Sultan: A Chief's Name on the Skykomish
Near Woodinville, Washington
Sultan, Washington takes its name from a Skykomish tribal chief whose name, Tseul-tud, early American settlers anglicized into Sultan. The Skykomish people had a large permanent village at the confluence of the Sultan and Skykomish rivers for generations before the first American prospectors arrived in the eighteen sixties following gold into the Cascades. Settlement grew slowly.
John Nailor claimed land at the river mouth in eighteen eighty, opened a small store, and built a ferry. By the late eighteen eighties, logging had taken over from mining as the main industry, and the forests of the Skykomish Valley fed mills that supplied the growing cities of Puget Sound. Sultan incorporated in nineteen oh five.
The town's name is one of the more honest gestures toward the people who were here first, even if the pronunciation drifted far from the original.
