The plan was to build the second “all electric” mill in the nation.  The first such mill being an upgrade of Weyerhaeuser’s Everett Mill B, completed in 1916.  It is important to remember that the underground power plant at Snoqualmie Falls, the first hydroelectric plant in the State of Washington, went on line in late 1898 and helped prove the viability of the alternating current system of power transmission over the direct current system espoused by Thomas Edison.  The town of Snoqualmie did not have electricity until 1912 and outlying Valley farms were without electricity until the late 1920’s and early 1930’s.

So the use of electricity in heavy manufacturing was still relatively new and using it to run a large lumber mill was an experiment honed on Everett Mill B and perfected at the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company facility.

The original power house at the mill was designed to accommodate four 750 horsepower Stirling boilers from Babcock and Wilcox that burned waste chips, shavings and sawdust to create steam and power the “turbo-generator.”

Previously, lumber mills used steam for “everything”.  This new mill used electricity for much of the rotary motion, saving steam for saw carriage motion, dry kilns, lifting cylinders and other situations where electricity was inefficient.  In fact by 1921 the mill was utilizing over 400 electric motors having an aggregate connected load in excess of 6500 horsepower.  The same electrical engineer that designed Everett Mill B, Albert H. Onstad, became an independent consultant for the Snoqualmie Falls operation earning a salary that equated to thirteen dollars per day when the general forest products labor rate was three dollars.

Of primary interest to first mill manager W. W. Warren, was the innovative and untested concept of extending power lines into the woods so that electricity rather than steam could provide the energy for yarding logs.  The value of electric yarders/loaders (donkeys) was not just in their assumed efficiency and speed over steam units but the fact that steam donkey boilers create sparks and the attendant risk of forest fires.  Starting with the opening of the mill in 1917, the company went through four years of experiments using equipment from Westinghouse, General Electric and others before accepting and installing the fast, efficient, spark-free units in 1921.  Electricity was provided by running wires all the way from the power generating plant at Mill 1 into the deep woods and directly to the electric donkey.  The electric yarders were an immediate success as noted in these quotes from W. W. Warren to George Long at Weyerhaeuser:  “The new electric loading machine is a wonderful success, and has this week justified our faith, hopes, and expectations.  Mr. Lewis (the logging foreman) is very enthusiastic.  The crew is proud of it, and the yarding part is the fastest machine in the woods.”  In a postscript he states, “Lewis says this A.M. the loader picked a butt log (7’ to 8’ on stump) up bodily and placed (it) on (a railroad) car on top of two other logs.  The Duplex steam loader couldn’t do that.”

Dreams of efficient harvesting of Snoqualmie Valley timber began in 1900 when Weyerhaeuser purchased thousands of acres in Western Washington from railroad interests.  The Grandin Coast Lumber Company purchased railroad lands checker-boarded with the Weyerhaeuser holdings in the Valley in 1906.  By 1914 the feasibility of heavy investment in milling and marketing the exceptional timber resources of the Snoqualmie Valley bore fruit in the incorporation of the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company (SFLCo) by Weyerhaeuser and Grandin Coast.  With capitalization of $23,000,000 this was serious business.

It took two years of planning before actual mill construction began in 1916.  The heart of the mill was a large brick fuel bunker, powerhouse, generating plant and stack, built between Mill 1 (with its 11’ electrically driven headrig or giant bandsaw) and the mill pond.  The still existing 211 foot ‘stack’ for this generating plant was constructed of special “radial perforated” curved brick and is nineteen feet in diameter at the base and thirteen feet in diameter at the upper lip.  Still visible on the side of the stack are the company initials, SFLCo.

Although World War I specified wood as a strategic product, attempting to get the mill up and running during times of severe shortages in manpower, metals and machines was a challenge.  It was especially difficult obtaining the large electric motors required for the mill and the delivery of the 4,000 Kilowatt Allis-Chalmers “turbo-generator” was the last piece of equipment required before the mill could go operational on November 25^th 1917.

In addition to power needed for production, this mill created “home” electricity for the lights and appliances of the new and growing mill town of Snoqualmie Falls (250 domiciles at buildout in 1924).  That the mill created their electricity was made evident to all of the households at the mill site.  Their lights would dim when the eleven-foot band saw (head-rig) of Mill 1 ripped into a large knot, a hog (gigantic motor driven chipper) gobbled a hard to digest log or one of the electric donkey engines in the woods was working extra hard.  Electricity at the townsite was also very obvious to neighboring farms, many of whom did not have power in their homes until over a decade after the mill began operation.

During planning, engineer Onstad recognized that the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company could easily generate additional power for sale into the Puget Sound Traction Light and Power Company grid.  Negotiations began in 1917 and the first co-generation contract was signed in 1920.  This process allowed the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company to sell excess power to Puget Power.  It also provided for Puget to act as backup in case the mill was unable to generate enough power of her own.

As the mill and mill town grew, the need for electricity and steam rose.  In the early 1929 a fifth, much larger boiler was added.  A second stack some 250 feet high and 16 feet in diameter at the base was added in 1944.

In 1989 Mill 1 was dismantled, but the generating plant was still required for the kilns, planer mill, grading and shipping that remained in service.  Green cut lumber from the Weyerhaeuser White River sawmill was trucked up to Snoqualmie where it was dried and finished.  In 1991 the two power house smoke stacks were assisted by pollution-combating scrubbers.

In 2002 Weyerhaeuser sold the Snoqualmie Tree Farm and in 2003 the mill itself was closed and the dismantling of the buildings began.

On August 11, 2004 the “new” stack erected in 1944 was toppled but the original brick stack currently remains.

Addendum: In 2010, Weyerhaeuser sold the mill site to Snoqualmie Mill Ventures who created DirtFish rally school on the site.

Where DirtFish is located in Snoqualmie was once part of the second all electric mill built in the United States. The Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Co was formed in 1914 and began operating in 1917. At its peak, the mill and associated mill town included 250 homes, a hotel, community center, 50-bed hospital, barber shop, grade school, boarding house for single men and eight bunkhouses built for Japanese workers.

“The Mill maintained a large three-story hospital for its employees and their families…There were generally two doctors working at the hospital along with several registered nurses.  The doctor and his family lived in a house near the hospital.  The building was one of the first ones built at the mill at the time the mill community was built.”

“It sat on the highest part of the mill property, above the school.  It was built of white siding and was well equipped for a hospital of that day.”

“The emergency room was on the north end of the first floor.  The women’s ward, which contained at least ten beds, was above it on the second floor.  The men had two wards on the south end of the building, one on the first floor and one on the second floor.”

“The operating room was between the wards on the second floor on the east side of the hall, while the west side of the hall on the second floor consisted of several private rooms.  The kitchen was on the east side on the first floor.”

– Memories of a Milltown by Edna Hebner Crews

“… Dr. Burke was the absolute best surgeon that there was.  And he may have deserved this reputation.  These were the days that doctors worked day and night and drove through all kinds of weather to make home calls and were consequently worshipped.  There was no end to the tales that were told of his feats in the operating room.  And men were pointed out to us who were walking around with metal plates in their heads which Dr. Burke had put in after logging accidents.  Those were the pre-antibiotic days so that his surgeries done with a scalpel and ether were all the more marvelous.  As we walked by the hospital on the way to school we could always tell when a surgery was in progress.  The smell of ether wafted strongly out of the open surgery window down to us.”

– Memories of a Milltown by Edna Hebner Crews

Though Dr. Burke may have had issues in his personal life, he was still widely respected in the community. So widely respected that the community took up a collection for a bronze memorial to honor him. The maximum donation was set at one dollar so that most people could contribute a full share. The plaque was unveiled at the Snoqualmie Falls hospital in September of 1927 where it remained for many years, until one night it disappeared, stolen, presumably for the value of the bronze. It was a great loss, but happily years later it was quietly returned, anonymously, to the museum.

“After Dr. Burke’s death a plaque of bronze was placed on a seat part way up the steps leading from the road up to the front of the hospital.  A tall fir tree stood beside this monument.  There was a ceremony dedicating the monument one afternoon…”

–Memories of a Milltown by Edna Hebner Crews

The Ralph and Hazel Swenson family did quite well on Monte Vista (means mountain view in Spanish) farm during the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until WWII (1941).  There was certainly no danger of not having enough food – which was a problem for some families.  Their farm was located directly above the big Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company mill (became Weyerhaeuser in 1948).

The Great Depression hit the Snoqualmie Valley and the big Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company mill (where my father, George Franklin Battey worked), cut pay and number of work days per week, but did not close down.

However, times were not EASY on the farm, especially a dairy farm.  Lots of work and you had to feed the cows and milk them twice a day and you could not fail at this – ever.  So no vacations.  There were nine family mouths to feed and often a family visitor – making it ten mouths – three meals a day.  There were generally fifteen cows being milked and the younger cows and the steers (for beef) made the stocking of hay, grain and feed quite expensive.  There was no tractor on the farm until after the Great Depression.  Your had trucks, but no tractor.  Fancy clothing was not a priority for every-day on the farm and my mom (Grace Swenson Battey) talked about sewing cloth sacks that flour came in for clothing during the Great Depression.  Mending clothing was continuous.

There was a very clear line between men’s work of caring for the cattle, woodcutting, land clearing and most of the dairy work and the woman’s work of providing three meals a day, continual baking, the vegetable garden, canning fruit and vegetables, taking care of the younger siblings and taking care of the chickens and gathering eggs, etc.  Before automatic milk bottlers came to the farm, the women sometimes helped in the dairy by filling each of the tall, thin-necked milk bottles by pouring them full from an aluminum pitcher.  They would then pop a 56mm milk bottle cap on top.

There was no pasteurization and no homogenization back then, so cream always rose to the top of the raw milk in those long-necked bottles.

Uncle Stewart, the oldest of the Swenson children and Uncle George, the youngest, both shared with me that Grandfather and his four boys played an ongoing game – trying to figure out more efficient and less expensive ways of doing their daily chores:)

Winters could be difficult.  It got colder back then and sometimes the (non-electric) water-driven hydraulic ram pump at the creek would freeze and stop pumping and you had to have water for all of those cows to drink and to wash all of the milk processing equipment…  You had to milk the cows by hand – in the COLD.  Seven days a week – no Sunday time off 🙂  There were no heaters in the barn and if there were, you could not afford the electricity to run them.  Surge brand milking machines came to the farm about 1935, meaning that they were milking by hand for about half of the Great Depression.

And cows standing in the barn being milked, let fly with their poop…which had to be cleaned up twice a day.

Plus, grandfather was selling milk, which was considered critical to normal nutrition – especially for babies. Some people in the community owed grandfather money for milk and ‘worked it off’ by doing work for grandfather. One of the huge fir trees blew over and I know grandfather had folks who owed him money cut the monster fir up and split it into firewood for use on the farm (wooden furnace and fireplace in the farmhouse and wood-fired boiler in the milk house). Fortunately, Grandmother got an electric kitchen stove in 1930 when electricity first came to the farm. I have heard stories about grandfather making certain that some babies had milk whether their parents could afford it or not. There were no home freezers yet, but in Snoqualmie there were large walk-in freezers and you could rent a locked space for the food you needed frozen. Not very convenient though, when you had to take a trip to town to get something out of the freezer. Grandfather butchered beef as needed and also raised hogs and lots of chickens for eating and eggs. For a while they raised turkeys.

You would never ‘waste’ money by buying bread. You baked almost every day and we have grandmother Swenson’s famous bread recipe in her own handwriting. You canned both fruit and vegetables in glass jars for the winter. You did not buy shampoo for your hair. You saved all of the ends of all of the bars of soap that a big family consumed, put them in a jar with some water and stirred them up to make a slithery good-smelling concoction that you used (sparingly) to wash your hair…The girls cut each other’s hair.

You churned your own butter, and we still have the glass butter churn. They also sold butter, eggs and apples from the farm on the dairy route and since the income was very important, sometimes the family did not have enough butter or eggs or apples for their own use because it was important to provide for customers. This did not mean the family went hungry, it just meant that things they could sell might be unavailable to them sometimes. Milk was delivered six days a week. Never on Sunday. Gasoline was a big expense for a business that drove down literally every street in Snoqualmie, Snoqualmie Falls (the mill town) and the little town of Meadowbrook in order to deliver the milk to customer’s homes.

One of the frequent types of research requests the Museum gets is for information about a house or property. But, the first thing we need to know is the full address of the property when you contact us. There are several ways we can potentially help with researching the property:

• Maps
• Images
• Help using King County Parcel Viewer
• Recommending the Puget Sound Region Branch Archives

Maps

The Museum has a collection of township maps from various eras that can list former property owners for larger tracks of land. By knowing former property owners sometimes we are able to locate an image of the property in photographs donated by that former owners family. This can also help track subdivisions and changes of ownership over time.

We also, for the downtowns, have some copies of Sanborne maps that show the locations of buildings.

Images

The Museum also has a large collection of photographs. If the property is in a downtown, there is a chance we have an aerial photograph. There is also a stronger chance we have a street photograph as well. That being said, the Museum’s collection is not very strong in images after 1940s nor in residential neighborhoods.

Some times we do have a lot of images though. For instance, the Boxley house, that was located roughly where Bank of America’s parking lot now is, was featured frequently in the background of other images.

Even if we do not have an image of the property we might still also have an image of the former owners.

Other Resources

Even if the Museum’s collection does not have information on your property, there are still some other resources that we can help direct you to.

King County has a wonderful website that features information on your property called the King County Parcel Viewer. It will often tell the year your house was built and can contain older image of your house. By clicking on the parcel and then clicking on Property Report the site will take you to information on your parcel. This includes your parcel number, year the main building was built, images of the property and other interesting information. If you then click on the top bar on the right side on Property Detail, it will take you to another page with even more information. Scroll down on that page it provides more images and sometimes a floor plan. If you click on the blue camera icon it will bring up even more images. This site only has some of the assessors images digitized and publicly available, but the Puget Sound Region Branch Archives have more of them.

If you take your parcel number and contact the Puget Sound Region Branch Archives, they can help you find additional historic images of your property. In 1939/1940 as part of the National Works Projects each building in King County was photographed and this archives holds those photographs. They even include buildings that no longer exist! But, to access them, you need the parcel number as that is how their images are sorted.

They can have property reports that contain information about the buildings as well as images of the property.

Another resource that is available to property owners is the title abstract. This is often run and given to property owners when they purchase property among their closing paperwork. It contains the history of the transfers of ownership of the property and legal description. It often also contains more detailed maps of the property. The Museum does not have access to this report but it is often a good place to start that many people do not think of. They can also be run by title company.

One of the most recent resources now available is the King County Historic Preservation Viewer. This great map has information what properties qualify for the historic register (with a green dot) and may be eligible for Landmark status and which properties are Historic Landmarks (red squares). If your property is marked you can contact the King County Historic Preservation office and they can help direct you to further resources available to help you preserve your historic building. Historic Landmarks have tax incentives and grants available for preservation work. These incentives can be available for properties marked with green dots as well.

Built by the Hop Ranch Growers’ Association around 1884 to act as a summer hotel for tourists and business men to the upper Snoqualmie Valley, it operated for about 16 years. The Snoqualmie Hop Ranch and Snoqualmie Falls was being promoted internationally as a grand destination for those wanting a wilderness experience, though the hotel register is filled with the whose-who of famous Seattle residence of the time. Visitors fished and boated along the Snoqualmie River, were taken on hunting trips, toured the Snoqualmie Hop Ranch in a hack (a type of horse carriage).

Constructed of clear old-growth logs, in 2″x6″ timbers. Laths of 8′ by 5/8″ thick were then finished in plaster. Ceiling joists were rough 2″x12″ timbers and the floor fine vertical grain fir 1.5″ thick. Some boards 28′ long. Nails were used through out and it featured lead plumbing considered a luxury. The ceilings were centered with elaborate fixtures holding a hook from which kerosene lamps hung. Wide 3 piece molding topped the walls and bordered the ceilings with two-toned wainscoting finishing the lower floor rooms.

There were two larger and ten smaller rooms on each floor of the upper two stories, totaling 24 rooms for guests. There was one indoor bathroom on the main floor and some rooms even featured wash bowls.

Rooms were furnished with oak furniture and wall to wall carpet. The Parlor had walnut furniture covered in horse-hair fabric that was shipped around the Horn.

The hotel closed around 1904 about the time the hop ranch was sold to A.W. Pratt. It was then used until the 1940s as a bunk house for Meadowbrook Farm workers. In the late 1940s Bert Willard bought the building and in 1949, he and some mill workers he hired tore the hotel down to salvage the lumber. The chandelier was salvaged and sold to a woman in Portland for her home. Other fixtures and furniture were salvaged within the community. The Museum has some of the fixtures.

So where exactly was the Meadowbrook Hotel?

We know that the Meadowbrook Hotel was in the area that most people think of when they think of the Meadowbrook, but that in itself is still a big area. We know from the images to the right that the hotel was located along the south side of Park St and fairly close to the river. We know from the drawing at the top of the page that the hotel was located west of Meadowbrook Way as the barn in the image was also west of Meadowbrook Way. Verbal descriptions of the location tell us that it was on property that is now part of the Mount Si High School campus, but that is still a large tract of land. Where exactly was the hotel? For more specifics, we are lucky that part of it shows up on a Sanborne Fire Insurance map of Snoqualmie.

In this 1926 map, the hotel is shown in the upper left corner, south of Park St listed as farm bunk 110. We can then look at a current map of the area to try and determine the exact location. Also on the 1926 map is the later Meadowbrook Hotel now known as the Colonial Square Apartments, the garage which still stands, along with several other of the town buildings. In the upper left corner by the number 4 is also a house that still stands. With all of these markers it suggests that the hotel would have been around the new driveway. To double check this, we can actually over lay the map to the aerial view to match up the locations. Though the scale is not 100% accurate, the overlay does strongly suggest the hotel was roughly right where the new driveway to the high school is located.

I was desirous of visiting the pass, so Mr. Denny was kind enough to arrange a party for that purpose, as well as to accompany it himself. We were joined by Professor Hall, of the University, and Dr. Wheeler, of Seattle, and started on the 25th of July. Mr. Denny was our leader. He carried an axe to clear away obstructions, for we heard that there was a good deal of fallen timber, owing to the bush fires which were all over the country, so he looked like a fireman at the head of a May-day procession. The pack animal came next, then followed Professor Hall. Just before starting, he had been coaxed into buying a small box of cigars for the benefit of the party. It was too late to be inserted in the pack, consequently he was obliged to carry it; but the box proved to be useful, for the pack-animal was lazy, so, in the absence of a whip, the professor having first pocketed his dignity, made use of the sharp corners of the box to goad the animal with, much to our amusement, as he had to lean forward in an awkward sort of way every time to reach the offender. Next came the writer, who was artist and historiographer to the expedition. He was equipped with a note-book, and a black-lead pencil, ready to take off everything and anybody. The rear was brought up by Dr. Wheeler, surgeon to the forces.

Next morning, on awaking, we were alarmed at the appearance of Professor Hall, for his face was of a blueblack, and we imagined he must be very bad. But it speedily turned out, that the colour of his complexion was owing to a pair of new blankets of blue colour, the indigo dye having rubbed off on to his face; thus he appeared as a devil in a Christmas pantomime. This little interlude was repeated every morning, and furnished an unfailing source of merriment to the party. On leaving Mr. Smith’s, the road passed under some over-arching maples of large size, leading to the forest, which abounds at this spot with fine cedars. We passed through a level country, and by a good road, to a settlement called Squawk, twelve miles from Mr. Smith’s; but, owing to the smoke caused by the bush fires, it was very gloomy travelling. We made a lunch, and cut some green oats for our horses, and bought some shelled oats, not being certain whether we should reach a proposed camping place this night.

After leaving Squawk, we began to meet with the obstructions which we had all along dreaded – a great fire had just passed over our track, and the trail was covered with fallen timber, which was smouldering, so the axe had to be brought into use. Every Western man knows how to handle this mainstay of the pioneer, and Mr. Denny plied it with vigour and skill, but we had some difficulty in getting our horses through, as the flames frightened them. Singular effects are produced by these fires; the scorched trees assume rich red and yellow tints, exactly as if in autumn season; but in other places the charred and blackened trunks, the hideous stumps, leaves curled up to cinders, the earth strewn with ashes, and the light of the sun obscured, present a sad and melancholy spectacle. About the middle of the day, the road opened out into a beautiful and park-like country, but we had to surmount three steep hills before camping. At length the tall firs began to dwindle, and the forest opened out, showing glimpses of the sky. Presently there was the welcome sight of the tops of some cotton-wood trees, always an indication of bottom-lands and of water. We stopped about five o’clock, at a Mr. Boorst’s, on the outskirts of Snoqualmie prairie, about forty miles from Seattle, having only made 300 feet of elevation since leaving Squawk. We camped in a beautiful orchard, which, with the farm-buildings, strongly reminded me of those comfortable and substantial-looking homesteads which are met in the valley of St. Gervais, on the Italian side of Mont Blanc – homesteads that suggest peace and plenty –a land flowing with milk and honey. The ranch adjoins the river Snoqualmie, which runs at the rear of the house; and after the heat and dust of the journey, we enjoyed a refreshing bath in its cold waters.

Next morning, three of the party started to visit the Falls of the Snoqualmie. The river is about fifty yards broad, and presents the usual characteristics pertaining to the lower portions of streams in this territory; viz., long reaches of firs, sprinkled with cedar and maple, alternating with cotton-wood and alder; the banks are occasionally covered with a dense growth of willows and underwood, while at every sharp bend of the stream there are piles of logs and driftwood, brought down by the spring freshets, and every now and then snags obstruct the way. After proceeding down the river about three miles, we came to the top of the falls, and crossed to the other side. We then made a steep descent, through forest as usual, till we gained the river again, and walking up it along the banks, over smooth and slippery boulders, came to a point where the spectacle was superb. An immense amphitheatre of perpendicular cliffs bounds the view. These are apparently of trap rock, with seams of quartz and sandstone, the latter uppermost. The river plunges in one leap of 275 feet over the centre, with a loud roar. Clouds of mist and spray rise up from the basin beneath, and a beautiful effect is produced by the waters in their descent. They resemble immense icicles, constantly elongating till broken, then reforming, and ever renewed. When one reflects that this immense volume of water pours forth from day to day, from age to age, throughout the rolling centuries, with its deep tone of music, its everlasting anthem, it gives one a grand image of Almighty power, of the majesty of the Creator. I thought of certain grandseaux at Versailles, much vaunted in their day, and reflected how feeble are man’s best works, compared with those of God! People who have seen the falls earlier in the season say that the month of June is the best time for visiting them, as there is then a still larger volume of water.

We resumed our journey on the following morning. Mr. Boorst joined us; we were also accompanied by an Indian woman, who went by the name of the “Widow,” together with her young husband – this being her third –as he was to guide us to a reported lead of plumbago near the pass which we were desirous of examining. On leaving Mr. Boorst’s, a fine view of the Cascade Range presented itself. Shortly after, we entered upon the Snoqualmie prairie, which is about four miles long, and from one and a half to two miles wide. It was unenclosed, and reminded me of an English common, in the absence of trees, besides being perfectly level, and covered with fern. There were blackberries, as well as a quantity of strawberries, and many plants of the same species as those found on open lands in England. Eight settlers live here. They have all large farms, averaging from 100 to 200 acres. The principal produce is hogs. They also raise cattle, and cure bacon, which finds a ready market at Seattle. Nearly all the open land hereabouts is taken up. We stopped at a ranch, and bought some hay, not being quite certain where we should camp at night. After crossing a considerable portion of the prairie we came to the river, and left the road, which continues on to the Cedar River Pass.

The timber growing on the banks comprises fir and cedar; it is of a very fine quality, being suitable for lumber. Salmon run up in the winter, and up the Yakima or Cedar River in the early spring. Fording it, we crossed a couple of good-sized prairies, from one and a half to two miles across, divided by belts of timber, and about eleven o’clock came to a very steep ridge, called “Perkins’ backbone,” as Mr. Perkins before mentioned first blazed the trail. It is about one mile in the ascent, and divides the middle and south forks of the Snoqualmie, the latter being the one we had hitherto followed. The ridge is very narrow, in one part not more than ten feet across.

About this spot Mr. Boorst drew my attention to some cedars which had been stripped of their bark, and informed me that it had been done by the Indians in the days before blankets were introduced by the Hudson Bay Company. They first stripped off large sheets of it, then laid them out on a flat stone or piece of wood, beating the strips out with a stick into fine threads; after which they worked them up into clothing. About two and a half miles below the summit of the pass, I noticed a large mass of granite in situ, cropping out of the mountain side.

The ascent now became comparatively steep. The trees began to dwindle and thin out, affording in their openings glimpses of pine-clad heights, and bold escarpments of rock, together with precipices strewn at their feet with debris, exhibiting, in fact, all the features of a mountain country, for we were now in the heart of the Cascade Range. Towards four o’clock we emerged into an open tract of turfy, marshy, meadow land, about a couple of acres in extent, and affording plenty of grass, with here and there pools, bearing waterlilies, all hemmed in by the common red fir. We had gained the summit of the pass. It is surrounded on three sides by lofty peaks bearing patches of snow. They have received the names of Mount Gregory Smith, after the chairman of the board of directors of the Northern Pacific Railroad, Mount Annie, after a lady on Puget Sound, and Mount Edwin F. Johnson, after the late engineer-in-chief to the railroad company. One of the company’s surveying parties, the summer before last, determined the height of the pass to be 3,010 feet above the sea. A party sent to report on the greatest depth of snow, found it to be seventeen feet on the 1st of March, and there was none whatever ten miles on the western side of the pass; also that there was no drifting of snow, and not a single slide, thus obviating any necessity for the erection of snow sheds, and showing that snow ploughs will be entirely adequate to keep the line in running order. We noticed heather, but it was not in bloom; also the mountain ash, and other plants peculiar to high elevations. There were quantities of berries, which were of finer flavor and larger size than those growing on the lowlands. This is attributed to the drier atmosphere. Another indication of our altitude was the squeak of the ground hog. A little further on, we found a wagon with a family in camp. They had come from Utah, and had passed through Idaho and Montana. One of the party informed us that he had walked 1,500 miles by the side of the wagon since leaving home. They had run out of flour, and were very glad to get some from us.

-Puget Sound and the Northern Pacific Railroad by Edmund T. Coleman

Thanks to a second grant from 4 Culture, the Museum has purchased additional supplies to preserve the Valley Record Collection. In 2011 the Snoqualmie Valley Museum received a pair of donations from the publishers of the Snoqualmie Valley Record of historic 1913-1940s newspapers and negatives and photos spanning the years 1970-2005 from the Snoqualmie Valley Record and in 2018 further received bound copies of the newspapers through 2016. The newspaper has been the only continuing newspaper serving the Snoqualmie area from 1912 to the present and has been an invaluable recorder of all aspects of local life. The donation required immediate attention as a portion of it was in unstable condition, literally being saved from a “trip to the dump.”

The first donation consisted of loose and bound copies of the paper covering the years 1913-1940, and thousands of photographs, proof sheets and negatives spanning the years 1970-2005. In this case, the Museum was given only a few hours’ notice before these items, heaped into boxes, were scheduled to go to the dump. In 2018, as the Record thought it would close it offices in the Valley, the publishers realized that the remaining bound copies of the paper (1940’s-2016) should stay in the Valley and be available through the Snoqualmie Valley Museum. The Museum now has possession the single best source for the social, political, economic, cultural and natural history of the area stretching from Snoqualmie Pass and Cedar Falls down the Snoqualmie River through North Bend, Snoqualmie, Snoqualmie Falls, Fall City, Tolt, Vincent, Novelty, and Stillwater to Duvall. The key now is to preserve these materials and make them easily accessible available to the public.

The Museum has broken the project into phases in order to stabilize the collection while working on bringing the whole Valley Record collection up to modern archival standards.

The project phases are outlined as follows:
Phase I. Complete. The hard bound 1913-1924 newspapers were copied onto microfilm by the Washington State Library, adding new material to its collection and providing a copy to the Snoqualmie Valley Museum.

Phase II: Complete. The Museum consulted with Nicolette Bromberg, University of Washington, Special Collections Library, regarding a strategy for processing the collection and use of cost effective materials. Provided training for Assistant Director Cristy Lake in her lab class. Under the direction of Nicolette and Cristy, Shannon Moller, a UW graduate student as a Capstone project, sorted the negatives and prints into chronological order using materials loaned by the UW.

Phase IIIa: Complete: The Museum received financial assistance from 4Culture to purchase archival materials, including negative sleeves, folders, and boxes to store and stabilize the photos and 43,591 of the negatives. At the start of this phase it was estimated that there were between 20,000-40,000 negatives. This phase was completed using trained volunteers and members of the collection committee under direction of the project director. During this phase negatives from 1980, 1982-1988, 1990-July 1993, 2002-2005 were rehoused. On completion of this phase the print boxes loaned from the UW were returned. The softbound newspapers were also housed in archival boxes.