Peter Kirk's Kirkland

Peter Kirk was a steel man from Workington, England, and the town on the northeastern shore of Lake Washington carries his name [1]. In 1888 he and Leigh Hunt and others formed the Moss Bay Iron and Steel Works, with a new city as their Pittsburgh of the West [1]. Hunt bought the land, since Kirk was not a citizen, and the founders laid out lots and gave the streets British names like Piccadilly and Oxford [1]. The railroad would not bring a line to the water, so the mill moved two miles east [1]. Then came 1893 [1]. A nationwide financial collapse ended any hope for the steel venture, investors backed out, and Kirkland was left with a partly built mill on the hill and rows of empty houses [1]. Kirk stayed on, parceling out his land over the years, and died in the San Juan Islands in 1916 [1]. A woolen mill and shipbuilding carried the town afterward, and Kirkland incorporated in 1905 [1]. Houghton merged with it in 1968, and most of Juanita and Rose Hill came in 1988 [1].