Picturesque project moving along

Published 12:59 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE VALLEY – Although the interpretive center at the Meadowbrook Farm is still under construction, the view from the farm that it will capture is always complete.

From a window facing the northeast, a perfectly framed Mount Si fills the view. To the southwest, Rattlesnake Ridge is the main focal point. Out another window facing north, an unobstructed view of the farm’s prairie is backed by the trees on the hills of the Snoqualmie Tree Farm.

“You can stand here and get a sense of what is was like thousands of years ago,” said Meadowbrook Farm Preservation Association chair Mary Norton.

Eventually Norton hopes the interpretive center can give the same feeling to the residents and visitors of the Valley. The farm, which stretches over 462 acres between Snoqualmie and North Bend, is a historic area in the Valley that was used as a hunting ground by the Snoqualmie Tribe and as a hop farm by the early pioneers.

It changed hands a few times through the years but was eventually preserved under an inter-local agreement between North Bend and Snoqualmie in 1995.

A vast majority of the park is preserved for passive use by visitors, but a small interpretive center is slated to open near the North Bend end of the farm off Boalch Avenue. Beset by delays ever since it broke ground in late 2001, the interpretive center really started to take shape late last fall. The structure will be a mostly open-space building modeled after the log homes that Northwest Native Americans used as multi-family dwellings.

Norton hopes that other projects, such as a fire pit and a garden containing historic flora to the Valley, can be added later.

For the complete story, pick up a copy of this weeks Valley Record