SVR Special Pages - Then and Now

WWW.VALLEYRECORD.COM Snoqualmie Valley Record • October 21, 2015 • 7

THEN NOW& A Spotlight on historic Snoqualmie Valley Businesses

Inside: Bicentennial Bridge Tolt-MacDonald Park footbridge was big bicentennial project 8

Movie Mania The Upper Valley has enjoyed a long history with movie houses 10

Signs of Fall City Historical Society creating information signs for downtown spots 12

History in the Making Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum has its own origins story 12

Courtesy Photos

Above: Scouts gather for the opening of the Tolt-MacDonald Park footbridge. Below: a photo of the Brook Theater, demol-ished this summer.

WWW.VALLEYRECORD.COM8 • October 21, 2015 • Snoqualmie Valley Record

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1441561

By EVAN PAPPASStaff Reporter

What started as a proj-ect for the U.S. bicenten-nial celebration became a massive effort involv-ing thousands of people that would improve the Tolt-MacDonald park for decades.

John MacDonald, bank-er, Navy veteran of World War II and volunteer for the Seattle Council of Boy Scouts of America, had a development idea for a

park and campground that had been acquired by King County in 1964.

Alan Sinsel, King County Parks District Maintenance Coordinator, explained that a notice from the pres-ident to the Boy Scouts of America is what spawned the idea in MacDonald.

“During the Nixon administration, he put out a notice to Boy Scouts to do projects for the (United States’) bicentennial,” Sinsel said.

A campground had

already been built on the Carnation park, but the area on the west side of the property had not been developed. Developing that portion of the park was MacDonald’s brainchild.

He wanted a bridge that could connect the two sides of the park, split by the Snoqualmie River, and found help in com-pleting the project from the Army Reserves’s 40th Engineering Company,

Tolt-MacDonald Park’s bicennential bridge

Courtesy Photo

John MacDonald stands at the construction site of the suspension bridge.SEE BRIDGE 08

Evan Pappas/Staff Photo

The Tolt-MacDonald Park footbridge as it stands today. Additional weights were added to improve stability in 2014.


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Fall Round UpSunday, November 15th, 2015

Two Player Teams(6) Holes “Scramble”, (6) Holes “Best Ball” and (6) Holes “Alternate Shot”

Holiday ClassicSunday, December 13th, 2015

Four Player Teams(1) Gross Ball – (1) Net Ball

Poison BallSunday, January 3rd, 2016

Four Player Teams(1) Player is “Poison Ball” – (3) Players

“Scramble” – Alternates every hole.

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Pro Shop (425) 888-1541 Email: [email protected]

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November 2, 2015 thru March 13, 2016Mount Si Golf Course will continue the tradition of the holiday food drive. This program gives you a discount on golf if you donate non-perishable food items when you play. Food donations will be given to the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank. For winter rates and food drive discount details go to www.mtsigolf.com or call 425- 888-1541.

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Mount Si Golf Course is pleased to host the Annual Winter Tournament Series.

These are fun events and a great way to get some golf in during the winter to keep your game sharp for the next season!

Campbell ScrambleSunday, January 24th, 2016

Four Player Teams(4) Player Scramble

Cabin Fever ClassicSat Feb 27th/Sun Feb 28th, 2016Two Player Teams (2) Day Event(2) Player Scramble – Both Days

Tip & Tuck ScrambleSunday, March 20th, 2016

Four Player Teams(4) Player Scramble

www.mtsigolf.com

A Valley TraditionMount Si GC has been a Snoqualmie Valley tradition since the 1920’s when the land was transformed from a hops farm into a golf course. It became an 18-hole public course in the 1930’s. In 1958,1985, and 1994 the course under-went signi� cant changes and has evolved into a popular public golf course. The restaurant saw changes to its outside and inside looks in the late 2000’s and continues to serve excellent food along with a smile.

Tournaments and Dates: (All events are 10:00 AM Shotgun Starts)

which worked on the approximately 500-foot suspension bridge. He also organized all the Boy Scouts in the greater Puget Sound area, approximately 20,000 of them, and over a four-month period, they cleared the land, built campsites, shelters, cabins, and an amphitheater that are still there today.

The bridge was the Army Reserve’s job, but they didn’t have much experi-ence in building suspen-sion bridges so they went up to Canada and got help

from some of the armed forces there who had expe-rience in building that type of project.

MacDonald was able to bring together a massive amount of people to work together on this commu-nity project, but was unable to see the result of all the work they had done.

“Unfortunately, he had a heart attack and died on May 10, 1976, weeks before the project was finished,” Sinsel said.

The park was named the “Tolt-MacDonald Park and Campground” when the project was finished in June, 1976.

Years later, one of MacDonald’s sons was vol-unteering at a King County Parks event and got in

touch with them to share some of the historic pho-tos and newspaper clip-pings that his family had recorded and kept for over 30 years.

On June 26, 2011, the 35th anniversary of the development’s comple-tion, King County Parks held a rededication to cel-ebrate the work that John MacDonald, the Army Reserve and the Boy Scouts did all those years ago.

“We rededicated the campground to him and to bring awareness to the project because the history had been lost.” Sinsel said.

Many of MacDonald’s

family attended the event along with King County representatives like Dow Constantine and Kathy Lambert, and about 200 Boy Scouts.

In fact, according to Sinsel, King County Executive Dow Constantine

was one of the Scouts who helped out on the project.

Today, the bridge is kept up-to-date with annual inspections and has seen some improvements as recently as 2014 where additional support weights were added to each side.

BRIDGE FROM 8


The John MacDonald Memorial Campground sign, created by a scout for his eagle award, for the 2011 rededication ceremony.

“We rededicated the campground

to him and to bring awareness

to the project because the

history had been lost.”

Alan SinselKing County Parks District Maintenance Coordinator


The eastern end of the Tolt-MacDonald bridge. Walking across leads to the Yurt campgrounds and group camps.

WWW.VALLEYRECORD.COM10 • October 21, 2015 • Snoqualmie Valley Record14

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The Snoqualmie Valley has always had a historic connection to the movies. From the era of the silent film to today’s modern era, the local theaters have always played an important part in the Valley.

Due to the collec-tion of Valley history in the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum and

the hard work and research of David Battey, recording secretary for the museum board, the history of these theaters has been preserved. Almost all the information available on these theaters was recorded by Battey.

Battey has written several articles about the history of the Valley’s theaters since the early 1900s. The Valley had three major theaters: the Sunset Theater, the

Pictureland Theater, and Brook Theater.

Cristy Lake, assistant director at the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum, said the Sunset Theater was built into an existing Snoqualmie building that is now Sigillo Cellars in Snoqualmie.

“The Sunset Theater is still around,” Lake said. “It was repurposed as a town hall and fire hall, then it was

the union hall for years, and then Christine purchased it and restored it as Mignone and then it’s been several business since then.”

In 1923, the Brook Theater, built by William and Geneva Cochrane on the Northeast corner of Meadowbrook Way and Park Street in Snoqualmie, opened.

The Brook was the larg-est and most luxurious of the theaters in the area. It

could seat over 400 people, had cushioned seats and the newest movie screens and projection technology. Over $20,000 (roughly $280,000 in 2015 value) was put into the building’s development.

These theaters showed the latest silent movies with

live music accompaniments by a pianist and a violinist.

According to Battey, E.W. Sandell, the owner of both the Sunset and Pictureland theaters, sold both the-aters to the Cochranes in

From silent to sound: A history of movie theaters in the Valley

Courtesy Photo

The Brook Theater and the adjacent stores on the corner of Meadowbrook Way and Park Street in Snoqualmie.

Courtesy Photo

William Cochrane poses for a picture with a moviegoer at the Brook Theater.

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Courtesy Photo

Top: The North Bend Theater (or Cinema in this case) as it started in downtown North Bend in 1941. Bottom: The the Sunset Theater on what is now Railroad Avenue.

late 1923 due to the huge competition the Brook had brought to the Valley.

“The guy that started the two silent movies before the Brook, he just kinda disap-peared back to Issaquah and then the Brook folks bought him out. So they had all three,” Battey said.

In the late 1920s, sound was introduced to the world of movies. The two com-peting technologies, the Vitaphone and Movietone systems, were both installed in the Brook so the selec-tion of movies wasn’t cut off. Battey described these systems as reminiscent to format wars we have seen in the last couple decades.

“It is kind of fun when they started the talkies. It was like VHS vs Beta,” He said. “There were two ways to show talkies and they had to pay to have both of those systems installed in the Brook Theater.”

The Brook saw a lot of suc-cess when it started showing “talkies,” but this new tech-nology made the Sunset and Pictureland theaters large-ly irrelevant as they were still limited to silent films. Due to the recession, which started in 1929, both the-aters were closed in 1930 so the Cochranes could focus on the Brook Theater.

Battey gathered much of his information from Cochranes’ corporate records for his research into the business behind the the-aters in the 20s.

“If you are going to waste money when you have none, a movie ticket is an absolute wonderful indi-cator of how much spare change there was in the Valley, so I thought that was amazing to find all of the corporate books of the Cochrane Motion Pictures Corporation, including the closing down of Pictureland and Sunset and the begin-nings of Brook, all there,” Battey said. “It was just amazing.”

The Cochranes ran the Brook Theater until the 1940s when they sold it. The theater eventually closed its doors in the 1960s.

But that was not the end of movies in the Valley. In 1941, the North Bend Theater opened. It is still standing in the same spot and is still open for busi-ness.

Lake said having three theaters in such a close range to each other really showed how important that kind of entertainment was to people. The fact that the North Bend Theater is still standing and in good condi-tion after 74 years is a testa-ment to the hard work and passion the community has

for the history of the Valley.“I think it’s very cool we

had three theaters in a rela-tively small community,” Lake said. “To me that shows it was a huge community draw that so many people were able to go and sustain three theaters. Of course the Depression hit and two of them closed, but I think it’s really significant that with-in two miles of each other there were three theaters. It’s really rare that there is a historic theater intact today and we are lucky to have that in our community.”

THEATERS FROM 10

WWW.VALLEYRECORD.COM12 • October 21, 2015 • Snoqualmie Valley Record


One of the oldest institutions in the Valley is also in charge of preserving its history. The Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum was started in the early 1900s by Ada Hill, a school teacher in North Bend.

Cristy Lake, assistant director at the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum, explained that through Hill’s work, the Valley gained an important organization.

“She started collecting things from the pioneers who were the parents of the kids she had in her class and over time the collection grew,” Lake said. “By the ‘60s it was filling the whole classroom and the school. The baby boom had happened and the school needed the classroom space so they asked Hill to remove the

stuff from the school and at that point, the historical society was formed to help take care of the collection.”

Since then the museum has been obtaining historical artifacts through a mixture of purposeful collecting and donations from people in the Valley. Lake said that over time the museum’s collec-tion has narrowed in subject to better focus on the region it is in.

“Originally the museum had a much broader mission that it does now. We focus specifically on Snoqualmie Valley now,” Lake said.

“When Hill started the collection it was Washington State and Pacific Northwest pioneer history. So parts of our collection are better represented than other parts.”

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The Fall City Historical Society has begun an exten-sive effort to provide histor-ic signs for many locations in town. A template has been designed, for overall cohesiveness of the signage, and development of signs for the Fall City Masonic Hall and the Neighbor-Bennett House, both on the National Register of

Historic Places, is under way.

Each sign will include a QR code, the familiar pattern seen many places these days, allowing mobile devices to access informa-tion. On the sign, the code will link to a more exten-sive report on the location, with additional background and images. These reports

will reside on the Fall City Historical Society’s website, www.fallcity.org/historical.

The historical society is also considering making site information available in a GPS-linked format for mobile devices, such as the Stqry app.

This project, and many other programs from the society are supported in part by King County Heritage 4Culture.

Walking tours will be offered soon. When a wide range of background infor-mation has been assem-bled, an updated Fall City Walking Tour will be made available, both in printed and digital form. Volunteers are being recruited to serve as tour guides at times.

Another guided tour, of the Fall City Cemetery, is also being developed.

Coming upThe annual Fall City

Calendar for 2016 is now available, the 10th in the series and the second in full color. It is available for purchase at the Farmhouse Market and will be featured with other ‘History in your Hand’ items at the Fall City Holiday Market Dec. 5 at Chief Kanim Middle School.

See www.fallcityhistori-cal.org for a preview of the calendar and instructions for ordering by mail.

Fall City creates historical signs

Courtesy Photo

Sample sign for Neighbor-Bennett House, built in 1904.

Snoqualmie Valley Museum got its start at school


North Bend is now home to the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum.

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SVR Special Pages - Then and Now