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Woodinville Tidbits
Woodinville, Washington is a rapidly growing and affluent suburb of Seattle that is located in King County about 20 miles northeast of downtown Seattle. In 2010, the population of Woodinville was 10,938 people. In 1872, Woodinville was named after the first non-native family that settled there. Woodinville was established as rural community and remained that way for the majority of the next 100 years. In the late 1970's, urbanization arrived in Woodinville and the year 1993 brought the incorporation of Woodinville as a city.
The first people to inhabit the Sammamish River area were native Indians. A subgroup of the Duwamish tribe, who were known as the willow people, was the tribe that resided next to the river. They lived off of fish from the lakes and river and supplemented their diet with berries, Wapato bulbs, and wildlife.
In 1856, some of the willow people joined native Indian attack on the settlement of Seattle. However, members of the tribe were later moved to the Port Madison Reservation and Fort Kitsap. The descendants of this tribe resided on the Tulalip and Suquamish Indian reservations.
White pioneers started to edge east next to the Sammamish River during the early 1870's. At the time the river was called Squak Slough. A man named Ira Woodin, along with his wife Susan lived there as well. In 1871, with their daughters named Mary and Helen, the family relocated to what is currently known as Woodinville from Seattle. They became the first white pioneers to settle in the area.
The Woodin family constructed a home on some 160 acres that was located on what is currently known as NE Woodinville Drive. By 1886, the population of Woodinville was some 60 people as loggers and homesteaders gradually continued to relocate there. Between 1878 and 1883, the Woodin home served as the first school. Until 1880, it also served as the first post office, a doctors office, and the first church.
Between late 1887 and early 1888, the Lake Shore, Eastern, and Seattle Railroad arrived in Woodinville. This made travel through the slough not necessarily required, although steamboats continued to ride the river into the early 1900's. In 1904, the boats no longer stopped in Woodinville, although until 1916, steamboat traffic continued to Bothell, after the level of Lake Washington was lowered almost nine feet because of the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
The commercial district expanded north of the slough and started edging eastward. Several stores and hotels were constructed close to the slough, and the community had a small factory for school desks, a blacksmith shop, a manufacturer of tiles and bricks, a feed store, two shingle mills, two sawmills, and four hotels by 1909. In 1929, the approximate population of Woodinville was 780 people, as a pleasant, rural community had emerged.
Hollywood, which is currently a neighborhood of Woodinville, was initially called Derby, and had started out as a small logging community. In 1911, the name was changed to Hollywood.
In 1916, the steamboats quit traveling on the river and other uses were found for Squak Slough, which in the early 1900's, was known as the Sammamish River or Sammamish Slough, by boaters.
During the 1950's, growth started advancing into Woodinville. Horse ranches were established. During this period, many of the early settlers buildings, such as the home of the Woodin family home were torn down, and in the 1960s even more were torn down. However, during the early 1970's, Woodinville was still more rural than urban, with only one grocery store, one drugstore, and one newly installed stoplight.
Woodinville started expanding more rapidly during the late 1970's. Subdivisions replaced the horse ranches, and during the 1980's this growth accelerated. The commercial district Woodinville also expanded rapidly east and north. In 1986, the Woodinville Town Center was established and video stores and fast food restaurants were built. With the rural community now becoming a suburban community, it was time for Woodinville to consider incorporation.
During the 1970's, there was talk of incorporating Woodinville, although during this decade, there were more serious efforts made to establish a new county from the eastern half of King County, with the county seat being in Woodinville.
In 1985 the efforts to Incorporate became more serious when the community of Bothell wanted to annex territory that the majority of people considered to be a portion of Woodinville. The King County advisory committee suggested that a 256 bed jail be constructed close to Cottage lake, less than one year later. This suddenly made incorporation much more attractive, because the incorporation of Woodinville would prevent King County from constructing a jail in the community. In 1993, Woodinville was officially incorporated as a city.
These days, Woodinville is an upscale suburb of Seattle that has a continually increasing population, which between 2000 and 2010, had increased by 19%, with a population of some 10,938 people. However, since it was incorporated, the total area of the community remained at 5.7 square miles. Woodinville is an affluent community that, in 2009, had an estimated median income for a household of $86,925, compared to $56,548 for the state of Washington and $67,468 for King County. The value of homes in Woodinville are also above the state and county and state norm, although they havent escaped from the recent downtown in the housing marked
