Monroe: Where the Rivers Meet the Railroad
Near Woodinville, Washington
Monroe, Washington began as a settler's claim at the point where the Skykomish and Snoqualmie rivers join to form the Snohomish. Henry McClurg arrived in eighteen sixty and called the place Park Place. When the Great Northern Railway came through in eighteen ninety-three and ran its tracks a mile east of where McClurg had settled, the town picked up and moved to the tracks.
The post office there had already been renamed Monroe in eighteen ninety, after President James Monroe. Logging was the first economy, then agriculture took over as the forests were cleared. By nineteen oh eight, Monroe was supplying milk to a Carnation condensery.
In nineteen oh seven the state legislature chose Monroe as the site for a new reformatory after the Monroe Commercial Club made an aggressive pitch for the institution. The reformatory opened in nineteen oh eight and has operated ever since, one of Monroe's most consistent employers across more than a century of change in the Skykomish Valley.
