​Snoqualmie Valley History: What is Williams Addition?

-Guest Post by Dave Battey

The fastest housing spurt in Snoqualmie’s 20^th century of growth occurred in the summer of 1958, when much of the mill town of Snoqualmie Falls was moved across the Snoqualmie River to become part of the Jack S. Williams Addition to Snoqualmie.*

Background

When the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company mill cut its first log in 1917, it was the heart of a state-of-the-art community owned by the Company and providing most of the services required by its employees.  A general merchandise store, post office, barber shop, railroad depot, hospital, grade school, boarding house, and Community Hall were provided for the employees.  But after the Great Depression, it became progressively less acceptable for a large corporation to be openly paternalistic toward its employees.  

At the same time, maintenance and property taxes were growing on the hundreds of homes built (most in the early 1920s) for employees on the hill above the mill.  So, Weyerhaeuser had started selling the homes several years earlier, with the requirement that they be moved to private property.  The current renters usually had the first right to buy, and many of them had been living in “their” mill houses for decades.  In fact, most mill houses had family names attached to them as nicknames, and locals used these names rather than addresses when giving directions.

C. Beadon Hall was our local banker. (His sister’s bank building is now Buckshot Honey.)  Unburdened by a large bureaucratic organization and respected for his local applications of common sense to problems, C. B.  was the last of that breed of bankers who could make their own major local investment decisions.  Beadon and Tom Williams (grandson of the late Jack Williams) announced their plan to Weyerhaeuser employees on June 10, 1958, at the Snoqualmie Falls Community Hall.

The Plan

This initial meeting made it clear that there was no direct connection between Weyerhaeuser and the new development, other than the sale of the houses to their employees.

A twenty-six-acre section of “Grandpa Williams” farm would become available for placement of up to sixty-two of the ninety company houses still to be sold and moved.  If the employees at the meeting were interested, C. B. would purchase the property, install streets and improvements, and divide it into lots for the Snoqualmie Falls homes.  The relocation of the homes would be handled by Tom Williams, who owned a contracting business.

A way would be engineered to get the homes across the Snoqualmie River. Originally, a barge was planned, but a temporary bridge was finally installed.

Weyerhaeuser was selling the houses for $100 to $150.  Many of these were Craftsman bungalows, equal or superior in quality to those built in Seattle at the same time.  They were constructed out of strong, straight-grained, clear fir cut from virgin forests.  The smallest house involved in the move was 24′ X 30′ and the largest 24′ X 50′, without porches.

There was some variability in lot size and view, and some houses would be more expensive to relocate than others; however, the average cost of a home on a new concrete block foundation would be approximately $3,500.  The houses would be connected to the Town of Snoqualmie’s water system, but each would have an individual septic system.  “Moving” included connecting to Puget Power, building new porches to replace those removed to facilitate the move, and installing a concrete walkway from the porch to the street.

C. B. and Tom initially said that a minimum commitment of fifty houses was required to make the development viable. This was later lowered as better cost estimates became available.  Weyerhaeuser required full payment for the house within 90 days, but C. B. would arrange terms for those who could not pay cash for the move and the new lot.  The move was expected to take no more than twenty-four hours.  Furniture, including dishes, could be left in place!

 Another meeting was held a week later, and the importance of timing and favorable weather conditions was emphasized.  The contractor needed at least one day, on average, per house for the move, and the Snoqualmie River might rise and interfere if things didn’t get going.  Fifteen prospective owners had signed up.  Mr. Hall was confident that others would follow.

 The Bridge

They chose a spot for the 240-foot temporary bridge at the foot of River Street, where it could connect with Mill Pond Road.  Otto Reinig noted that this had been a shallow fording place for Snoqualmie pioneers.  Pilings were driven by a pile driver that moved across the bridge as it was built.  

The pile driver itself, at thirty tons, weighed more than a mill house.  Built from fir cut by the Preston Mill, the bridge had 12 X 12 cross beams, 6 X 16 rails, and 4 X 12 decking. The bridge was almost fifty percent built on August 4, just fifty-four days after the initial meeting.  The total cost of the bridge was $5,000.

The Move

On Tuesday, August 19, the first house, owned by Hiram Dowd, was moved from Railroad Avenue (a community located between the railroad and 396th Drive) across the bridge, where it spent the night on the Snoqualmie side before being moved to its new foundation.  Homes from the Orchard community (around the present bark plant) were moved about two and one-half miles total.  

They came down the Weyerhaeuser logging road into the mill, across the log dump, and out onto Mill Pond Road.  The homes in the Riverside community (site of the current Sycamore Corridor King County Historic Site) presented a greater challenge.  They could not go under the railroad trestle on Mill Pond Road and so had to go up the hill on Fall’s Station Road (now 396th Drive).

Not everyone trusted the mover’s promise that valuables did not have to be packed.  Mrs. Lee Rutledge packed all her china, glassware, and lamps, and her husband nailed their Television to the floor and tied the refrigerator upright with a rope!  While many families stayed with friends or relatives for several days while their homes were being moved, others remained in their own homes.  The Rutledges continued to cook meals and sleep in their home, even on the night of the move, when the house had a decided tilt.

The new lots were very dusty; the streets were not paved and were sprinkled with water to control the dust from the moving.  But, as young Chris Dowd said, “Here there’s no soot”, referring to the then almost continual ashfall in the mill area from the burners and stacks.

The Results

We were unable to determine the day that the last of approximately thirty-two mill houses moved across the bridge and into the Williams Addition (if you know, please email the museum – this was probably the Wilbert Boyle or the Willard Stevens residence). Still, based on reports of one home a day, the entire project took no more than three and one-half months from the official announcement to “completion”.

 There were no Environmental Impact Statements or Shoreline Management rulings involved at that time.  King County took over maintenance of the streets, which remained dusty and problematic (along with those in Snoqualmie) in the summer.  At the insistence of the majority of homeowners, the area was never annexed to Snoqualmie.  

Remodeling and upkeep were variable, and for a time, the area had the nickname “Dogpatch.”  The numerous septic systems on 7,000-square-foot lots created maintenance challenges for homeowners.

Do you live in a mill house?  Many were moved to sites other than the Williams Addition.  If you do, do you know where your house stood at Snoqualmie Falls?  Do you know the family name(s) associated with it?  Can you find a photograph of it on the original site? Be on the lookout for a new program on how to research your home this fall at the Snoqualmie Valley Museum!

-Featured Image: PD-811-13 -Lake house being moved from Mill Town to across the river. Photo credit to the Snoqualmie Valley Museum Collections for all images. * The Williams Addition was located off of 384th Ave SE behind historic Snoqualmie and includes SE 85th St, 382nd Ave SE and 381st Pl SE along Kimball Creek.

[Dave Battey, the Official Historian for the City of Snoqualmie, is the grandson of Valley dairymen Ralph Swenson, who brought his family to Monte Vista Farm, just north of the mill town of Snoqualmie Falls, in 1920.  Dave & his wife, Kathy, moved their family to the farm in 1975. After a 30-year career with the Bell System, he retired in 1990 and began writing local history columns for the Snoqualmie Valley Reporter newspaper.  He has served on the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Society Board for many years, is now a board member emeritus and was deeply involved in the preservation and management of Meadowbrook Farm Park.]