Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.
Eastside Stories
To the east of Lake Washington lay the Cascade mountains, a range of peaks which reaches over 700 miles from Northern California to Canada. This stretch of rugged topography posed a formidable barrier to those traveling on foot to the Pacific before the creation of a road. Both creating a barrier and a life-source, water flows down from multiple rivers and lakes in the Cascades, increasing as snow melts in the summer. This water flows all the way to Lake Washington via winding rivers, creeks, and other bodies of water throughout King County.
Water is the reason the geography that we know today exists. Glaciers and the water flows associated with them have helped to form much of Washington State’s geography. In the Pleistocene (about 20,000 years ago), the Cordilleran Ice Sheet reached its’ farthest extent, covering much of Canada and the United States. 14,000 to 11,000 years ago it began to recede. As it moved north past the Canadian border, the Cordilleran Ice Sheet created many mountain valleys including the route we call Snoqualmie Pass today.
Human activity is recorded along this route as early as 6,000 years ago and indigenous groups lived in the area long before this, during the time of the glaciers. Native Americans used the route on foot for thousands of years and taught it to European explorers and trappers who came to Washington State in the 18th and 19th century. Indigenous groups from both sides of the Cascade Range traveled back and forth to trade game, plants, and other goods, a practice that continued for some tribes until the 1940s or later when military action in the middle of the state interrupted traditional hunting and foraging as well as routes of travel.
The arrival of the horse in the 1740s encouraged this kind of trade, allowing groups like the Snoqualmie who occupied the Cascades to trade with those from the interior plains. Past encampments of indigenous groups have been found by archaeologists near food sources including berry patches and rivers where fish were readily available. By the 1840s and 50s, when a formal road was being discussed, Native Americans had already been influenced by European colonizers and goods which transformed styles of dress and economic patterns. Early Europeans also introduced smallpox, reducing the population greatly during early excursions to the region.
In the first half of the 1800s several European visitors to the region recorded being guided by indigenous populations through Snoqualmie Pass and on other routes. Although today hundreds of people pass through the Cascades in an hour or less, until the project to build a road was formally undertaken by state and federal government only about a dozen people passed through each year. Although many thought it safest to travel by water, the effects of war and Manifest Destiny on the region led to the desire for a quicker route for people to travel from east to west.
Resources
Eastside Heritage Center Archives
http://glaciers.us/jhbretz.html
“Snoqualmie Pass: From Indian Trail to Interstate” by Yvonne Prater
