Snohomish County history

Woodbury Sinclair purchased Cady’s stake in 1864 with the intention of establishing a store supporting the area’s booming logging industry.

When his wife, Mary Low Sinclair, arrived in Cadyville on May 1, 1865, she became Cadyville’s first permanent white female resident.

Cadyville became known as Snohomish in 1871 when the plat of Snohomish City Western Part joined Ferguson’s eastern claim with Sinclair’s western claim at Union Avenue.

Brothers Alanson, Elhanan, and Hyrcanus Blackman migrated to Snohomish from Maine and established their first logging camp in 1875 on what was then called Stillaguamish Lake but is now known as Blackmans Lake.

In 1876, journalist Eldridge Morse began publishing a well-respected territorial newspaper called The Northern Star.

Local lumber, the first milled by the Blackmans, was used to construct the house in 1878.

The Snohomish train station was built in 1888.

The G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) Cemetery was established in 1889 by the G.A.R.'s Morton Post 110 of Snohomish, the historic cemetery is one of two in the Puget Sound area and the only independently active and maintained Civil War G.A.R. cemetery in the State of Washington.

When Snohomish was incorporated in 1890 it became the first incorporated city in the county.

Thus the Everett Land Company was formed, and work crews began to clear land in the summer of 1891.

But the silver panic of 1893 halted the boom, and Rockefeller sold his interests.

See the town clock commemorating the incorporating of the City of Snohomish located at First Street and Avenue A. See if you can find the “OOPS” on our clock. (Hint: what happened to the 11th hour?) In 1895 Snohomish lost the county seat to Everett, still a matter of questionable ballot counting.

When the first issue of the Labor Journal was published in Everett on February 26, 1903, the newspaper listed 31 trades unions with a combined membership of 2,500 in a city whose total population was about 10,000.

By 1910 it was estimated that a fifth of Everett’s population was employed in the mills, where working conditions were dangerous and hours long.

On Memorial Day 1911 a disastrous fire struck First Street and everything between Avenues B and C was destroyed.

Treaty Day, Tulalip Indian Reservation, 1914

Clough-Hartley sawmill, Everett, 1915

Events culminated November 5, 1916, in the Everett Massacre, a labor confrontation between the IWW and county lawmen that left two deputies and at least five Wobblies dead, with dozens more wounded.

The 1923 Tokyo earthquake spurred a lumber boom in the Pacific Northwest, bringing the region out of recession and fueling development that lasted until the stock market crash.

During the Great Depression, one of the town's largest employers, Bickford Ford, was founded in 1934 by Lawrence Bickford, remaining open until today.

The Everett Pacific Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, operated by Pacific Car and Foundry of Seattle, began wartime production on the Everett waterfront in 1942.

In 1943, Paine Field was converted to a military base.

The Everett Herald began its South County Bureau in May 1954.

In 1967 Boeing began building the 747 plant near Everett’s Paine Field, thus initiating rapid population growth in the county.

The Snohomish Historical Society was founded in 1969 and is headquartered at the Blackman House Museum, the old home of Hyrcanus Blackman.

Residents were told that the new industry would be “recession proof,” but Boeing soon suffered in the nationwide hard times that began in 1970.

In 1973, Snohomish was the first city in the county to pass an ordinance establishing a Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

As one old-time logger expressed it in a 1974 interview, “You just about had to join” (Wardell). In Everett, however, one joined at peril.

In 1975 a catastrophic flood destroyed or damaged 300 homes with a loss of 3,500 head of cattle and other livestock.

The City of Snohomish’s Design Review Board, an advisory body, was created in 1979 to ensure development in the Historic District is consistent with established historic standards.

But Weyerhaeuser’s layoff of 300 workers and its announcement to close Everett operations rallied voters to overwhelmingly support Naval Station Everett, which was dedicated in 1994.

Naval Station Everett, 2004

In 2011, the Economic Development Council of Snohomish County, the Everett Chamber of Commerce, and the South Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce merged to create Economic Alliance Snohomish County.