Novelty

Sal is a voice that rides along as you drive Washington's roads: the road ahead, the pass, the stories of the places you pass.

Novelty never did become much of a town. It sat at the bottom of Novelty Hill, a would-be settlement that didn't take, and its neighbors fared only a little better. Duvall was first called Cherry Valley. Carnation went by Tolt. All of them were small outposts in a stretch of the Snoqualmie Valley, and Novelty was the one that never quite caught. Up on the ridge above, the land told a different story. Those forested tracts weren't as fertile as the river bottoms, and small family farmers decided clearing them wasn't worth the backbreaking labor. The big logging companies saw it differently, and Weyerhaeuser bought 1,500 acres of that timberland near the start of the twentieth century. The steep slope down to the valley still carries the name Novelty Hill, a name that outlasted the town. [1]