Skykomish villages at Gold Bar

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.

The Skykomish people lived along the south fork of the river for centuries before any settler came up it. They belonged to the larger Snohomish peoples, and their year turned on the seasons of hunting, fishing, and gathering plants. The village at Gold Bar was one of seven, and a big one, permanent, with winter villages located further downstream near the same spot. After the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855, the tribe was meant to move to the Tulalip Reservation, but plenty stayed put. A village of 240 people was still reported near Gold Bar in the 1900s. Settlers brought smallpox and other diseases into the valley, and by the close of that century only a few hundred Skykomish survived. The town came afterward, built over a place that already had a long history. [1]