HistoryLink Tours

This is the site where the first Issaquah homesteaders filed claims in what was then known as the Squak Valley. Lyman Andrews filed first, soon after he discovered coal in the nearby mountains in 1862. Two Norwegian brothers, Lars and Ingebright Wold, filed adjoining claims in 1867, while Jacob Jones filed another adjoining claim the same year. The four plats intersected at Front Street and Sunset Way, then known as Mill Street. The two Wold brothers and Jones — all bachelors at the time — simply built one cabin at the common corner where their plats merged, rather than three separate cabins. Lars and Ingebright Wold and a third brother, Peter, established the first hops farms in the valley, which served as the mainstay of Issaquah’s economy until the late 1880s.

Between 1910 and 1923 a rail spur from the Issaquah Depot passed through this intersection, and you can still see its footprint in the odd angular gap between the buildings on the northeastern corner of the intersection. Since 2001, the Issaquah Library has graced the northwestern corner of the intersection.