Issaquah: Coal, Hops, and the Cascades
Near Woodinville, Washington
Issaquah sits at the foot of the Cascade foothills where three creeks meet, and its name comes from the Lushootseed word the Snoqualmie people used for the sound of water birds calling on the lake. White settlers arrived in the eighteen seventies and found two things worth mining: coal and hops. The Issaquah Coal Mine opened in eighteen seventy-nine, and mule-drawn trams hauled ore to Lake Sammamish for boat transport to Seattle.
When the hops blight of the eighteen nineties wiped out the agricultural side, coal kept the town alive. Rail service arrived in eighteen eighty-nine, linking Issaquah to the growing Puget Sound economy. Today it anchors the eastern edge of the Seattle metropolitan area, a city of roughly forty thousand people framed by Tiger Mountain and Cougar Mountain on three sides.
