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Fifty of the best of Matt McCauley's "A Look to the Past: Kirkland"
newspaper columns, edited to present new information and many
photos from the prized collection of the Kirkland Heritage Society.
In 1870 two teenage boys claim homesteads on Juanita Bay, and to
pay for improvements on their homesteads, struggle for the rest of
their short lives logging timber on Lake Washington's eastern
shore. In 1872 a couple and their 22-year-old son stake claims at
Houghton, carving homes out of dark, dense, first-growth timber.
Other pioneers arrive and claim homesteads on the eastern shore. In
1887 a flamboyant young newspaper publisher convinces an
even-tempered English steel manufacturer to locate a new,
world-class steel mill on a tiny lake between Houghton and Juanita,
and to plat a town site on Lake Washington's shore, which will
become Kirkland. Their vision is big. They want to create nothing
less than a "Pittsburgh of the Pacific," but reality intervenes.
The speculative bubble bursts and fortunes are lost, lives are
broken, and in the shambles of their dreams the scrappy pioneers
refuse to quit. They build their town anyway. Kirkland's past reads
like a great western novel, peopled as it is by pioneer settlers,
land speculators, loggers, stump ranchers, land developers, steam
boatmen, boat builders, WWII Rosie-the-riveters, finally, the
suburbanites of post-WWII. Kirkland native Matthew W. McCauley
wrote a popular newspaper column, "A Look to the Past," in the
1990s in which he tells these stories. Here are 50 of the best,
updated with new research, and accompanied by many of images from
the Kirkland Heritage Society's prized collection. "It is a
pleasure having Matt McCauley's A Look to the Past articles finally
gathered together in one volume. When they were first published in
the Kirkland Courier two decades ago, they were such a joy to read
that I saved most of them in my clippings file. I say "most"
because I now see that I missed a few, and I was delighted to read
some "new" ones after all these years. What a treat " - Alan Stein,
Staff Historian, HistoryLink.org "Matt is ... an old soul. As a
young boy he seemed to show wisdom only seen in older people. Matt
always loved older people and their stories. Today, Kirkland is the
beneficiary of his interest in the people and history of Kirkland.
Matt is a stickler for detail and accuracy. He wants people
remembered and respected." - Loita Hawkinson, Kirkland Heritage
Society
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