A History of Snoqualmie Pass Part 1: Crossing the Northern Cascades Before Roads

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.

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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

Cold War Defense on the Eastside: Redmond, Washington and the Nike Missile Project

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.

After the discovery of the atomic bomb during World War II, Washington state became a major site of nuclear production and defense. From fabricating uranium cores which fuel atomic production to the 12 bases established to protect us from a Russian nuclear attack, Washington is at the heart of the Cold War legacy. Hanford Site produced the uranium cores that were used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the summer of 1945. This site in the middle of the state, still houses a large amount of nuclear waste from this time period, although the last reactor was shut down back in 1987.

Here on the Eastside we have a different kind of legacy around the Cold War in our communities. Starting after Russians smuggled plans for the creation of their own bomb from the USA and had their first successful test in 1949, America started thinking about atomic defense. Fear of a nuclear holocaust became a huge concern of the public and perhaps fueled the creation and expansion of the Nike Missile Project. This led to bases in the Kenmore/Bothell area, Issaquah, and Redmond.

Named for the goddess of victory in Greek mythology, this project involved the creation of several high-speed missiles that would be able to stop aircraft and perhaps even warheads still in flight. It also created a need for several strategically placed bases which would be able to launch missiles. One of these bases was built in Redmond. Known as Nike Missile Base S-13 and S-14, the Redmond site consisted of a fire control area located two miles up a hill from the launcher in the valley below. The site was said to be located on 95th off Avondale by locals at the time of operation, but some articles say residents knew little about what went on there during its seventeen years of operation from 1957-1974.

Photo from the Sammamish Valley News shows missiles readying for launch (only a test) at the Redmond facility.

This base was a double launch site which meant it had twice the missiles of similar bases. Although originally run by the US army the base passed into National Guard hands officially in 1958. It was operated during its entire existence on a 24-hour, 365 days a year basis. Still, it seems soldiers stationed there were not overly burdened by the work.

Winning repeatedly in contests of skill around tracking and launching missiles, showing they had time to practice, they also enjoyed a fair amount of recreation. In September 2006 Bill Sunde, who was stationed at the base from 1962-64, recounted to the Redmond Recorder how being stationed at the base was the best unit he’d ever been assigned to. It seems much of the soldier’s time there was spent in leisure as he recollected multiple recreational activities as perks of the job including ping-pong, tennis, basketball, volleyball, speedboats, rowboats, fishing equipment, and water skiing.

After being decommissioned in 1974 the National Guard continued to have a base nearby at the control site on 95th Avenue NE and 172nd. The property, consisting of two sites with a collective acreage of about 40, passed into the hands of the Lake Washington School District. Although there was talk of it becoming a park as early as 1987, for many years the site was dilapidated and covered in graffiti as the base sat and rotted. One report of a visitor during this time said someone had spray painted the words “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here,” the famous inscription over the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno, over a door. It is a far cry from the words reported by William Schuize, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Aviation Editor in 1960 as being over the door, “Coles Imperamus” meaning “We Rule the Skies”.

Like all missile defense sites involved in the Nike Project, the Redmond Nike Missile Base never launched a missile defensively. Still by the time the project was conceptualized in 1952 the military was already developing an improved version. The Nike Ajax Missile was replaced by the Nike Hercules and the Nike Hercules was replaced by the Nike Zeus starting in 1960. Across America, sites were dedicated to the development of nuclear warheads, production of nuclear supplies, and storage of/defense against nuclear attack. Today, we see much of this as a fear-based response to the potential of a nuclear holocaust in which military-fueled economies thrived.

Resources

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/nike-nuclear-missile-site-s1314

http://warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/abandoned-nike-missile-bases-united-states.html

https://www.historylink.org/File/9711

http://choosewashingtonstate.com/research-resources/about-washington/brief-state-history/

Influenza Outbreak of 1918 In Washington State

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

As we live through the Covid-19 pandemic it can be harrowing and comforting to know that our nation and world has endured an outbreak like this before. In many ways the reactions are similar and the precautions necessary to slow the spread of viral infection remain the same—stay home, keep your distance, and wear your mask. The Influenza Outbreak (also often referred to as the Spanish Flu Epidemic) of 1918-19 occurred right as World War I (WWI) was coming to an end and soldiers returning home were responsible for its far reach.

Many don’t realize WWI killed 16 million, but this strain of influenza killed over 50 million worldwide. With so many young people lost to WWI, the deadly strain of influenza which overtook so many was made more concerning as it took the lives of young people just as readily as vulnerable populations. Like Covid-19, the flu affected people differently, some victims died within the first few hours of showing symptoms while others held on for several days and some recovered and lived healthy lives. At the time, health officials speculated as to whether asymptomatic carriers could pass on the disease and moved quickly to develop a vaccine to slow its spread.

The origin of the term Spanish Flu also had to do with the war. The reason it is often called the “Spanish Flu” is because neutral Spain freely reported cases and deaths, without a need to suppress information as many warring nations did. The origins of the disease remain unknown today. Here in Washington, the illness originated with returning solders at Camp Lewis and the Bremerton Naval Base, and from a train full of solders arriving in Seattle via Philadelphia. The first record of the disease in Western Washington was recorded on October 3, 1918.

For most, public education was the first attempt to slow the spread and contain the virus. Being in Washington, local populations found themselves lucky as those in charge of public health monitored the spread from the East Coast and attempted to prepare for an outbreak. Dr. T.D. Tuttle, a medical man who had headed the Montana state tuberculosis sanitarium, was Washington’s Health Commissioner in 1918. He fought to put social distancing rules in place and shut down gatherings. By October 30, 1918, Washington State passed a law requiring people to wear gauze masks in public.

Front page of The Reflector, October 20, 1918.

Closer to the Eastside we have some documentation from The Lake Washington Reflector. The Reflector reported that on October 20, 1918, “Nearly Everybody was Laid up with the ‘Spanish Influenza’”.  This first page article explains how even people who weren’t sick didn’t feel comfortable leaving their home to get news stories for the paper. This is not surprising since most of the Reflectors' content consisted of “visiting news”, essentially having people go door to door to inquire about local events and personal milestones. Not very conducive for social distancing. Even rural areas were hit hard during the Influenza Outbreak in 1918, perhaps because populations there lacked immunities.

We know people here were affected though. On November 1, 1918, the Reflector issued a poem by Miss Emma Conway which cautions people to stay inside and avoid the flu, a foreshadowing for the leniency on quarantine that Armistice Day would bring. November 13, 1918, Armistice Day, marked the official end of World War I. People were so relieved to see the end of the biggest war in history at the time that they took to the streets. The ban on masks was lifted and gatherings resumed as citizens overlooked the danger in order to celebrate victory. All this of course led to a resurgence of the disease which peaked in Washington state in December 1918.

Even after Armistice Day, Tuttle shut down dances and enforced forms of social distancing such as making people sit in every-other row in the theater and removing those who appeared sick. Tuttle proposed more bans within the state such as limiting the amount of people who could come to witness the State Senate in action, but the Olympia City Council rejected the bans. There was an official meeting of the State Board of Health which voted down Tuttle’s plan soon after.

Poem Submitted by Emma Conway entitled “The Flu”. Published in the November 1, 1918 edition on The Reflector.

In February 1919 Tuttle was fired 3 years into his 5-year appointment because of the politics around not letting people celebrate. His original quarantine and social distancing rules truly did slow the spread of the virus and kept big cities like Seattle and the surrounding region from being hit hard. This is obvious when you compare Tuttle’s response with the Heath Officer of Spokane, J.B. Anderson. He wasn’t too worried and issued a warning statement about how to prevent the virus’s spread without much to enforce it. Even as the death-toll rose he hesitated to enforce quarantine procedures. Spokane’s death-rate was higher than most rising to 6% during the epidemic.

After Armistice Day though, Olympia, Seattle and even Bellevue didn’t heed Tuttle’s advice either. The Lake Washington Reflector's front page, dated January 10, 1919, shows that Bellevue held a “Big Ball” at the Bellevue Clubhouse even as the illness continued to affect local populations. The following winter the disease didn’t return in as much force and by 1920 there were few if any cases reported. The strain of influenza which caused so much destruction hasn’t made an impact like it did in 1918-19 to this day.

Resources

https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/224

https://content.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/WWI/influenza.html

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/fears-masks-and-deaths-spanish-flu-hit-hard-102-years-ago/

https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/fears-masks-and-deaths-spanish-flu-hit-hard-102-years-ago/

Eastside Heritage Center Archive

https://www.historylink.org/File/20300

https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-seattle.html#

O'Neal, Claire. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc., 2008.

Eastside Stories: Twin Valley Dairy

Article by Carla Trsek

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.

Kelsey Creek Farm is a very popular city park in Bellevue, but its agricultural story goes back several decades before Bellevue incorporated. The land was first farmed by the Duey family in the 1920s and 1930s. William Duey worked on a farm in Skagit Valley, but when he heard about land available for rent in what is now Bellevue, he moved with his wife and three children in 1921 to start their own dairy.

The land belonged to the Haller family, a Seattle family with extensive Eastside land holdings. In addition to the land that became Kelsey Creek Farm, the wealthy family also owned the land that became the Glendale Golf Course along the park’s northern border.

The Duey’s first barn before the 1933 fire. Note the angled roofs. Photo courtesy City of Bellevue.

It was far from ideal farmland. Most of the property was either covered with stumps or soaked in wetlands. The stumps came from the Hewitt-Lea Lumber Company, which had logged the site around the turn of the century. Additionally, no roads connected the farm to the small town of Bellevue. The only access to the property was a railroad bed with the ties still in place. It had only gone out of service two years before the Duey family moved in.

William and Pearl Duey and their three children, Fernley, Alta, and William Jr., quickly got to work pulling out stumps, building a house, building a barn and establishing a herd of dairy cows. They milked the cows twice a day and delivered milk, cream, and butter to customers once a day. They named their farm Twin Valley Dairy in honor of the two valleys that parallel either side of the barns.

The Duey’s second barn after the 1933 fire. Note the rounded roof. This barn still stands at Kelsey Creek Farm and houses the park’s resident animals. Photo courtesy City of Bellevue.

The Twin Valley Dairy provided a good life for their family but they were not always financially secure. Especially during the 1930s when people who couldn’t pay for their milk in cash, they would offer services or products from their own farms in return. Additionally, the logging operation that preceded the farm and bedeviled the Dueys as they pulled out stump after stump at least provided the family with a second source of income. There was so much downed cedar on the property left over from the logging operation that Mr. Duey cut and sold cedar fence posts.

The heart of the dairy were the cows. The herd was made of a mix of dairy breeds common during the period, including Brown Swiss, Guernsey, and Jersey. They kept about thirty milking cows, but the total bovine population rose and fell with the births and sales of calves. The cows lived year-round in the pastures, although they probably were taken into the barn for milking and possibly for calving. In a small barn just south of the main barn, milk was bottled and cream and butter were made.

In 1933, the barn and 90 tons of hay stored in its hay loft burned to the ground. The Duey’s youngest son Fernley remembered that “the whole hillside was afire. It was a mess. We had to milk the cows and tie them to a fence for several days until another barn could be built.” That new barn was built amazingly quickly. Neighbors and hired hands put up the structure in just a few weeks. The Duey’s continued to provide milk, cream, and butter to Eastside customers through the end of the decade.

William and Pearl Duey in front of their milk truck, c. 1930s. Photo courtesy City of Bellevue.

At the beginning of World War II, the Duey family moved off the property and the Haller family sold it to a man named John Michael. The Duey family sold him their business, including their cows. Michael expanded the dairy herd and built a larger barn to the north of the Duey’s barn with material purchased from Dunn Lumber in Seattle.

All three barns are protected as part of the city’s park. The small milk barn is now painted red and serves as offices for the site’s staff. The Duey’s big barn is now painted white and houses the park’s resident farm animals and Michael’s larger white barn serves as classrooms and offices. In a city now dominated by growing business interests, Kelsey Creek Farm provides a tangible connection to Bellevue’s agricultural history.

References:

Harvey, David W. “Historical Analysis of Kelsey Creek Community Park Barns Bellevue, Washington.” For Kovalenko Architects and City of Bellevue Parks and Recreation Department. October 1991.

Jones and Jones. “Kelsey Creek Community Park Renovation Plan.” City of Bellevue Department of Parks and Recreation. June 1993.

McDonald, Lucile. “Kelsey Creek Park land still being farmed.” Journal American. April 23, 1979.

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Our Mission To steward Eastside history by actively collecting, preserving, and interpreting documents and artifacts, and by promoting public involvement in and appreciation of this heritage through educational programming and community outreach.

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

Eastside Stories: Airfields of the Eastside

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

Article by Margaret Laliberte

At the end of World War II veterans who had become pilots during their years in the military returned to civilian life, enthusiastic about using their new skills.  The entrepreneurs among them envisioned a future in which thousands of Americans could be taught to fly, and then own, small planes. They’d fly on business or take their families out for a weekend spin. With relatively inexpensive insurance and availability of war-surplus airplanes, flying was an activity seen as accessible to even middle-class hobbyists. Vets who hadn’t been pilots could use the G.I Bill to learn to fly.

The Eastside was a player in this post-war phenomenon of “general aviation” (non-military, non-commercial). Four little air fields sprang up during the 1940s: Issaquah’s Sky Ranch, north of I-90 and west of East Lake Sammamish Parkway; the Bellevue Air Field across I-90 from where Eastgate developed; the North Seattle Air Park on Finn Hill near Kirkland across from St. Edward Seminary; and the Lake (or Mercer Inlet) Air Field where Newport Shores now lies. They’re all gone now, buried under development. Only at Eastgate will a remnant of the old airfield land eventually become a new Bellevue park or possibly a sports facility. 

First to appear, in 1941, and longest to endure, was the Seattle Sky Ranch, on land leased by Ab Davies and Al Lockwood from the Pickering family between Lake Sammamish and Highway 10 (the “Sunset Highway,” now designated I-90).  Until 1951 the partners operated the grass field as a flight school, training vets funded by the G.I. Bill. When that funding source ended, they closed down their operation. In 1961 Linn Emrich, a plot and Air Force veteran, leased the field and renamed it the Skyport. He founded the Seattle Sky Sports Club, which featured parachute jumping, gliding, even ballooning. The Sky Ranch hosted the National Parachute Championships in 1963. After the land was sold in 1975, years of bitter litigation followed as the new owners tried to terminate Emrich’s lease. In May 1987 a special election was held to approve a $5.2 million bond issue to purchase the property for a park. The measure failed by just 5%. Meanwhile, the legal battle ended when Emrich finally vacated the field.  Two final attempts to halt development were mounted by citizen groups arguing that the developers had not provided sufficient information about potential for flooding to Issaquah’s council nor satisfied the Army Corps of Engineers requirements for an assessment of the impact on the wetland area. But a Superior Court judge held that the city had acted properly, and the development of a huge business park and shopping center at Pickering Place moved forward. In 2002 Robert Pickering, former owner of the property, reminisced about the old days. "It was so nice back then on summer evenings, sitting there watching the parachuting. The divers didn't always land in the field. Some would land in the valley, some in trees in my back yard, some in blackberry bushes."

Bellevue Air Field was built by a World War I air veteran, Arthur Nordhoff, King County and later Seattle city counsel. (His daughter Nancy had flown planes in the wartime Women’s Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs.) The field was located just north of Highway 10 and east of 156th Ave. N.E. Back in 1942, the Port of Seattle had favored this area for a major airport rather than one at Bow Lake, where land was much more expensive and more subject to foggy conditions. But United Airlines convinced Tacoma and Seattle to partner on a site at Bow Lake, and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was the result. The little air field built on the Eastside instead had a paved runway, licensed repair facility, and hangars for private planes. A schematic in a 1959 FAA inspection report showed a shower and rest room building among the various buildings. A 1969 article in the Bellevue American newspaper noted that private aviation was still a growing business. One hundred twenty-five planes were parked at the airfield, which saw 80,000 take-offs and landings in a year.

But the air field was becoming problematic. No ground navigation was ever installed. Eastgate had developed, and when weather required landings to the North, pilots had to navigate over the high hills to the south, subdivisions and an increasingly busy I-90, before touching down startlingly close to the highway. In 1978 the field was sold to a Boston-based office park firm, but flights continued until February 1983. The journal Seattle Business bemoaned, “How long can a major urban center like Bellevue be without an airport”? Although much of the property now houses office buildings and a hotel in the I-90 Business Park, 14-1/2 acres of the old air field were purchased by the City of Bellevue in 2003. Development of the land into either a park or a large sports facility is currently ongoing. 

Sources:

“Great-Grandma Operates Air Field on Mercer Island [sic],” Seattle Times, July 4, 1946, p.7

Irving Petite, “Frontiers in the Sky,” 1951

Seattle Business magazine, October 1983, p.33

“Vacation Via Air Lanes,” a 1946 article by Helen Call, newpaper unknown

“There once was an airport in Inglewood,” March 26, 1989 article by Barbara Brachtl, probably in Bellevue Journal American

Numerous Seattle Times articles

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/WA/Airfields_WA_Seattle.htm

https://mynorthwest.com/974191/searching-for-traces-of-bellevues-phantom-airfield/?

https://historylink.org/File/4194

Photo: Airfield in Eastgate, located north of the intersection of SE Eastgate Way and 158th Ave SE, just north of I-90.