Montlake - The Real Birthplace of REI

Most of us know something about REI.  Some of us may know a bit of the history, or think that we do.  Some of us have heard about how it all started with an ice axe, etc. 

Some of us have been members for years, can recite our membership number (203xxx), bought our first backpack and hiking boots from Jim Whittaker above the Green Apple Pie and delight in regaling the cashiers who ring us up about our long association with the Co-op.  Some of us have been employees (#14xx).  Some of us may complain about the changes over the years or high prices, or Yuppie-gear, blah, blah, blah.  This post isn’t about any of that so no need to go there. 

It is about a critical bit of REI history that I bet you don’t know.  It’s about how the Co-op almost never came to be.  It’s about how 85 years ago a Montlake business deal-gone-bad set everything in motion so that today, in spite of Covid-19, REI is serving 5.5 million active members and how those members and guests open the doors to the stores by grasping handles made of ice axes.    

That’s right.  It all started with an ice axe in Montlake.

Symbolic Door Handles

What is well-known and undisputed is that Lloyd Anderson and his wife, Mary, were members of “The Climbers Group”, an offshoot of the “Mountaineers”.  In 1938 they founded Recreational Equipment Cooperative using the Rochdale Principles.  The purpose of the co-op was to provide a source of quality outdoor gear for their friends and fellow climbers.   

Mary and Lloyd Anderson 

The impetus of those actions followed Lloyd’s discouraging attempts to buy an ice axe from local retailers.  There were only a couple of shops where axes could be found and one of those shops didn’t have any in stock.  The other shop had one but were charging $20.00 for it.  A huge amount of money at the time, equivalent to $380.00 today.  Lloyd passed.  He heard about a “ski shop” in Montlake where he might be able to find one so he paid it a visit.  The “shop” was in the basement and garage of the house at 2314 E Lynn Street and belonged to a Garfield High School Boy’s Advisor and head of the very successful Bulldog Ski Club as well as Mount Rainier Ex-Chief Guide, Henry B. Cunningham.  H.B. was selling and renting ski equipment and was known as one of the true local experts on the sport.   

Cunningham didn’t really stock ice axes but his experience in the climbing community gave him the where-with-all to order one.  He quoted $7.00 for an Austrian axe and told Lloyd that it would arrive shortly, but it didn’t.  It took months to arrive and when Lloyd went to pick it up, he saw that it wasn’t an Austrian axe at all but a cheap Japanese copy and Cunningham said that it would cost him $12.00, not $7.00.  

Henry B. Cunningham 

Image from “The Challenge of Rainier” 

Lloyd was really upset and felt that he had been duped but needed the ice axe so he spent the extra $5.00 and vowed to not let anyone ever stick it to him like that again.  His bitterness carried over and he learned how to order climbing gear directly, buying breathtaking ice axes for $3.50 from Sporthaus Peterlongo in Innsbruck for his friends and family.  And so REI came to be.  

In 1948 Henry B. Cunningham moved out of the basement of his house and opened Cunningham’s Ski Lodge next door on the northwest corner of 24^th and Lynn, where the “Montlake Market’ had been and the current location of Café Lago.  

I, personally, spent a lot of time in that shop and bought my first ski equipment from Cunningham’s (Lost and Found).  Whatever went on that caused the purchase of that ice axe to go sideways seems lost to the past but I’m glad that whatever happened did happen as I can tell my friends that REI started just two blocks away from where I grew up in Montlake.  

The Real Birthplace of REI