Clise Mansion and Willowmoor: The Farm That Became Marymoor Park

Marymoor Park lies along the Sammamish Slough in Redmond, north of Lake Sammamish, and in 1962 it became King County's first park. The land's history goes back much further. Evidence shows Native Americans visited the site more than 6,000 years ago and occupied it around 1000 B.C., hunting, fishing and gathering berries along the river. In 1876 the brothers John and Adam Tosh, coal miners from Ireland, homesteaded it, and for the next 30 years they cleared and worked the land. [1]

In the spring of 1904, Seattle businessman James Clise bought 78 acres of Adam Tosh's property. Clise had arrived in Seattle the day after the Great Fire of 1889 and made his fortune in real estate and other ventures. He built a hunting lodge on the slough, and his family came to love it so much that they moved there from their mansion on Queen Anne Hill. By 1907 he had bought enough land to make almost 400 acres, which he called Willowmoor, and the lodge had grown into a 28-room mansion in the European Arts and Crafts style, designed by architect Max Umbrecht, with a billiard room, art gallery, library and sun porch. [1]

Clise made the rest a model farm, with a horse barn, cow barn, bull barn, poultry house, greenhouse and dovecote, and later a creamery, a duck yard, a goose pond and a narrow-gauge railroad in the barnyard to haul grain and feed. The most eye-catching structure was a windmill on the slough, modeled after windmills James and his wife Anna had enjoyed in Holland. Anna Clise, a founder of Children's Orthopedic Hospital, held many fundraising parties there, and a four-horse tallyho met guests at the Medina ferry dock and drove them to Willowmoor in style. [1]

The farm was famous. Clise brought Ayrshire cattle from Scotland, and Willowmoor Ayrshires won awards at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle and the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. His Morgan stallion Troubadour was grand champion of all breeds at the 1909 fair. Henry Ford insisted that all the milk at his Dearborn Hospital in Michigan come from Willowmoor Ayrshires or their descendants, and in 1913 the Japanese government sent 40 businessmen to Willowmoor to study its dairy methods. [1]

Clise sold the estate in 1921. A later owner renamed it Northwood, and in 1941 it was leased to Walter Nettleton and Ralph and Dean Dodd. Nettleton renamed the farm Marymoor, after his daughter Mary. In 1962 county voters passed a special bond issue to buy it from an investment firm that had planned to develop it commercially, creating the park. The mansion opened as Marymoor Museum in 1968. In 1970 the site was placed on the National Register as the Marymoor Prehistoric Indian Site, the mansion followed three years later, and in 1982 Willowmoor Farm was named a King County Landmark. [1]