Issaquah Salmon Hatchery

The hatchery came out of the Works Progress Administration in 1936, a federal venture meant to bring back the kokanee runs in Issaquah Creek that logging and coal mining had wiped out in the basin [1]. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife owns and operates it [1]. Coho arrived at first from the Green River and sockeye from Baker River, and steelhead went into the creek off and on across the years [1]. The hatchery has also taken on spawning Lake Sammamish kokanee, part of the effort by the Kokanee Working Group to keep a critically endangered native fish from going under [1]. When closure threatened the place in 1992, private citizens, community leaders and business people banded together to save both the hatchery and the creek's runs, and Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery grew out of those partnerships [1]. The grounds hold more than fifty-four pieces of public artwork, among them community mosaics, murals and installations; the Stained Glass Salmon Mosaic took eighty-seven people, ages four to eighty-six, over six hundred hours to finish in August 2017 [1].