For 86-year-old Harlan McNutt of Port Angeles, Wednesday’s Peninsula Daily News article about the suspected arson at the Pershing Hotel brought a flood of memories.
McNutt’s great uncle, Dave W. Morse, constructed the building at 101 E. Front St. in 1914, he said.
According to Clallam County auditor’s data, the building was built in 1896.
But McNutt said that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“The building was built the same year the streets were filled up,” McNutt said Wednesday.
The book, Jimmy Come Lately: A History of Clallam County by Jack Henson, is also greatly inaccurate in documenting the county’s past, McNutt said, discrediting other information on the building.
McNutt said his great uncle built the structure with its first floor on the beach. That floor became a basement when the streets were filled in.
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