A Squak Made and Remade

WHEN A CAPITALIST laid a railroad to their front door, opened a coal mine nearby and built a home in town as well, the citizens of Squak agreed to change the name of their hometown. In 1887 Daniel Gilman and Thomas Burke's Seattle Lake Shore and Easter Railroad began laying track from the waterfront foot of Seattle's Columbia Street into the hinterlands of King County. While the rail was headed for Spokane, the more modest expectation was that it would soon reach Gilman's coal mine in — yes, Gilman.

And here is Gilman, as captioned on the photo. With the help of Erica Maniez, museum director for the Issaquah Historical Society, we can date it from the spring of 1888. Maniez notes that Mary and Tom Francis' Bellevue Hotel, with the sign on the far left, opened in May.

The hotel faces Mill Street (now Sunset Street) and the raised railroad spur that runs to Gilman's mill. Kitty-corner is Isaac Cooper's saloon (or Cooper's Roost) and its flagpole facing what is still Front Street. Maniez notes that after her husband died, Mary Francis married Isaac Cooper.

On the far right is another bar, the Scandinavian Saloon. According to the short history of Issaquah on the historical society's Web site (http://issaquahhistory.org/historyarticles.htm), the patrons there were most likely lumberjacks, for Northern Europeans generally worked above ground while the English, Italians, Yugoslavians and Czechs were down in the mines.

By 1899 the citizens of Gilman were generally more alienated from than admiring of their absentee namesake and changed the town's name to a more mellifluous version of Squak — Issaquah.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.