming community, so the citizens banded together to build up a reputation for their crop. For a time, the town became known as “The Strawberry City,” and it grew steadily year-over-year. The Marysville Strawberry Festival, which continues to run year after year, began as a means for farmers to sell their crop and for the town to begin developing some tourism business.

The Town’s Changing Face

Unfortunately, disaster struck in 1955, when a sudden cold front froze the entire strawberry crop for a year. Many of the farms were still small, family-owned affairs, without any crop insurance. Uninsured farmers who did not have enough savings to survive until the next harvest were forced to sell their properties, and almost overnight, the strawberry industry collapsed. New farmers would replace many of the old ones, but unfortunately, the industry never recovered.

Throughout the latter half of the century, farmlands were bought up and turned into residential areas, greatly expanding the city while removing some of the charm that once defined it. Today, some strawberry farms still operate around the borders of town, and the Strawberry Festival still carries on as a legacy of the past. If you have not already, make sure to check out the Festival when it comes around next June. On top of a car show, fashion show, carnival, and multiple parades, the Festival also hosts friendly farmers with locally grown berries, perfect for preserving, juicing, or just eating straight off the stems.

Speed Makes a Difference in Marysville Water Removal

As a local Marysville expert in water removal, SERVPRO takes every step necessary to ensure rapid responses to emergency situations. Our successful formula, perfected over decades with input from franchises around the country, relies on our ability to reach you in time to prevent the most severe damage from happening.

Calling us as soon as disaster strikes can eventually prevent most of the damage to your home and can keep our restoration work to a minimum. By calling us as soon as possible,

• We can identify and stop the source of the water, preventing further damage from occurring.
• We can get in touch with your insurance company to ensure smooth, timely payouts.
• We implement water extraction tools that prevent structural damage to your home
• We immediately begin the drying process, stopping mold from taking root.

The scale of our response depends on the scale of your situation. The first person to arrive at your home, just hours after your call (even in the middle of the night), is our inspector. The SERVPRO inspector determines what machinery we should bring in, what hazards may be present in the building, and what you can do to help. By scaling the solution to the problem, we save you time and money, and keep our resources available for any other disasters that may happen in the community.

SERVPRO of Marysville / Arlington responds 24/7 to emergency requests for water removal and other critical damage mitigation services. Our phone lines are always open at (360) 658-0506.