Posts

Grand Ridge Mine Hike

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Have you ever wanted to walk in the footsteps of Issaquah’s earliest miners? On the Issaquah History Museums’ Grand Ridge Mine Hike, you will have the chance to explore the daily commute of miners who worked in Issaquah’s longest-lasting coal mining operation. The hike will begin at the East Sunset Trailhead in downtown Issaquah and participants will hike to the mine site through an historically significant section of the county’s 1300 acre Grand Ridge Park.

Participants will meet at the East Sunset Trailhead for a moderately easy three-mile hike on well-developed gravel and dirt trails. The hike will be socially distanced, and masks are required. The walk will be held rain or shine. Bring water and snacks, and wear appropriate hiking shoes.

Due to COVID restrictions, there is a strict limit of 15 guests for this hike. All participants must purchase an individual ticket in advance and unexpected guests cannot be accommodated. Please, no children under 10; children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult. Although we love pets, please leave your furry friends at home.

For more information, contact the Issaquah History Museums at 425-392-3500 or info@issaquahhistory.org.

Downtown History Hike, Part I (to 1925)

/in , /by

Explore some of Issaquah’s hidden history on this easy stroll through the historic downtown. Museum Director Erica Maniez will lead participants on a walk through the history of Issaquah, from the Native Americans who first lived here  up to Issaquah’s growth into a small town, circa 1925. You’ll hear about how changes in transportation impacted Issaquah’s growth, and what life was like in a town of just 1,000 people.

The tour will begin at 10:00 am. Advance registration is required; order tickets via Eventbrite. Participants check-in at the Issaquah Depot. The walk will cover roughly two miles of level sidewalk and will last approximately 90 minutes.

Walks are held rain or shine. We recommend that you bring water and snacks, and request that you leave animal companions at home.

The Worst Year Ever!

/in , /by

Was 2020 the worst year ever? IHM volunteer and long-time resident Jane Garrison muses over the similarities and differences between the 2020s and the 1920s.

Read more

Collecting History, Connecting Community

/by

Annual Fund Raiser

Featured Artifacts | Video Stories | Donate

The Issaquah History Museums care for more than 30,000 photographs and artifacts that represent Issaquah’s past. Each of these items helps to tell a story about Issaquah, as it was or as it is today. Want to help us continue to preserve and tell Issaquah’s stories—including yours? Donate to our to the 2021 Annual Fund today! Your support will help us continue our work in the coming year. Our campaign goal is $10,000. Here’s what your gift can do:

$1,000 pays for half of our archival supplies for one year. These include the acid-free boxes and bags we use to store Issaquah’s ever-growing collection of photos and artifacts.

$500 covers the cost of hosting our online collections for one year.

$250 covers the staff time it requires to catalog the contents of one archival storage box.

$100 allows us to have 4 digital reproductions made from photos that a donor might not be ready to part with.


IHM 88-15-2: Top Hat


IHM 95-36-1: Can of Beans



IHM 2005-15-3: Cow Bell


IHM 2015-2-1: Rotary Phone

Issaquah’s “Lady Mayors”

/in , , /by

While Issaquah’s first woman mayor was referred to disparagingly as a “lady mayor,” she set a precedent for other women who would run for — and attain — the office of mayor.

Read more

Quarantine Baking: Vintage Recipe Edition

/in /by

Thanks to the quarantine, you, like our archivist, may now have some time to try out some of Issaquah’s vintage recipes. Click here to try out Vic’s Cream Muffins!

Read more

Newly-Digitized Press Yields More Than 100 Years of Stories

/in , /by

There is a new tool available for anyone researching life in Issaquah, doing local genealogy, or trying to confirm a fact from the past. Thanks to a generous donation from local philanthropist Skip Rowley, of Rowley Properties, the Issaquah History Museums have made the full archives of The Issaquah Press available online, in a format that is both searchable and free to the user. Interested residents, researchers, and others can view more than 100 years worth of The Issaquah Press via an ArchiveInABox website.

The Issaquah Press started out as The Issaquah Independent, and its first issue was published on January 18, 1900. The weekly newspaper played a critical role as observer and recorder of events in Issaquah and the surrounding area. As Issaquah changed from a booming coal-mine town to a quiet farming community, and then to a growing suburb of Seattle, The Issaquah Press captured the stories and images that made Issaquah unique. Many local businesses, organizations, and individuals can trace important events in their development through the pages of the Press. When the Press closed up shop in February 2017, it was universally mourned.

In March 2018, the Seattle Times donated the full collection of Issaquah Press back issues to the Issaquah History Museums. Each of the 184 volumes consist of several years worth of newspapers bound together within a hardbound cover. Each volume is roughly two feet high and a foot wide. Lacking sufficient space at the Gilman Town Hall, we rented climate-controlled storage space to accommodate the collection.

Once the back issues were appropriately stored, staff began planning for a complete digitization. Selected issues of The Issaquah Press were digitized by a company called Smalltown Papers in the early 2000s. However, more than half of the Issaquah Press collection remained inaccessible — unless the prospective researcher was willing to use an aged microfilm reader paired with microfilm created in the 1980s.

In December 2018, Skip Rowley pledged to cover the cost of digitizing the remaining half of undigitized Press issues. Once the project was funded, Digital Archives Specialist Kris Ikeda began shipping bound Issaquah Press volumes to a digitization facility in Frederick, Maryland for processing. Digitization of the remaining Issaquah Press issues took 8 months, during which time 3,311 editions (consisting of 43,513 pages) were scanned. 

Note that a small percentage of the Issaquah Press remains lost. Issues between 1900 and 1907, and between 1911 and 1918, are missing, their bound volumes lost sometime before the Press was microfilmed in the early 1980s. When you’re researching a particular topic, it can often feel like everything interesting that ever happened in Issaquah occurred during those gaps. We are always on the lookout for Issaquah Press issues that fall into these gaps. I try to keep a half-glass full attitude, and remain grateful for the thousands of issues, documenting more than 100 years, that do exist.

Ready to dive into Issaquah’s past? Follow this link to our ArchiveInABox site, where you can browse, search, and read through our community’s stories.

Downtown History Hike

/0 Comments/in /by

Explore some of Issaquah’s hidden history on this easy stroll through the historic downtown. A museum guide will lead participants on a walk through the history of Issaquah, from the Native Americans who first lived in the area up to Issaquah’s growth into a small town, circa 1925. You’ll hear about how changes in transportation impacted Issaquah’s growth, and what life was like in a town of just 1,000 people.

The tour will begin at 10:00 am. Advance registration is required; order tickets via Eventbrite. Participants check-in at the Issaquah Depot. The walk will cover roughly two miles of level sidewalk and will last approximately two hours.

Walks are held rain or shine. We recommend that you bring water and snacks, and request that you leave animal companions at home.

Contact the Issaquah History Museums office at 425/392-3500 or info@issaquahhistory.org if you have any questions.

Historic Tiger Mountain Mine Hike

/in /by

Coal mining, crime, and deception were alive and well on Tiger Mountain, just a few miles south of downtown Issaquah, in the early 20th century.  Honest coal miners mixed with henchmen and bunko artists to create a set of colorful stories — which you can hear as you explore the original setting of the events.

The Issaquah History Museums (IHM) are pleased to introducing the newest addition to their series of history hikes. Walk in the footsteps of miners, scallawags, bootleggers, and other energetic profiteers, and learn how Tiger Mountain and its secrets gained a reputation as far away as Utah, Wyoming, Oregon, Colorado, and other far flung locations. Visit the site of the Caroline Mine, where hike leaders will introduce you to its operations and structures — and the people who passed through its history.  This hike will open your eyes to a whole new side of Issaquah’s history!

This hike lasts roughly 2.5 hours, goes about 2.5 miles, and has an elevation gain of roughly 100 feet. Please purchase tickets through Eventbrite.

**********

Participants will meet at the Issaquah Depot Museum (78 First Avenue NE, Issaquah) and receive a parking pass and a map to a parking lot in the Tiger Mountain State Forest. The hike will begin there. Note that this parking lot is not generally available to the public, and won’t be accessible without the pass.

The Squak Valley Hot Shots

/in /by

The Squak Valley Hot Shots were an all-women’s jug band that grew out of the Eagles Club. Although membership in the group changed over time, the Squak Valley Hot Shots played together from 1957 to 1980. The Hot Shots were a much-anticipated part of the Labor Day festivities; they were also recording artists! The homegrown group produced at least one 45 record in their career, and they played gigs throughout the Puget Sound area. In 1977, they helped the Seattle Sounders celebrate Issaquah Day at the King Dome be performing during halftime. Another hallmark of their career was a 1974 performance at Governor Wes Uhlman’s innauguration ball, in Olympia. Ida Mae Bergsma commented on some of their swankier appointments in a 1976 newspaper article, saying, “It’s not easy walking into a classy place like the Olympic Hotel carrying a wash tub.”

Although their line-up was generally all-female, the band occasionally called upon men to fill in for missing players. One undated clipping from the band’s scrapbook notes that, during an appearance in the North Bend parade, Dave Morgan filled in for Gladys Morgan, and “with his wig, dress and pantaloons, made a fine looking girl.”

Just before the end of 2017, the Issaquah History Museums received a group of unique artifacts pertaining to the Squak Valley Hot Shots. The IHM already preserves a number of photographs and other documents relating the the Hot Shots. Now some of the original musical instruments used by the Hot Shots have joined the community’s collection. Among the instruments donated were a washtub and broom, a washboard and wooden spoon (which also doubled as an identifying sign), an amplified kazoo and maracas.

Want to dig deep into the topic? You can see photos of the Squak Valley Hot Shots, and peruse their scrapbook (kindly loaned to us to  copy by June Nissley Willard) in our online Digital Collections. Members of the Squak Valley Hot Shots included Chattie Adair, Ida Mae Bergsma,  Madge Brundage, Pat Cammon, Mae Daverso, Edna Diedrich, Virvae Reed Dieringer, Jean Gregg, Eleanor Kramer, Irene McDiarmid, Kaye McElfresh, Gladys Morgan, Eleanor Munden, Beryl Nelson, Frances Nissley, Eileen Pennington, Faye Straub, Edna Uber, Alice Varner, and May Williams.

(Below, left: The Squak Valley Hot Shots, circa 1960. Below, right: washboard and band sign today)

2011-15-1-individual photo IMG_1654

Events

Grand Ridge Mine Hike

/in /by

Have you ever wanted to walk in the footsteps of Issaquah’s earliest miners? On the Issaquah History Museums’ Grand Ridge Mine Hike, you will have the chance to explore the daily commute of miners who worked in Issaquah’s longest-lasting coal mining operation. The hike will begin at the East Sunset Trailhead in downtown Issaquah and participants will hike to the mine site through an historically significant section of the county’s 1300 acre Grand Ridge Park.

Participants will meet at the East Sunset Trailhead for a moderately easy three-mile hike on well-developed gravel and dirt trails. The hike will be socially distanced, and masks are required. The walk will be held rain or shine. Bring water and snacks, and wear appropriate hiking shoes.

Due to COVID restrictions, there is a strict limit of 15 guests for this hike. All participants must purchase an individual ticket in advance and unexpected guests cannot be accommodated. Please, no children under 10; children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult. Although we love pets, please leave your furry friends at home.

For more information, contact the Issaquah History Museums at 425-392-3500 or info@issaquahhistory.org.

Downtown History Hike, Part I (to 1925)

/in , /by

Explore some of Issaquah’s hidden history on this easy stroll through the historic downtown. Museum Director Erica Maniez will lead participants on a walk through the history of Issaquah, from the Native Americans who first lived here  up to Issaquah’s growth into a small town, circa 1925. You’ll hear about how changes in transportation impacted Issaquah’s growth, and what life was like in a town of just 1,000 people.

The tour will begin at 10:00 am. Advance registration is required; order tickets via Eventbrite. Participants check-in at the Issaquah Depot. The walk will cover roughly two miles of level sidewalk and will last approximately 90 minutes.

Walks are held rain or shine. We recommend that you bring water and snacks, and request that you leave animal companions at home.

Pages

Grand Ridge Mine Hike

/in /by

Have you ever wanted to walk in the footsteps of Issaquah’s earliest miners? On the Issaquah History Museums’ Grand Ridge Mine Hike, you will have the chance to explore the daily commute of miners who worked in Issaquah’s longest-lasting coal mining operation. The hike will begin at the East Sunset Trailhead in downtown Issaquah and participants will hike to the mine site through an historically significant section of the county’s 1300 acre Grand Ridge Park.

Participants will meet at the East Sunset Trailhead for a moderately easy three-mile hike on well-developed gravel and dirt trails. The hike will be socially distanced, and masks are required. The walk will be held rain or shine. Bring water and snacks, and wear appropriate hiking shoes.

Due to COVID restrictions, there is a strict limit of 15 guests for this hike. All participants must purchase an individual ticket in advance and unexpected guests cannot be accommodated. Please, no children under 10; children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult. Although we love pets, please leave your furry friends at home.

For more information, contact the Issaquah History Museums at 425-392-3500 or info@issaquahhistory.org.

Downtown History Hike, Part I (to 1925)

/in , /by

Explore some of Issaquah’s hidden history on this easy stroll through the historic downtown. Museum Director Erica Maniez will lead participants on a walk through the history of Issaquah, from the Native Americans who first lived here  up to Issaquah’s growth into a small town, circa 1925. You’ll hear about how changes in transportation impacted Issaquah’s growth, and what life was like in a town of just 1,000 people.

The tour will begin at 10:00 am. Advance registration is required; order tickets via Eventbrite. Participants check-in at the Issaquah Depot. The walk will cover roughly two miles of level sidewalk and will last approximately 90 minutes.

Walks are held rain or shine. We recommend that you bring water and snacks, and request that you leave animal companions at home.

The Worst Year Ever!

/in , /by

Was 2020 the worst year ever? IHM volunteer and long-time resident Jane Garrison muses over the similarities and differences between the 2020s and the 1920s.

Read more

Collecting History, Connecting Community

/by

Annual Fund Raiser

Featured Artifacts | Video Stories | Donate

The Issaquah History Museums care for more than 30,000 photographs and artifacts that represent Issaquah’s past. Each of these items helps to tell a story about Issaquah, as it was or as it is today. Want to help us continue to preserve and tell Issaquah’s stories—including yours? Donate to our to the 2021 Annual Fund today! Your support will help us continue our work in the coming year. Our campaign goal is $10,000. Here’s what your gift can do:

$1,000 pays for half of our archival supplies for one year. These include the acid-free boxes and bags we use to store Issaquah’s ever-growing collection of photos and artifacts.

$500 covers the cost of hosting our online collections for one year.

$250 covers the staff time it requires to catalog the contents of one archival storage box.

$100 allows us to have 4 digital reproductions made from photos that a donor might not be ready to part with.


IHM 88-15-2: Top Hat


IHM 95-36-1: Can of Beans



IHM 2005-15-3: Cow Bell


IHM 2015-2-1: Rotary Phone

Issaquah’s “Lady Mayors”

/in , , /by

While Issaquah’s first woman mayor was referred to disparagingly as a “lady mayor,” she set a precedent for other women who would run for — and attain — the office of mayor.

Read more

Quarantine Baking: Vintage Recipe Edition

/in /by

Thanks to the quarantine, you, like our archivist, may now have some time to try out some of Issaquah’s vintage recipes. Click here to try out Vic’s Cream Muffins!

Read more

Newly-Digitized Press Yields More Than 100 Years of Stories

/in , /by

There is a new tool available for anyone researching life in Issaquah, doing local genealogy, or trying to confirm a fact from the past. Thanks to a generous donation from local philanthropist Skip Rowley, of Rowley Properties, the Issaquah History Museums have made the full archives of The Issaquah Press available online, in a format that is both searchable and free to the user. Interested residents, researchers, and others can view more than 100 years worth of The Issaquah Press via an ArchiveInABox website.

The Issaquah Press started out as The Issaquah Independent, and its first issue was published on January 18, 1900. The weekly newspaper played a critical role as observer and recorder of events in Issaquah and the surrounding area. As Issaquah changed from a booming coal-mine town to a quiet farming community, and then to a growing suburb of Seattle, The Issaquah Press captured the stories and images that made Issaquah unique. Many local businesses, organizations, and individuals can trace important events in their development through the pages of the Press. When the Press closed up shop in February 2017, it was universally mourned.

In March 2018, the Seattle Times donated the full collection of Issaquah Press back issues to the Issaquah History Museums. Each of the 184 volumes consist of several years worth of newspapers bound together within a hardbound cover. Each volume is roughly two feet high and a foot wide. Lacking sufficient space at the Gilman Town Hall, we rented climate-controlled storage space to accommodate the collection.

Once the back issues were appropriately stored, staff began planning for a complete digitization. Selected issues of The Issaquah Press were digitized by a company called Smalltown Papers in the early 2000s. However, more than half of the Issaquah Press collection remained inaccessible — unless the prospective researcher was willing to use an aged microfilm reader paired with microfilm created in the 1980s.

In December 2018, Skip Rowley pledged to cover the cost of digitizing the remaining half of undigitized Press issues. Once the project was funded, Digital Archives Specialist Kris Ikeda began shipping bound Issaquah Press volumes to a digitization facility in Frederick, Maryland for processing. Digitization of the remaining Issaquah Press issues took 8 months, during which time 3,311 editions (consisting of 43,513 pages) were scanned. 

Note that a small percentage of the Issaquah Press remains lost. Issues between 1900 and 1907, and between 1911 and 1918, are missing, their bound volumes lost sometime before the Press was microfilmed in the early 1980s. When you’re researching a particular topic, it can often feel like everything interesting that ever happened in Issaquah occurred during those gaps. We are always on the lookout for Issaquah Press issues that fall into these gaps. I try to keep a half-glass full attitude, and remain grateful for the thousands of issues, documenting more than 100 years, that do exist.

Ready to dive into Issaquah’s past? Follow this link to our ArchiveInABox site, where you can browse, search, and read through our community’s stories.

Downtown History Hike

/0 Comments/in /by

Explore some of Issaquah’s hidden history on this easy stroll through the historic downtown. A museum guide will lead participants on a walk through the history of Issaquah, from the Native Americans who first lived in the area up to Issaquah’s growth into a small town, circa 1925. You’ll hear about how changes in transportation impacted Issaquah’s growth, and what life was like in a town of just 1,000 people.

The tour will begin at 10:00 am. Advance registration is required; order tickets via Eventbrite. Participants check-in at the Issaquah Depot. The walk will cover roughly two miles of level sidewalk and will last approximately two hours.

Walks are held rain or shine. We recommend that you bring water and snacks, and request that you leave animal companions at home.

Contact the Issaquah History Museums office at 425/392-3500 or info@issaquahhistory.org if you have any questions.

Historic Tiger Mountain Mine Hike

/in /by

Coal mining, crime, and deception were alive and well on Tiger Mountain, just a few miles south of downtown Issaquah, in the early 20th century.  Honest coal miners mixed with henchmen and bunko artists to create a set of colorful stories — which you can hear as you explore the original setting of the events.

The Issaquah History Museums (IHM) are pleased to introducing the newest addition to their series of history hikes. Walk in the footsteps of miners, scallawags, bootleggers, and other energetic profiteers, and learn how Tiger Mountain and its secrets gained a reputation as far away as Utah, Wyoming, Oregon, Colorado, and other far flung locations. Visit the site of the Caroline Mine, where hike leaders will introduce you to its operations and structures — and the people who passed through its history.  This hike will open your eyes to a whole new side of Issaquah’s history!

This hike lasts roughly 2.5 hours, goes about 2.5 miles, and has an elevation gain of roughly 100 feet. Please purchase tickets through Eventbrite.

**********

Participants will meet at the Issaquah Depot Museum (78 First Avenue NE, Issaquah) and receive a parking pass and a map to a parking lot in the Tiger Mountain State Forest. The hike will begin there. Note that this parking lot is not generally available to the public, and won’t be accessible without the pass.

The Squak Valley Hot Shots

/in /by

The Squak Valley Hot Shots were an all-women’s jug band that grew out of the Eagles Club. Although membership in the group changed over time, the Squak Valley Hot Shots played together from 1957 to 1980. The Hot Shots were a much-anticipated part of the Labor Day festivities; they were also recording artists! The homegrown group produced at least one 45 record in their career, and they played gigs throughout the Puget Sound area. In 1977, they helped the Seattle Sounders celebrate Issaquah Day at the King Dome be performing during halftime. Another hallmark of their career was a 1974 performance at Governor Wes Uhlman’s innauguration ball, in Olympia. Ida Mae Bergsma commented on some of their swankier appointments in a 1976 newspaper article, saying, “It’s not easy walking into a classy place like the Olympic Hotel carrying a wash tub.”

Although their line-up was generally all-female, the band occasionally called upon men to fill in for missing players. One undated clipping from the band’s scrapbook notes that, during an appearance in the North Bend parade, Dave Morgan filled in for Gladys Morgan, and “with his wig, dress and pantaloons, made a fine looking girl.”

Just before the end of 2017, the Issaquah History Museums received a group of unique artifacts pertaining to the Squak Valley Hot Shots. The IHM already preserves a number of photographs and other documents relating the the Hot Shots. Now some of the original musical instruments used by the Hot Shots have joined the community’s collection. Among the instruments donated were a washtub and broom, a washboard and wooden spoon (which also doubled as an identifying sign), an amplified kazoo and maracas.

Want to dig deep into the topic? You can see photos of the Squak Valley Hot Shots, and peruse their scrapbook (kindly loaned to us to  copy by June Nissley Willard) in our online Digital Collections. Members of the Squak Valley Hot Shots included Chattie Adair, Ida Mae Bergsma,  Madge Brundage, Pat Cammon, Mae Daverso, Edna Diedrich, Virvae Reed Dieringer, Jean Gregg, Eleanor Kramer, Irene McDiarmid, Kaye McElfresh, Gladys Morgan, Eleanor Munden, Beryl Nelson, Frances Nissley, Eileen Pennington, Faye Straub, Edna Uber, Alice Varner, and May Williams.

(Below, left: The Squak Valley Hot Shots, circa 1960. Below, right: washboard and band sign today)

2011-15-1-individual photo IMG_1654