Mount Si: The Mountain Named for Uncle Si Merritt

On a day in 1862, a traveler passing through the Snoqualmie Valley saw a mountain he thought would be the perfect place to call home. His name was Josiah Merritt. He built a small wooden cabin at its base, on the bank of a small creek near where it emptied into the Middle Fork beneath the mountain. He grew vegetables, planted an orchard and raised pigs, and in his free time he played the fiddle for his friends. In the town of North Bend he was known as Uncle Si. People began calling the peak Uncle Si's Mountain, and over time the name was shortened to Mount Si. [1]

He had come a long way looking for gold. During the gold rush he left Ohio for California, and after a few years with little success he headed north when gold was discovered in British Columbia. He left Seattle on a pack trail going east to Snoqualmie Pass, meaning to turn north to Canada. On the Snoqualmie Prairie he met Jeremiah Borst, an early settler known for generously helping people start new lives there. Merritt liked North Bend and Borst's company, so he stayed, and he raised the same produce and meat that Borst did. [1]

Selling bacon was an expedition. Merritt went by oxen and sled, carried the meat across the river on his back, and went by oxen and sled again to Borst's house. From there he canoed down the river to Snoqualmie Falls, where he had to carry the meat on his back down the cliff of the falls to the mouth of Tokul Creek. Then he canoed down the Snoqualmie and Snohomish rivers to Everett and around Puget Sound to Seattle, where he sold it to Schwabacher Brothers & Company, a wholesale store in what is now Pioneer Square. [1]

After living in North Bend for some time, he sold $400 worth of bacon in Seattle and used the money for a trip back to Ohio. He had left his wife and three young children there twenty-three years before. His wife, Sally Merritt, came with him to Washington, along with her youngest son, and was known in town as Aunt Sally. The cabin had burned down twice, so he built a third, larger one. Uncle Si lived out the rest of his days in the Snoqualmie Valley and was buried at the Fall City Cemetery in 1882. [1]

The Snoqualmie Tribe has its own name for the mountain, q̓əlbc̓ in the Lushootseed language. The Snoqualmie people are recognized as the original stewards of the land, and the mountain is sacred to them and part of their origin story. [1]

Today Mount Si is a Snoqualmie Valley landmark and a popular hike. In 1977, North Bend City Council member Francis North helped establish it as a public recreation area and natural preserve, and the state Department of Natural Resources recognized part of it as a conservation area, which protected it from logging and housing development. In 1987 the land was redesignated the Mount Si Natural Resources Conservation Area, expanding protection to five hundred and two acres. It protects old-growth Douglas fir, western hemlock and Sitka spruce, and animals including mountain goats, black bears, elk, deer and cougars. More than 100,000 people hike it every year. In 2005, after decades of heavy use had eroded the trail, the Department of Natural Resources and the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust renovated it. [1]