Mount Si High School fastpitch falls short vs. Issaquah Page 6
Your locally owned newspaper, serving North Bend and Snoqualmie, Washington May 7, 2015
Snoqualmie Corridor plan passes, will cater to recreational users By Mark Yuasa
By Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times
Snoqualmie Valley Trails Club members hike up Squak Mountain in Issaquah. About 800,000 visitors each year hit the trails and waterways in the area.
Outdoor recreational enthusiasts will soon have more places to enjoy their favorite activities in the expansive Snoqualmie Corridor region. A 10- to 15-year vision outlined in a massive project plan by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources puts forth development and preservation of 120 miles of hiking trails, whitewater rapids, climbing areas, picnic and camping sites, and other recreational areas covering 53,500 acres. After intensive community outreach, the DNR plan was recently adopted. “It’s an exciting time right now, and we’ve got a lot of partners (King County, State
Parks, state Fish & Wildlife and many other private groups) and support that are creating new opportunities for outdoor recreation in the corridor,” said Doug McClelland, department assistant regional manager of natural areas and recreation. The department has been involved since the mid-1980s acquiring land from Issaquah to North Bend that hold some of the most diverse terrain within close proximity to the greater Puget Sound population. Studies found about 800,000 visitors each year hit the trails and waterways of the West Tiger Mountain Natural Resources Conservation Area, Middle Fork Snoqualmie NRCA, Mount Si NRCA and Rattlesnake Mountain Scenic Area.
“It is a large stretch of area that lies in the Mountains to Sound Greenway where we enjoy a lot of recreational activities,” said Amy Brockhaus, coalition director for the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust in Seattle. McClelland said projects in progress are trail access-point work on the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River; bridges and roads along with trail development on the Teneriffe Trail at Mount Si; and eight miles of mountain-bike trails on East Tiger Mountain. The main focus of work in the next five years or so will occur on the Raging River State Forest, Middle Fork of the See CORRIDOR, Page 2
Northwest Railway Museum: A train lover’s paradise concept makes Anderson smile. “Our staff will be altogether in one space instead of in three different areas,” he said. “It’s about people and about being able to collaborate. We will work more effectively and more efficiently if we work together.” Plus, moving the offices will open more space in the Snoqualmie Depot for additional museum displays. It is the larger, moving displays that make the Railway Museum exciting to children and families who may have never been on a train. On weekends from April to October, the museum offers excursions from Snoqualmie to North Bend, where passengers can disembark for shopping, food and exploring before the return trip. Santa Trains run from Thanksgiving to just before Christmas.
By Sherry Grindeland Spike by rail spike, rail car by rail car, the Northwest Railway Museum has gone from a collection of rusting locomotives and crumbling cars to a firstclass ticket to reminisce about trains. The museum is about to embark on the final leg of the planned journey to become the premier train center in the Northwest — building a railway education center. “This is the culmination of our long-term development project,” said Richard Anderson, the museum’s executive director. Plans for the center are out for bid. Anderson said the final cost isn’t available yet, but he expects it to be slightly more than $2 million. That includes what has already been spent for planning and permitting. When completed, there will be rooms for lectures and classes, a library for research and to house railroading books, a humidity-controlled collections storage area and something Anderson and the museum staff long for — office space. The building will join a Conservation Center that handles rebuilding and restoration of the train cars and locomotives
See TRAINS, Page 2
Richard Anderson, director of the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, stands on the loading step of Coach 218, a 1912 wood passenger car built by the Barney and Smith Car Co. that was used by the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway and has been restored by the museum and placed in its collection.
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and a Train Center that displays fragile and restored cars. Like its sister buildings, the
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By Greg Farrar
Railway Education Center will be built beside the railroad tracks on acreage on the eastern
end of Snoqualmie. Of the many things that will be housed there, the office-space