Preston, WA: A Raging River Mill Town and Its Park

Preston sits along the Raging River, and for almost a century its story was a mill. The Preston Mill Company operated from 1896 to 1990. It ran two mills on the river: a shingle mill, and a lumber mill upstream. Many of Fall City's early buildings were built with lumber from the Preston mill. [1]

The company was founded by August and Emil Lovegren, Swedish-American immigrants. They drew European immigrants, mostly of Swedish descent, to work at the mill. By 1929 it employed roughly 200 men. [1]

After the mill closed, the community planned what came next. In 1997, residents worked with the Mountains to Sound Greenway, King County Parks and the state Department of Natural Resources on a document called the Preston Vision. It asked for parks and open space. That same year King County bought the old shingle mill site, now Preston Mill Park, and what is now Preston Athletic Fields. [1]

The 22-acre park then sat largely untouched for years. In 2015 Jim Ellis, founding president of the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, urged that the site tell its story. Ellis was a Preston community member who, as a teenager in the 1930s, built a cabin on the Raging River with his brother. The park, the community center and the athletic fields are now known together as the Jim Ellis Memorial Regional Park. A $1.6 million project with King County Parks added trails, a paved parking lot, restrooms and a pedestrian tunnel to the Preston Community Center, finishing its first phase in summer 2022. [1]

Two mill buildings still stand, gray and mossy. The old mill shed, easy to see from Preston-Fall City Road, was in disrepair, and the county planned to take it down and turn the space into an interpretive exhibit. Local historians were seeking landmark status for the other building, the kiln. 'We do not want to see that building come down,' said Rick Divers of the Fall City Historical Society. [1]