Early Kirkland
by Matthew W McCauley /
2017 / English / EPUB
25.9 MB Download
Kirkland is a city of over 88,000 today, but when the US government
opened the eastern shore of Lake Washington for homesteading in
1870, it was an unforgiving, mostly unpopulated primeval forest of
giant old-growth conifers and tangles of undergrowth. Over the next
two decades, hardscrabble pioneers gradually braved the wilds to
stake and prove up 80- and 160-acre land claims. In 1887, a
consortium of speculators, developers, and dreamers headed by a
dynamic English steel industrialist sought to transform the
scattered wilderness ranches into a steel manufacturing center, the
"Pittsburgh of the West." A boomtown was born, but within a few
years, the steel scheme imploded, leaving in its ruins a few
resilient families who undertook the arduous, decades-long struggle
to forge a town. Early Kirkland provides a new look into Kirkland's
past, from its beginning to 1940.
Kirkland is a city of over 88,000 today, but when the US government
opened the eastern shore of Lake Washington for homesteading in
1870, it was an unforgiving, mostly unpopulated primeval forest of
giant old-growth conifers and tangles of undergrowth. Over the next
two decades, hardscrabble pioneers gradually braved the wilds to
stake and prove up 80- and 160-acre land claims. In 1887, a
consortium of speculators, developers, and dreamers headed by a
dynamic English steel industrialist sought to transform the
scattered wilderness ranches into a steel manufacturing center, the
"Pittsburgh of the West." A boomtown was born, but within a few
years, the steel scheme imploded, leaving in its ruins a few
resilient families who undertook the arduous, decades-long struggle
to forge a town. Early Kirkland provides a new look into Kirkland's
past, from its beginning to 1940.
