Snoqualmie, Washington

• 1. Introduction

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  Snoqualmie, Washington sits 28 miles east of Seattle, beside one of the most visited waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest. Its name comes from the indigenous people who have lived in this valley for at least 13,000 years. In the Lushootseed language, the word sdukʷalbixʷ means "people of the moon." That name, Anglicized into Snoqualmie, now belongs to a city of more than 14,000 people, a master-planned suburb, a famous waterfall drawing a million and a half visitors a year, and a stretch of road haunted by fans searching for a sign that keeps getting stolen. How did a remote river valley at the foot of the Cascades go from a hop farm billed as the largest in the world to a PGA Tour golf course and a rally car driving school? The answer runs through coal prospectors, lumber barons, a visionary filmmaker, and one extraordinarily well-timed railway.

• 2. Thirteen Thousand Years

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  Samuel Hancock traveled up the Snoqualmie River with members of the tribe in 1851, searching for coal deposits. Near what is now known as Meadowbrook Bridge, his guides pointed to the surrounding land and called it Hyas Kloshe Illahee, "good and productive land." Hancock carried that intelligence back to the settlement that would become Tacoma. His journal entry is the second written record of European exploration of the valley. The first is lost to time. The Snoqualmie Tribe, whose ancestors had occupied this river valley for at least 13,000 years, already knew exactly what the land was worth. The 1850s brought not just explorers but settlers claiming ownership, and the tension between those competing ideas of land was severe enough that in 1856 the military built Fort Alden near a Snoqualmie village. After what the records call the Treaty War ended, the fort was abandoned. The land it had occupied would soon belong to a pig farmer who understood the valley better than anyone else who had arrived since Hancock.

• 3. Hops, Logs, and Early Ambition

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  Jeremiah Borst arrived in the spring of 1858 by way of the Cedar River trail from the eastern side of the mountains. He settled precisely where Fort Alden had stood and turned a profit selling pigs and apples in Seattle, using that income to buy out surrounding landowners one by one. Borst became the valley's most successful early pioneer, and his land would later anchor the valley's most spectacular agricultural gamble. In 1882, three Puget Sound partners founded the Hop Growers Association, purchased land from Borst on Snoqualmie Prairie, and built what they promoted as "The Largest Hop Ranch in the World," eventually covering 1,500 acres with 900 of those devoted entirely to hops. The venture was enormously successful for a time but fell into obscurity by the end of the 1890s under pressure from market shifts and crop pests. Timber ran parallel to farming and ultimately outlasted it. Watson Allen established the first lumber mill at the mouth of Tokul Creek around 1872. Within five years there were 12 logging operations along the Snoqualmie River, supplying lumber across the Seattle region. Within 15 years that industry employed 140 men and was sending millions of board feet of logs downstream.

• 4. Rails, Power, and Incorporation

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  By the late 19th century the Puget Sound region was expanding rapidly, but the major railway lines had bypassed it. A group of Seattle entrepreneurs responded by funding their own line to cross the Cascades. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway opened the valley's resources to distant markets and brought in the first waves of tourists to see Snoqualmie Falls. Speculation followed immediately. In February 1889, Will Taylor platted what is now North Bend under the name "Snoqualmie Prairie." In August of that same year, Seattle investors platted the area that would become the city of Snoqualmie under the name "Snoqualmie Falls." The oral history of the town names Edmund and Louisa Kinsey as its first residents, operating a hotel, a livery, a general store, a dance hall, a post office, and a meat market, while also helping build the first church. Two of their six children became photographers, documenting the early timber works of the region. Charles Baker, another Seattle investor who had helped plat the city, built the first hydroelectric plant at the falls in the late 1890s. Baker's original generators are still running today, operated by Puget Sound Energy. The official vote for incorporation took place in 1903. Land prices set in 1889 had never dropped to reflect the valley's financial reality, and new arrivals had responded by simply building where they wished. The first city council's immediate task was lowering lot prices and clearing buildings from public right-of-ways, establishing the street grid that still defines downtown Snoqualmie.

• 5. Boom, Stagnation, and the Ridge

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  In 1917, a new all-electric lumber mill opened across the river from Snoqualmie, along with the company town of Snoqualmie Falls built to house its workers. It was only the second all-electric mill in the United States. For decades timber kept the valley stable through World War I, the Great Depression, and the postwar years. Then two structural shifts arrived in quick succession. The federal highway US-10 bypassed the city when it was routed across the Cascades, pulling commerce east toward North Bend and west toward Bellevue and Issaquah. By the 1960s the company town of Snoqualmie Falls had been dismantled, its homes relocated elsewhere in the valley. From 1960 to 1990, the city's population grew by roughly 11 people per year, moving from 1,216 to 1,546. The stagnation broke decisively in the mid-1990s when Snoqualmie annexed 1,300 acres of undeveloped land and built Snoqualmie Ridge, a master-planned community that now includes 2,250 dwelling units, a business park, a neighborhood retail center, and a private PGA Tour-sanctioned golf course called The Club at Snoqualmie Ridge. A second annexation in 2004 added Snoqualmie Ridge II, with 1,850 more dwelling units and a hospital. By the 2000 census the city still had just 1,631 residents. By the 2010 census that number had jumped to 10,670. By 2020 it had reached 14,121.

• 6. Twin Peaks and the Sign That Keeps Disappearing

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  David Lynch and Mark Frost chose Snoqualmie and its neighbors for the exterior shots of Twin Peaks, and the fictional town's identity became permanently fused with the real one. The Snoqualmie chamber of commerce helped organize the first Twin Peaks Fan Festival in 1992, running from the 14th to the 16th of August in anticipation of the theatrical film Fire Walk with Me. Lynch himself appeared at the North Bend Theatre to introduce the film live. A smaller, fan-organized festival ran every year from 1993 through 2019. Since 2023 the city has officially proclaimed the 24th of February "Real Twin Peaks Day," and in 2024 Kyle MacLachlan, who played Agent Dale Cooper in the series, attended the festivities in person. The connection draws visitors who come looking for filming locations, and one location in particular has become a kind of running joke: a "Welcome To Twin Peaks" sign placed on Reinig Road has been stolen or vandalized so repeatedly that no permanent installation has ever held. Actress Ella Raines, who was born in Snoqualmie Falls on the 6th of August, 1920, is another piece of the valley's cultural history, though her career in Hollywood belongs to a chapter most visitors driving out to find a television sign never stop to ask about.

• 7. What the Valley Runs On Now

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  Weyerhaeuser had operated a major mill at the Snoqualmie mill site for decades before ceasing all operations there in 2003. The city annexed 593 acres of that former mill site and mill pond, now called Borst Lake, in 2012. The old mill office became home to Dirtfish, an advanced rally car driving school, and in 2014 the site hosted a round of the Global RallyCross Championship. The Snoqualmie Ridge Business Park, built on 180 acres in the 1990s, employs over a thousand people across more than a dozen facilities; the majority of those workers live within the city. Its tenants include Space Labs, T-Mobile, Zetec, Motion Water Sports, Technical Glass, Philips Oral Healthcare (which manufactures the Sonicare electric toothbrush there), and the King County Department of Permitting and Environmental Review. Tourism anchors the other major strand of the economy. Snoqualmie Falls and the Salish Lodge next door draw 1.5 million visitors annually. The Snoqualmie Casino, owned by the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe, opened in 2008 a few miles outside the city center. The Northwest Railway Museum operates heritage railway rides from a historic depot in downtown Snoqualmie. The people Hancock described nearly 175 years ago as knowing "good and productive land" when they saw it have turned out to have given the valley its name, its longest continuous history, and one of its most significant present-day economic anchors.