Issaquah Depot: An 1889 Railroad Station, Now a Museum

The Issaquah Depot was built in 1889. It served as both a passenger station and a freight warehouse for the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway. The building goes by a few names: Issaquah Depot, Issaquah station, or the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway Depot. [1]

When it opened, the town it served was not yet called Issaquah. In the 1860s settlers called the area Squak, their pronunciation of the Native name Is-qu-ah, which means snake. In 1889 residents renamed it Gilman, after Daniel Hunt Gilman, a promoter of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern, the railroad that hauled coal from the nearby Gilman mines. The railroad changed hands quickly. Only a few years after the depot opened, in the 1890s, the Northern Pacific Railway took over the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern. [1][2]

The post office never accepted Gilman. It called the town Olney, after the postmaster's home town in Illinois, because Gilman was too close to Gilmer, in Klickitat County, and it did not want mail going astray. The town council petitioned the state, and on February 2, 1899, the legislature changed the name to Issaquah, close to the original Is-qu-ah. [2]

For the railroad, Issaquah was the point. Its first division was built to Issaquah, where the coal mines would furnish cargoes. Daniel Gilman's name outlived the town name, too. He and Thomas Burke led the group that founded the railroad, and when a stretch of its abandoned right-of-way in Seattle reopened in 1978 as a bike path, it was named the Burke-Gilman Trail. [3]

Passenger trains stopped using the depot in the 1940s. Northern Pacific abandoned the building in 1962. For a little over two decades it sat without a railroad to serve. [1]

The City of Issaquah bought the building in 1984. Restoration began the next year and was finished in the early 1990s. On September 13, 1990, the depot was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It is a plain, practical building, described in its listing as a vernacular depot design. It stands at 78 1st Ave NW in Issaquah. [1]

Today the depot is a museum. It is run by the nonprofit Issaquah Historical Museums, which used to be called the Issaquah Historical Society. [1]