Earlier in the Month of June, King County decided to knock down a few building on a couple pieces of property. The demolition orders had been signed back around Valentine's Day and around Memorial Day, work began. So what you say, the county knocks down stuff all the time. This may be true, in this case the county dropped the ball. The structures on one property consisted of a house and small lumber operation, interesting and reminiscent the early to middle parts of the twentieth century in the upper Snoqualmie Valley. The other property consisted of a farmhouse, barn and couple out buildings. This property too was reminiscent of bygone era of our valley and our county. Both properties had been within the last couple years purchased by the county to add to the Three Folks Nature Area. Which in and of itself was a great thing for us all.
Here's where the tragedy occurs, the county in all its wisdom and without public discourse leveled the buildings and went about returning the land to its natural state.
For the second property (the farm) this was particularly sad and senseless. First both the county and state want to preserve barns, especially historic or relevant barns. This barn was definitely old enough and add to that it was one of the few barns left above the Falls in the Snoqualmie River Watershed, so it was relevant as well. The farm dates to at least 1900, as that was when the farmhouse was constructed. The barn dates to at least 1940, and probably much earlier. Around the property there are many conifers and native plants. There also were fruit trees, holly bushes and mature rhododendrons, things that had been planted by the families that owned the farm down through the years. This landscape had over time become the nature landscape of the area.
The county apparently didn't consider this, instead considered only the liabilities associated with the land and builds and decided to do the easy and senseless thing, bulldoze it all.
I say senseless because maybe the parks folks should leave their Seattle offices once in a while to get an idea of what they actual have or in this case had, a living relic of the way Eastern King County once appeared. Small family farms trying to make a living. This property pre-dates the first east-west highway through region amongst other things. Its longevity made it worth saving, now the future generations in this part of the world can only look upon pictures of what once was, instead of being able to go and see it. The blood is on their hands, they missed an opportunity to create or do something really special.
Its been nearly a month and it still hurts and now when I drive past the old farm, all I see is was isn't there, gone is the farm and piece of the old soul of the valley.
It's my birthday, so a picture of me and the greatest present I could ever hope for, even if it's a few days late.
Well, America's Finest Blog has been away for bit.
Sorry.
Tonight America's Finest Blog returns with a tale of unforeseen consequences, the story of the low flush toilet. Once upon a time a toilet held 3.5 gallons of flushing power, the unenlightened people of earth flushed lots of water down the drain, they were happy and the drains were happy too (more on that later). Then came the 1990's, guilt consumed the enlightened peoples of the world and said, change must come. It indeed came, not in the form of catchy sayings like, "If it is yellow then let it mellow, if it is brown flush it down." Instead in the idea that a toilet should use less water. The results a lot of backed up toilets. That lead to boom times for plunger manufactures, lots of need for engineers to create the perfect low flow toilet and a federal law that said you're going to like your crappy new toilet because we've banded you old toilet, oh and we suggest you buy a plunger. Luckily, instead of engineering better bridges and electric cars our engineers created low flow toilets that have to some degree flushed our memories of high flow toilets down an improved drain. In fact the reduced flow toilets have saved cities like San Francisco 20 million gallons of water a year. Super duper right? Well, yes...
Most sewer systems across our fair land and other lands not so fair, were designed to accommodate high flow water systems. Apparently the sewer loves waste. The new low flow toilets and shower heads (remember the full flow shower head?) have left the sewers full of sludge, as there isn't enough water to wash it all down. Makes me happy to be on a septic system...
