(click to enlarge photos)

A decade ago, while preparing a book of “repeats” covering Washington State, Jean Sherrard and I found the panorama printed here of the little railroad town on the shore of Rattlesnake Lake.  About 1100 feet above the town, the at once modest and exalted Rattlesnake Ledge faces north towards the off-camera larger and older town of North Bend.  Darius Kinsey, a professional admired for his photography of lumber camps and towns, named this subject Cedar Falls, the appellation preferred by Seattle, which began building a masonry dam nearby on the Cedar River and a power plant between that new dam and the nearly-new town.     

We have returned this week to Kinsey’s pan, largely by following the lead of Alan Berner, the Times well-versed photographer and writer who is often inspired, we have noticed, by a poetic temperament.  With “Amid drought, Rattlesnake Lake Reveals its Roots,” his recent October 12 Times feature, Berner shared with readers an exhibit of oversized stumps, driftwood sculpture exposed on the bottom of Rattlesnake Lake, mostly dry after our arid year.

In his caption Kinsey has used Cedar Falls, the town’s second name, but in 1907 it was still called Moncton after a railroad town in New Brunswick, Canada.  The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad developed this little company town to help push and tunnel its electric transcontinental line through Snoqualmie pass.  In 1911 Seattle began to first build its nearby dam and then with water from Cedar Lake the city filled the reservoir behind a new masonry dam and Rattlesnake Lake as well – unwittingly.

Beginning in late April 1915, seepage from the reservoir began lifting the little lake more than a foot a day.  On May 13 The Times reported that “motion picture operators this afternoon began taking films at Cedar Falls to show a town drowned out by mysterious flood waters that came from the ground beneath the homes and lands of the people.”  By then, with two high-ground exceptions, all the families of Cedar River had fled their homes for boxcars or other burgs. 

Seattle’s first attempts to keep Moncton/Cedar Falls dry came in 1910 when the prohibitionists in city government tried to reverse King County’s decision to allow Moncton resident William Brown to open a saloon.  Teetotalers, like Seattle historian Clarence Bagley, then Secretary of the Seattle Board of Public Works, feared what drunken railroad and dam workers might do at work – and to their families and souls.  Brown’s portion of Seattle’s 1916 payoff to the flooded citizens of Cedar Falls was $6,086.44.  Fearing pollution to their Cedar River Watershed more than feeling guilt over their seeping reservoir, Seattle bought-out the damaged little town beside the erratic Rattlesnake Lake.   

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, guys?  A few Jean – a few features that relate.  Ron has put five or six, I believe.   The bottom of the five is relevant to this week’s dam buster theme.  The others stick to the regional aptness of their subjects. “Go East.”  We will follow that with a few more ancient clips and so fresh scans introduced for the first time to this roller derby of eternal recurrence with heritage anecdotes – illustrated and sometimes bruised with our mistakes..

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