File:Logging crew with electric donkey engine, ca 1922 (KINSEY 862).jpeg

English: Caption on image: Kinsey Photo No. 87 PH Coll 516.4111
In the early 1890s, the town of North Bend was called Snoqualmie, and the town of Snoqualmie was called Snoqualmie Falls. What is now Snoqualmie got its name - and the railway depot that was originally slated to go to North Bend - by wooing railway officials when North Bend's founder (land speculator Will Taylor, who platted the city) was out of town. To avoid confusion, railroad officials created rules against nearby towns sharing similar names and so "forced (what is now) North Bend to change its name and made Snoqualmie Falls drop "Falls" from the town's name. The railroad depot, on Railroad Avenue in Snoqualmie's old downtown core, soon attracted other business interests to the city. Edmund and Louisa Kinsey, who are believed to have purchased the first lots in the new town, quickly became community stalwarts. The couple and their six children are widely considered Snoqualmie's "first family." "In the 1890s, they provided newborn Snoqualmie with a hotel, store, post office, church, meat market and community center" reads the inscription on a plaque commemorating the Kinsey family that hangs outside the 1923 building that housed the town's first bank. (The building was used as a city hall until a 1990 flood forced the city staff into a newer building). The Kinsey family was also responsible for building the town's first livery stable and a hall for the Good Templars, "an amazingly strong political force" that influenced the national prohibition movement. Two of the Kinsey sons - Darius and Clark - went on to regional fame photographing logging camps and farming operations. Newcomers flooded into Snoqualmie after an underground power plant was built at Snoqualmie Falls in the late 1890s, producing electricity and local jobs. A small company town, including a railroad depot, grew up around the falls. A second powerhouse was added in 1911. A few years later, in 1917, Snoqualmie Falls Lumber cut its first log. The owners of the second all-electric lumber mill in the country built their own company town - called Snoqualmie Falls - across the river and up a hill from Snoqualmie. At its peak, the mill town included 250 homes, a hotel, community center, 50-bed hospital, barber shop, grade school, boarding house for single men and eight bunkhouses built for Japanese workers. During World War I, soldiers were assigned to the mill and woods so that wood, an essential material for the war effort, could still be logged and processed. Though mill wages fell during the Great Depression, Snoqualmie Falls Lumber - which later became Weyerhaeuser - survived the hard times to enjoy the nation's post-World War II building boom that increased demand for lumber. By the 1950s, the idea of a mill town had fallen out of vogue. The houses at Snoqualmie Falls were in need of expensive maintenance, and mill workers, who rented from the company, wanted the chance to own their own homes. Many of the houses were moved across a temporary bridge on the Snoqualmie River to create the Williams Addition to Snoqualmie in 1958. By 1960, Snoqualmie's population had stabilized at around 1,200 residents. By then, agriculture was no longer a major economic force in the community, but Weyerhaeuser's mill operations were still a mainstay. With the completion of Interstate 90 in the 1970s, more Snoqualmie residents began commuting to jobs outside the city. Still, over the next 30 years, only about 11 people were added to the city's rolls each year. In 1989, Weyerhaeuser closed its main mill above Snoqualmie. In 2002, the company announced it was shutting down its Snoqualmie dry kilns and planing plant. The closure, along with Weyerhaeuser's decision to mothball its White River mill in Enumclaw, effectively ended the company's 100-year logging operation in King County. [Source: Green, Sarah Jean. "Snoqualmie's prairie roots: A town grows from backwater to economic center." The Seattle Times, Friday, December 20, 2002] "Enthusiasm for electric donkey engines ran high for a number of years. At the Vancouver Congress, in 1911, the question of adapting electricity -- bolting a huge electric motor in the place of the steam boiler to power a donkey's drums -- had come up and had been tabled due to the vagueness of the promises made by the representatives of Westinghouse, Allis-Chalmers, and General Electric ... As it turned out, electric donkeys received a fair trial, notably at Snoqualmie, Washington. Although the electric machines did bring in logs, they had certain inherent drawbacks. There was the difficulty of the smooth application of power: the electric donkey started too fast and jerked the mainline in a way disconcerting to the rigging crew. The power transmission lines, and the high salaries of the skilled specialists required to maintain the delicate equipment, cost more than customary labor...Such reasons precluded the widespread adoption of electric logging machines." [Source: Prouty, Andrew Mason. More Deadly Than War: Pacific Coast Logging, 1827-1981. New York; London: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1985.]

• Subjects (LCTGM): Logs; Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company--People--Washington (State); Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company--Equipment & supplies--Washington (State)
• Subjects (LCSH): Loggers--Washington (State)--King County; Electric donkeys--Washington (State)--King County; Logging--Washington (State)--King County