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Every Saturday night for 35 years in the mid-20th century, people flocked to the Playquato Ballroom three miles west of Chehalis to dance, compete in waltz and jitterbug contests and sometimes meet the person they married.
In 1938, the same year they married, John and Ruby (Norris) Marth built the dance hall just downhill from the historic Claquato Church and Cemetery. They hosted Northwest and national musicians and drew dancers from Lewis, Thurston and Cowlitz counties. Matchbooks touted the dance hall as “The Spot for Good Fun.”
Admission to Playquato—sometimes referred to as Plaquato — cost about a dollar — 95 cents at times, including tax, with a high of $2.50 before the ballroom closed in 1970. In the 1940s, the dances took place from 8 p.m. to midnight but later they started at 9 or 9:30 p.m. and lasted until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m.
Now, people can relive those precious memories by visiting the Lewis County Historical Museum in Chehalis, where the old player piano used in the ballroom sits as centerpiece of a Playquato exhibit.
One of the Marths’ three children, Sandra Lee Marth Hill, with her husband, Craig, donated the dance hall’s 1920s-era Clarendon player piano to the museum in honor of her father, John Marth, who died in 1963. Sandra herself became a local legend, serving as Miss Lewis County in 1965, Miss Washington in 1966 and the first female TV anchor in Los Angeles before working for ABC Sports and Wide World of Sports.
Jason Mattson, the museum’s executive director, demonstrated how the piano’s air-powered vacuum system worked. When pumped by the feet, it plays the proper keys to perform songs by following perforated holes on a roll of paper.
“We decided to do the Playquato exhibit to kind of showcase the fun and popular place that was around for many years,” Mattson said. “We had some big stars that came to town, and not many people realize that.”
He said he’d love to have people share their memories of Playquato and the bands that played there. Feel free to stop by the museum and share them or email them to me at the address below.
“I heard the parking lot was quite the party,” Mattson said.
During the 1940s, ads in The Daily Chronicle and other newspapers promoted the musicians and the dances, which at times were sponsored by the Chehalis Eagles, who ran a bar at the hall.
Sometimes, while reading obituaries and anniversary announcements, I’ll discover couples met at the Playquato Ballroom. Mahlon Wixson, a Reno, Nevada, native raised in a Salt Lake City orphanage, reunited with his father as a teenager on the Chehalis family farm, served in the Navy, and became a welder. “It was at Plaquato Dance Hall in Lewis County … where he met the love of his life, M. Doreen Hanke,” according to his June 2005 obituary in The Kitsap Sun.
After Helen Ulrich married Louis Ming in June 1943, they held a dinner for 70 at her parents’ home and reception for 300 at Playquato Ballroom, according to The Tacoma News Tribune.
In November 2013, Werner Blaser of Chehalis wrote about how he met his wife, Bette Jo Guenther, while performing at Playquato. He grew up on a farm north of the Chehalis-Centralia Airport, served in the Navy during World War II, and worked for the family business, Blaser Brothers Midway Dairy, which operated for six decades. He liked to make music, playing clarinet and saxophone in bands on the radio and at the Chehalis Elks, and he played bass for the Bill Moses band at Playquato and modern dance music with the Gene Fleming band.
“In fact, it was music and playing in the band at Playquato that brought Bette Jo and me together,” he wrote. “It was New Year’s Eve 1951 to 1952 at just about midnight that I noticed her. I asked one of the other band members who that girl was with the pedal pushers on. He told me it was one of the Guenther girls. Sometime after midnight I had another band member take over for me on bass and I went out to ask her to dance. She accepted and while we were dancing she said, ‘Hey, you haven’t given me my new year’s kiss yet.’ I obliged, made a date, then got married on Aug. 16, 1952. From that New Year’s Eve kiss and marriage, our children came along.”
Werner died in November 2017 at 91, and his wife of 65 years, Bette Jo, a 1952 Napavine graduate, passed away a month later at 83.
Darlene Swiglo of Pe Ell, a 1952 W.F. West graduate who died last year at 90, often sang on the local radio and occasionally with Tex Ritter at the Playquato Dance Hall, according to her July 2025 obituary.
Betty Ann Hamilton of Chehalis, who later owned the Tri-Mountain Restaurant & Truck Stop at Napavine, simply enjoyed dancing at the hall and meeting country music artists. She later worked at a Famous Country Music Dancehall & Restaurant in Hollywood, according to her March 2021 obituary. She was 94 when she died.
During World War II, Georgie Bright Kunkel, the youngest of 11 children who was raised on Prindle Street in Chehalis, worked summers at Boeing branch plants in Seattle and Chehalis. She told me she watched movies, danced at Playquato, picnicked at Deep Lake, and sang in church choirs. Georgie passed away in October 2025 at 105.
The domed building on a half-acre featured two dance floors, cloakrooms, a smoking lounge, and a kitchen that served burgers and alcohol-free beverages, although the parking lot proved a gathering place for people, too, perhaps offering stronger libations.
An article in The Daily Chronicle noted the arrests in early March 1954 of two men near Playquato, both on charges of drinking and driving. One was a minor.
By 1952, the Marths sold the ballroom to Harry and Thelma Thode, breeders of registered milking shorthorns in Chehalis. “The dance hall kept its reputation for hosting big-name country artists including Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn, with Thelma’s homemade cream pies becoming a favorite,” the museum exhibit states.
Among those who performed at Playquato was Bobby Darin, who sang “Splish Splash,” “Queen of the Hop,” and “Mack the Knife.” TV stars Heck Harper and the Wagon Masters of Circle 8 Hoe Down performed there in April 1958. Lefty Frizzell, whose No. 1 hits included “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time),” performed there in August 1958. Johnny Miller, considered the leading one-man band in the nation, played at Playquato in July 1957.
Tex Williams was a regular with his 10-Piece Western Band, which was sometimes referred to as the Playquato Band. Members of his band included Don Rich, Jim Kikota, Bob Schonack. Emil Spahr Jr., Ed Tveden, Marion Vinton and Jack Wohl. A July 2, 1954, ad in The Longview Daily News touted singers Wanda Wayne and Billy Barton performing with Tex Mitchell’s 10-Piece Western Band. Clayton Watson, a 1958 Pe Ell High School graduate, and Roy Moses, a 1932 Napavine High School graduate, both performed with different bands at Playquato.
Fern (Crocker) Mohoric, who graduated from Boistfort High School in 1937 and married her high school sweetheart, Joe Mohoric, was well-known as a piano player and musician who often entertained with her brothers in The Crocker Family band at Playquato and Baw Faw Grange. For more than three decades, she played piano at the Twin Cities Senior Center every Thursday. She died in May 2021 at 101. The late Loren Estep played banjo at Playquato after serving in the Navy.
A June 2018 obituary for Ted Karniss, a 1941 Pe Ell High School graduate and Navy veteran of World War II, noted that he and his wife, Clara, spent many Saturday nights dancing at the Playquato Dance Hall. He died in 2018 at 96, while his wife passed away in June 1997.
The late Chronicle columnist Bill Moeller frequently wrote about what old-timers remember and top among those memories was dancing at Playquato. He wrote about seeing The Maddox Brothers and Rose sing live in KELA’s radio studio before performing at Playquato.
“Its rustic atmosphere was the setting for most of the big-name country singers of the day when it was owned and operated by Harry and Thelma Thode. Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Jim Reeves, Little Jimmy Dickens, Tex Williams, Carl Smith, Pee Wee King, were just some of the big stars who appeared there,” Moeller wrote in 2010.
“Some Saturday nights, after I had signed KELA off the air at 11 o’clock, I’d stop on my way home just to hear the music,” he wrote. “Sometimes I got a preview. KELA had a live program every Saturday night hosted by Gil Moon and his Western Ramblers and once in a while Gil would be able to persuade the stars to drop in on his show before starting their own set at the dance hall.”
Moeller continued, “I remember one in particular. Rose Maddox, of The Maddox Brothers and Rose, had a manner of keeping the beat by stomping her foot as she played and sang. I mean stomped! I thought she was going to punch a hole in the floor of Studio A.”
Even Gov. Albert Rossellini stopped at Playquato in January 1960 to support a March of Dimes fundraising dance, which featured Ferlin Husky, a TV singer with the Grand Ole Opry, Linda Robinson of Olympia and a singing trio called the Fleetwoods. Providing dance music was Tex Mitchell and his band as well as the Chordeens. For New Year’s Dances, they provided “Hats - Horns - Noise Makers for Everyone.”
In addition to the Tex Mitchell band, performers in the 1960s included Lois Robinson as featured vocalist with music by Jean Marsyla on the accordion, Jack Palm, Jim Mikota, Jerry Robinson and Emil Spahr. Gary Schonack, whose father Bob Schonack played accordion with Bob Billis and the Texas Playboys, performed with the Bonnevilles at Playquato in the 1960s.
Lois Robinson worked at Centralia Federal Savings & Loan and sang at the Playquato, where she met her husband, George Godding, who was stationed with the Army at Fort Lewis. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in February 2012.
After the Playquato Ballroom closed in 1970, the 8,200-square-foot wooden building sat empty for half a decade. Although it was boarded up, vandals frequented targeted the building, which was uninsurable, according to the Thodes.
On May 17, 1975, at 11:35 on a Saturday night, an arsonist set fire to the building in a blaze visible for miles in the nighttime sky that scattered ashes throughout the area. A strong breeze fanned the flames, which completely engulfed the hall. Chehalis firefighters struggled to keep the blaze from spreading to nearby buildings. Only black ashes remained of the once-treasured hall where many people created lifelong treasured memories dancing to music.
Ironically, Chehalis firefighters likely used a 2,000-gallon tank truck to fight the blaze, a truck purchased with money raised 15 years earlier during a Fireman’s Ball at Playquato on April 30, 1960. At that time, the Chehalis Rural Fire Protection District was 2½ years old.
The Thodes estimated the loss at $20,000, which in today’s dollars would be equivalent to $121,903. On May 31, 1975, they submitted a card of thanks to The Chronicle, publicly thanking the Chehalis Fire District 6 firefighters for their valiant efforts to save the building, but they bemoaned the unnecessary loss.
“It is indeed unfortunate we have among us those who have so little regard for other people’s property,” they wrote. “The ballroom had been padlocked, nailed and wired shut, but to no avail. Thieves had stripped the building of all furnishing, even to the electric wiring and light fixtures. Playquato had not been open for some time, but it was still our property.”
Two years later, in September 1977, Michael Wallace of Toledo announced construction of Hillcrest II, a new $67,500 convenience store selling groceries and gasoline on the site of the popular ballroom. He opened his first store east of Winlock on Highway 603.
Interestingly, I also found the name Playquato in a listing of Portland Meadows horse races in a Feb. 4, 1994, issue of The Columbian, when the three-year-old horse bearing that name and ridden by jockey Bruno Maelfeyt placed first.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.
