BY ERICA S. MANIEZ

(Erica S. Maniez is director of the Issaquah History Museums.)

The Issaquah Historical Society was created at a time of dramatic change in Issaquah. Many of the changes were driven by the town’s rapid growth during the 1950s and 1960s.

Incorporated in 1892, Issaquah had a population that fluctuated between 600 and 1,000 people for the first 50 years of its existence. It was a tightly-knit rural community, where (the story goes) if you got into any kind of trouble, your parents would already have heard about it by the time you got home.

Things began to change in 1940. Highway 10 (which included today’s Gilman Boulevard) and the first floating bridge over Lake Washington both opened that year. These advances in transportation made it possible for Issaquah residents to commute to jobs in the city.

After World War II, people all over the nation were leaving the cities to move to the suburbs. Inhabitants of Seattle did the same thing, driving population growth on the Eastside.

Between 1950 and 1960, Issaquah’s population nearly doubled. Between 1960 and 1970, the population grew again, rising from 1,870 to 4,313. This 130 percent increase over the course of a decade was the largest in Issaquah’s history. Interstate 90 was constructed in the early 1970s, further increasing access to Issaquah – and driving up the value of property in the area.

Hallmarks of the small town began to disappear as roads, houses and shopping centers filled the landscape. New grocery stores began competing with old, familiar businesses like Tony & Johnnie’s and Fischer Meats. Many businesses that were once on a high-traffic thoroughfare, like Boehm’s Candies, were no longer convenient road-side stops. Residents who had grown up knowing everyone in town started seeing faces that they didn’t recognize.

Among these distressing changes was the disappearance of the town’s old buildings and sites. Between 1960 and 1972, a number of historic landmarks such as the Snoqualmie Power station and the Bush homestead disappeared. Construction of I-90 necessitated removal of the railroad trestle, a longstanding symbol of Issaquah’s railroad heritage. In July of 1970, Dr. W.E. Gibson’s stately Victorian home was torn down to make way for a bank building. Gibson was an early mayor and town doctor, and the loss of his home served as a rallying point for those interested in historic preservation.

In 1972, a group of 22 people gathered at the home of Floyd and Esther Bush for the first meeting of what would become the Issaquah Historical Society. Minutes from their June 10, 1972 meeting noted that their reason for formation was, “to preserve and retain what is left of the flavor, the oldness, the living history of Issaquah and environs” and to “encourage reconstruction of the atmosphere of what was the early mining and logging pioneer town, in future modern structures.” The wording of this mission statement conveys their desperation, as they struggled to preserve “what is left” of their town’s history.

This was not the first effort at documenting the town’s past. Carmen Ek Olsen, whose grandfather came to the area in the 1880s, wrote a series of articles on the town’s history in 1954 and 1955. Harriet and Edwards Fish, who moved to Issaquah area in the 1950s, were also instrumental in starting the push for historic preservation.

In 1960, Bill Flintoft appointed Olson, the Fishes, Roy Pickering, Ed Hendrickson and Andy Wold to the Centennial Planning Commission. They were charged with the task of gathering information on the history of the town from surviving early settlers and their descendants, as well as conveying that information to new members of the community and creating some written account. The effort turned into the book “Past at Present,” the first published history of the town.

In November of 1972, the City of Issaquah agreed to purchase the Gilman Town Hall for use by the group. A year later, the Issaquah Historical Society hosted a grand opening at the facility. The society found a friend in Andy Wold, who donated the first artifacts to the society. The Issaquah History Museums still care for hundreds of items that once belonged to the Wold family, who first settled here in the 1870s.

During its first decade, the society published “Squak Valley” by Bessie Wilson Craine, restored the Gilman Town Hall to a more authentic appearance, and began negotiations to acquire the train depot. In 1984, the City of Issaquah purchased the depot and the Issaquah High School began a 10-year restoration project.

Known today as the Issaquah History Museums, the organization operates the Gilman Town Hall and Issaquah Depot museums, cares for more than 7,000 photographs and 10,000 artifacts, in addition to offering a variety of history programs and publications to the public.

An exhibit at the Gilman Town Hall, circa 1983.