Reporter ISSAQUAH | SAMMAMISH
Friday, September 7, 2012
www.issaquahreporter.com
Hidden treasure Volunteers find artifacts in ReardFreed House
Jane Keuchle, director of Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery, stands in front of a 1937 dam on Issaquah Creek, which provides water for the hatchery. The antiquated structure is being replaced by a system of weirs.
BY KEVIN ENDEJAN KENDEJAN@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
DAM IMPRESSIVE
Hatchery prepares to celebrate 75th anniversary, upcoming improvements BY CELESTE GRACEY CGRACEY@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
P
erhaps the saddest part of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery dam is watching red Coho attempt to jump it and land instead on a 10-foot buttress.
After surviving whales and fishermen and then even leaping the hatchery wall – they finish their journey not by spawning but breathless and stranded. The dam is essential for keeping the hatchery flowing with water, and Jane Keuchle, director of Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery, couldn’t be happier to see it go. It’s being replaced by a $4 million system of weirs, low dams with pools that will make
75 YEARS OF THE ISSAQUAH SALMON HATCHERY Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery is hosting a 75th anniversary celebration from noon to 4 p.m., Sept. 8. The community event is scheduled to include several activities including a tribute from the Snoqualmie Tribe, tours of the hatchery and dam, and a wood-carving demonstration. Activities for kids include feeding the trout, a salmon dissection and creating fish-print shirts. The event is free to the public and centers at the Issaquah Hatchery, 125 W. Sunset Way. it easier for the salmon to move upstream. Not only will the new system make it easy for salmon, it also means cleaner water for the hatchery. “The idea behind it is to make the stream more of a stream,” Keuchle said. The project has been on Washington Fish &
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CELESTE GRACEY, Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter
If the walls of the ReardFreed House could talk, there’s no telling what they would say. But members of the Sammamish Heritage Society and the City of Sammamish found the next best thing in mid-August. While demolishing the siding in the kitchen of the 117-year-old house, volunteers found several old artifacts, including a single-shot .50 caliber Civil War-era rifle. “I think it kind of validates the historical significance of the house,” said Mary Moore, project manager with the Heritage Society. “It shows that there were families here and a lot of fun interesting things that were going on in the last century.” Along with the gun, workers found a gin bottle that dated back to the 1930s, several fragmented magazines, an old book, empty pill bottles, a metal piggy bank and painted tray that was used in a child’s high chair. Kevin Teague, who is leading the Reard-Freed project for the city, said it’s unclear how the items reached their resting spot in the home. He noted they may have been hidden there, but it’s likely that they slid down from an upstairs area referred to as the ballroom in early June when the home was moved from 212th Avenue Southeast to its new home at Southeast Eighth Street Park. “There was a cavity between
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