Lake Easton State Park History

Lake Easton State Park is a popular recreation site that lies at the nexus of historic travel and transportation routes that have been used for millennia.

Indigenous Lands

The present-day parklands lie within the traditional territories of Sahaptian and Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Snoqualmie Indian Tribe, and Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. For thousands of years, the lands and waters of this area have provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures.

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Yakima Treaty of Camp Stevens in 1855, keeping rights to harvest resources in their usual and accustomed places. After government land surveys were completed in 1898, some of the land in today’s Lake Easton State Park passed into private ownership as Homestead Entry or Cash Entry patents. The largest portion of land in today’s park was granted to the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) in 1902, part of nearly 40 million acres of public lands granted to the railroad by the US federal government to subsidize the construction of the line. Much of the granted land was sold to other private owners to increase profits. The land grant consisted of alternate sections of land, creating a checkerboard of land ownership which complicated management of the remaining public lands.

Transcontinental Railroads

The Northern Pacific Railroad was initially completed to its west coast terminus at Tacoma by a route along the Columbia River through Portland, Kalama, and along the path of the ancient Cowlitz Trail to Puget Sound. Engineers preferred a more direct route crossing the Cascade Mountains, however, and the company risked losing some of its land grant if it did not complete the mountain crossing. A route along the Yakima River, passing through today’s Lake Easton State Park and tunnelling under the Cascades at Stampede Pass was completed in 1887. The line remains a major freight route to this day, to the delight or consternation of park visitors.

The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railway (better known as the Milwaukee Road) was a latecomer to the railroading scene, crossing over the existing NP within today’s park on its way to a tunnel underneath Snoqualmie Pass, completed to Seattle in 1909. Ultimately, the Milwaukee Road lost the competition for traffic, falling into bankruptcy 70 years later. The route within Washington has been repurposed as the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail, extending from Idaho to North Bend. Trail connections in Lake Easton State Park allow visitors opportunities to hike, ride or ski the route.

Highway Through the Mountains

Snoqualmie Pass is the lowest point in the crest of Washington’s Cascade Mountains between the Columbia River border with Oregon and the state’s northern border with Canada. It has been used as a thoroughfare to travel across the mountains for thousands of years. Indigenous people on both sides of the mountains used it as a passage for journeys to harvest resources, trade and visit.

In 1855, Seattle businessmen Dexter Horton and Charles Boren began a survey of a route through Snoqualmie Pass to link the city with resources east of the mountains. They completed a rough route to Ellensburg by 1867. Much of the route was soggy and muddy and required puncheon or corduroy construction to allow passage. Puncheon consists of logs split in half, with the flat side facing up. Corduroy roads have the round side of the log facing up, resembling corduroy cloth.

New owners in 1883 made improvements to the route, but it fell into disrepair when the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed. In 1899, David Denny was contracted by King County to reestablish the Snoqualmie Pass Wagon Road with better puncheon and corduroy, bridges and blasted sections to improve the road alignment. That same year, railroad financier Sam Hill, the builder of the Peace Arch, founded the Washington State Good Roads Association to advocate for the establishment of a state highway department. Saying “good roads are more than my hobby; they are my religion,” he lobbied to build and maintain public roads to tie together the state.

In 1912 the Good Roads Association endorsed a plan to build a state highway across Snoqualmie Pass. On March 12, 1913, Washington Governor Ernest Lister approved Senate Bill 447 making an appropriation of $335,434 for the survey, construction, and maintenance of the “Sunset Highway” between North Bend and Cle Elum, passing through today’s Lake Easton State Park. Governor Lister dedicated the completed road at the summit of the pass on July 1, 1915.

In 1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act authorizing and funding the Interstate Highway System. The Snoqualmie Pass highway was designated as part of Interstate 90, the longest route in the system, stretching 3,021 miles through 13 states from Seattle to Boston.

The Kachess River Bridge in the western part of Lake Easton State Park is a remnant of the old Sunset Highway, now enjoyable for walking or bicycling as an access to the park’s trail system.

Water for Irrigation

Homesteaders and farmers in the Kittitas Valley sought to increase the value of their land with irrigated agriculture. Diversion of natural creek flows began as early as 1872. With the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, the US Congress passed the Reclamation Act on June 17, 1902. The law used funds from the sale of federal public domain lands for the “construction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid lands.” In 1903, Yakima Valley citizens petitioned the US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) to create water storage and irrigation networks in the Yakima River watershed. In 1905, the USBR included the Kittitas development in project planning. The Kittitas Reclamation District (KRD) was organized in 1911 to manage water contracts. In 1925, the USBR and KRD finalized plans and construction of the Easton Diversion Dam and distribution canals began. The 66-foot-high dam was completed in 1929, impounding the Lake Easton reservoir. Water began to flow to irrigation customers in the Kittitas Valley.

Becoming a State Park

On June 4, 1957, the USBR and the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) signed a Memorandum of Agreement for the development and administration of recreation areas surrounding the Lake Easton Reservoir. Additional lands were purchased by the WSPRC in 1961. Park facilities were constructed by the Washington Youth Development Conservation Corps during the summer of 1961, and the park was opened for use that August.

In 2000, a public-private organization, The Cascades Conservation Partnership, sought to connect and restore wildlife habitat by acquiring lands originally granted to the Northern Pacific Railway in the Cascade Mountains. Nearly $16 million in private donations from some 17,000 people and $68 million in public funds were used to buy back 45,000 acres of the granted lands. About 400 acres of the land was added to Lake Easton State Park in 2002, protecting forest land on the south side of the lake and in the adjacent valley of Cabin Creek.

A Place to Enjoy Winter Recreation

On June 18, 1975, Governor Daniel J. Evans approved Substitute House Bill 762, allowing the WSPRC to establish parking areas for winter recreational activities.  Funding for snow removal and other maintenance costs was provided by fees from permits required to park in the areas, called “Sno-Parks.” Some Sno-Parks were established for motorized use such as snowmobiles while others were designed for nonmotorized recreation such as cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. A later amendment to the law increased fees at some areas to provide special grooming of cross-country ski trail networks. A Sno-Park area was established at Lake Easton State Park, providing access to five kilometers of groomed trails through a beautiful, forested area west of the lake. Another Sno-Park location, on the Cabin Creek lands added to the park in 2002, features snowshoeing routes near the creek and access to miles of snowmobile trails leading beyond the park to national forest lands.