MARYSVILLE — The Marysville Library paid tribute not only to the 50th anniversary of the Sno-Isle Libraries on Saturday, Oct. 13, but also to the predecessors of Sno-Isle who worked to establish Marysville’s first library nearly a century ago.

Eric Spencer, managing librarian of the Marysville Library, recognized the attendance of Sno-Isle Libraries Board of Trustees member Susan Cohn and Library Director Jonalyn Woolf-Ivory, as well as members of the Marysville Historical Society and the Friends of the Marysville Library, as he presented the Marysville Library’s time capsule for the future, handcrafted by members of the Quilceda Carvers.

“In 1962, 50 years ago, we had a World’s Fair in Seattle and Boeing was in pretty good shape,” Spencer said. “The space race was turning a lot of eyes toward the future. We were lucky to have two counties come together to take a big step into the future.”

Spencer credited the Log Cabin Civic Club that first formed in Marysville in the 1920s with serving as a proto-Friends of the Marysville Library, and noted that when a new Marysville Library was built in 1978 — 10 years after the Marysville Library joined the Sno-Isle Libraries — it averaged about 1,000 visitors a week.

“This building opened in 1997, nearly 20 years later,” Spencer said. “The Marysville Library now averages 1,000 visitors a day, so I think we should appreciate the folks in the 1920s who got this all started.”

Woolf-Ivory, whose father was a librarian, recalled her then-1-year-old daughter tagging along with her to work, when “Mom” served as superintendent of the Marysville Library in 1986.

“There was a tiny children’s area where she would pull the books off the shelves and get people to read stories to her,” Woolf-Ivory said. “In their own way, the children of today are still pulling books off the shelves. This is a dream library. It’s a paradise. The city and the library district worked together to provide a lovely building with outstanding service. There’s even a path all around the outside of the library, because the city is concerned enough to want the outside to be as lovely as the inside.”

After Wade Faries of the Quilceda Carvers explained how the wood for the time capsule box was clear Western Maple with no knots that was harvested from Snohomish County, Spencer added, “And our box is really cool compared to all the others,” drawing laughter from the audience.

Paul Brown, publisher of The Marysville Globe, donated this year’s “pink issue” of the newspaper commemorating breast cancer to the time capsule, while Caldie Rogers, president and CEO of the Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce, submitted a Chamber centennial coin honoring the Chamber’s history and its relationships with the Tulalip Tribes and the military. J.J. Frank, director of the Minority Achiever Program for the Snohomish County YMCA, handed Spencer a book covering the past century of the YMCA’s history, as well as pamphlets offering a snapshot of the Marysville YMCA’s current activities.