The Iron Road Reaches the Snoqualmie River
As construction on the Snoqualmie branch of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad nears its completion, a new frontier town emerges on the South Fork of the river.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Messrs. Smith and Humes have finished their ten-mile grading contract on the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern railroad's Snoqualmie branch. The track has been laid to within two miles of the end of the grade, and the rails will be laid to the terminus before the close of next week. Commencing September 1, trains will be run to South Bend, which is within two miles beyond the Hop Ranch, and which will be for some time the terminus of the Snoqualmie branch. This station is on the south fork of the Snoqualmie river, and in the midst of a prairie agricultural district; a good town promises to spring up here. Hops will be shipped from South Bend this fall, and the railroad will build sidetracks for the accommodation of traffic. Upon completion of the track to South Bend, no more track will be laid this year, nor indeed until the Denny Iron Mine, twenty miles farther east, in the Snoqualmie pass, is opened. The Denny mine will be the permanent terminus of the branch. A short distance east of South Bend, the mountain grade commences, and the ground rises rapidly till the crest of the pass is reached.
“This station is on the south fork of the Snoqualmie river, and in the midst of a prairie agricultural district; a good town promises to spring up here.”
This 1889 report chronicles the expansion of rail infrastructure into the Snoqualmie Valley, an early precursor to the region’s long-standing tug-of-war between industrial extraction, agricultural identity, and the rapid development of commuter-heavy bedroom communities that define the corridor today.
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