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Kent Tidbits
The community of Kent was the home of some of the earliest pioneers in King County and was located 15 miles southeast of Seattle. The settlement was the first community in King County to incorporate outside of Seattle. The community has since developed into an industrial center after originally being an agricultural community.
Many thousands of years ago, the land currently known as Kent was oceanfront property. At a depth of hundreds of feet, Elliott Bay extended a considerable distance down the Duwamish Valley. Sometime long ago in the past the upper 2,000 feet of Mount Rainer plummeted downward, which sent about .7 cubic miles of rock and mud all over the White River Valley. This mudflow stopped close to Auburn in a very large pile of debris.
The course of the White River was changed to the north by the Osceola Mudflow. During the next hundreds of years, the river filled the valley with alluvium and sluiced through the mud bump. By the middle of the 1800s when the first white pioneers arrived, the valley was filled with arable, rich, and fertile land that was ideal for farming.
Native Americans had been fishing, hunting, and gathering berries in the valley and surrounding plateaus for years. Many Indians welcomed the settlers because these newcomers broadened their trading potential. However, as additional pioneers arrived in the valley, the access to the river and the surrounding property by the Indians diminished, and tensions flared.
In order to determine property rights, treaties had been signed with Indian tribes all around Puget Sound by 1855. However, the White River Indians were much more reluctant to be relocated than the Snohomish and Snoqualmie Indian tribes in the north. Some of the local Indian tribes started fighting back beginning in the fall of 1855.
One Indian ambush killed nine people, that included children and women in 1855. Some of, the children escaped and were assisted with their escape to Seattle by local Indians who were sympathetic towards them. This started what became known as the Seattle Indian Wars.
The war was rapidly over within a few months and the Indians retreated, once Troops were brought into the region. A new treaty was written and signed that provided the establishment of the Muckleshoot Indian reservation, which is the only Indian reservation currently located within the boundaries of King County. Collectively, the White River tribes came to be known as the Muckleshoot tribe.
Slowly, pioneers began returning to the valley once the war was over. A man named Thomas Alvord and his wife purchased some land next to the river and set up a successful trading business and ranch in 1859. In 1862 another man named John Langston arrived and established a general store. Also in 1862, a man named James Crow eloped to the valley with his bride Emma, where they later raised 13 children.
Once again, farmers took to the land, and raised many different crops of vegetables that included onions and potatoes. Animal stock was brought in to pasture on untilled land. Much of the valley had been cleared by the late 1870s. There was a new cash crop being cultivated, namely hops, which is a bitter plant in the hemp family that is used to flavor beer.
This cash crop took the valley by storm. Inexpensive to produce, hops commanded a high price on the market as the result of a blight in Europe. All throughout the valley, hop kilns and hop farms blossomed. Many farmers were made wealthy men. Until 1891, when aphids destroyed most of the hop crops, hops were king for ten years. However, hops were what transformed the transportation routes in the valley.
In the early 1800s the first hop crop was picked and farmers needed some way to get it to market. The most reliable method of transportation to and from Seattle was the river. Steamboats with flat bottoms soon became popular. However, it wasnt long before bridges spanned the river and roads were constructed.
Following a considerable amount of legal wrangling, the railroad was brought into service, although somewhat poorly. The Northern Pacific shut it down again after riders from King County complained. It reopened and then the railroad was threatened with the revocation of its land grant. When Northern Pacific relocated its terminus to Seattle from Tacoma in 1887, Orphan Road became a reliable means of transportation in the valley.
The first plat was filed in 1888, by two people named Ida Guiberson and John Alexander. The year 1890 brought the incorporation of Kent as a town. Kent was booming, although in 1891 the failure of the hop industry changed that. Then, things got even worse by the economic collapse across the country in 1893. Almost overnight wealthy farmers practically became paupers.
Kent had social organizations, newspapers, stores, churches, schools, and banks by the early 1900s. all these were necessary for a growing community. The interurban rail service arrived in the community in 1902. In 1906, Farmers got a break when a major flood diverted the White River southwest through Pierce County. Prior to this, the White River merged with the Green River close to Auburn, and both rivers caused widespread flooding each year.
First generation Japanese farmers were able to lease farmland from American citizens. These Japanese farmers in the Kent Valley supplied over 70% of the vegetables and fruit for Western Washington and more than half of the fresh milk that was consumed in Seattle.
Kent suffered, but eventually overcame the Great Depression. The community hosted a lettuce festival in 1934 that attracted over 25,000 people. However, the community was changed significantly by WW II. Japanese Americans were forced to move into internment camps.
Since the 1920s, an objective of the valley residents had been to dam the Green River high up in the mountains. In 1950, Congress adopted a plan to build a storage dam at Eagle Gorge.
The Boeing Aerospace Center was the first major industry to relocate to Kent in 1965. Other industries that followed were primarily manufacturing factories or warehouses. However, by the 1980s, high tech companies began to dominate the area.
Kent had transformed from an agriculture community into an industrial center in only a few years. Kent has been able to spend a considerable amount of money on their park system, which has made it one of the largest in the county. The community is also a regional leader in the arts and education.
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