Fall City Hop Shed

George Davis Rutherford put up this hop shed on a hop farm of 1,500 acres beside the Snoqualmie River, a plain rectangular building of about twenty feet square [1]. Hops go into beer, and when hop aphids ruined the crops in the old European growing districts, the valleys east and south of Seattle took up the trade [1]. Through the 1880s, no other agricultural enterprise in King County was bigger than the growing and exporting of hops, and this shed is the last remnant of it [1]. Inside, stoves made the heat, and a large vented cupola on the roof drew that warmth up through the hops to dry them before shipping [1]. Cheap prices, dear supplies and the aphid itself finished off hop farming on a grand scale in the valley as the century turned [1]. The building was shifted to where it sits in 1904 and turned into a storage shed [1]. The Fall City Hop Shed Foundation has done much to keep it standing, and in 1996 oversaw its restoration [1].