Upcoming Exhibit

Snoqualmie Valley in the 1950s will be the topic of the upcoming new exhibit at the Museum. The 1950s was an unique time in the Snoqualmie Valley signalling a transition era between a time when residents could get everything they needed without leaving the Valley and today’s reality of regular purchases from outside the area, just a hundred or so years after an era when everything one would need for daily life was physically was available from the Valley to residents of that time.

The 1950s was also a transition time with the ending of the Snoqualmie Falls company town, the early stages of the post-war baby boom, planning for flood control and the future I-90 and the first concepts of large scale residential developments being proposed.

The upcoming exhibit will look out how Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, outdoor recreation, local businesses and entertainment, agriculture and use of social capital influenced the lives of those here in the 1950s and changes to those themes during that era changed how we live here today.

There are several interesting sources available for this exhibit to help explore daily life here: the Harold Keller Collection of photographs from 1945 to 1967, the Valley Record Newspaper, a 1956 Snoqualmie Community Survey that interviewed each household about what they thought were the strengths and weakness, assets and threats, and values and vices of the community, and coming this spring the 1950 Federal Census.

The exhibit is funded in part through a generous grant from Snoqualmie’s LTAC fund. Join us in thanking them for their support!