From here http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060625/NEWS/606250315
Railroad town died slowly and stubbornly, but left legacy behind
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Dallas Barnard
The Lester Depot, which was built in 1897, was the center of community life in the now-gone railroad town of Lester. It was eventually demolished.
By Mike Archbold
Journal Reporter
At the turn of the last century, the railroad town of Lester grew as fast as the railroads that opened the Puget Sound region to growth.
Lester, along the upper Green River, had a railroad depot, a roundhouse, businesses, a school, a church, a hotel, a railroad, a tavern and many homes. In the 1920s, the population of railroaders, along with a few loggers, and their families numbered more than 1,000.
Today, only a herd of elk roam the overgrown streets marked by a few rotting fence posts and the occasional iris among the tall grasses that speak of a domesticated past. The homes have been bulldozed, and most of the buildings are gone. Now part of the Tacoma City Water watershed, the small valley is closed to the public.
The mountain town located 14 miles west of Stampede Pass died slowly and stubbornly — like its last official resident, Gertrude Dowd Murphy, or Gert, as she was known to her many friends.
Gert was born in 1903. She came to Lester in 1927 to work as a teacher. It was a mere 12 years after the town was officially named after Lester Hansacker, the local Northern Pacific Railway telegraph operator…
Gert never really left. Three years ago, she died. She was 99, and the only person allowed to live out her life in Lester.
Missed but not forgotten
In her later years, the very independent-minded woman eschewed a nursing home. She summered in Lester with a relative and wintered in Kent with family.
She told interviewers she liked to wa