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Timing is Everything
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2020/04 - April
Last month, thanks to DST, we added a little more daylight to our spring workday. Whether Daylight Saving Time is your friend or foe, it is an irreversible part of our lives.
If we travel back in time to the late 1880s, long before we tried to lasso morning light and the setting sun, Highlands had a timely challenge of its own . . . no two clocks seemed to chime the same time.
Enter Highlands’ first druggist, Theron D. Walden of Metamora, Illinois. In 1885 he set up shop (and a bank) in the Martin Building at Fourth and Main, later home to Bill’s Soda Shop. The following year he built his home on 11 acres of land which experienced several incarnations over the decades, including Joseph Richert’s Blackberry Hill and later Toby West Antiques.
In April 1890, Walden organized Highlands’ first Freemason lodge in the Baxter Wilson Building. In 1892 he served as mayor.
Clearly Walden was an energetic soul with many interests, but his greatest passion was flowers. He was a cacti aficionado. He gathered over 350 varieties, the most impressive collection in the South. It was valued at $600, which was a huge sum in the 19th century.
What has all that to do with time? Walden’s son, Frank, worked at the drug store as a watchmaker and jeweler. Years later Frank became the go-to person to synchronize town clocks. Hotel keepers in particular needed reliable sun time to schedule their daily routines. Frank regulated the Post Office clock so that the town would have a standard hour and minute … the Plateau’s Greenwich.
Spend some valuable time of your own reading Ran Shaffner’s Heart of the Blue Ridge. For additional info, go to highlandshistory.com or email [email protected].
by Donna Rhodes,
Photo courtesy of Highlands Historical Society
