History of the Grange

History of Sammamish Valley Grange

The Sammamish Valley Grange has done a lot for the community over the last 100 years. Below is a list of our the major events we have done over these 100 years.

1909-1920

· An organizers gets a group of interested individuals in the town of Bothell together on January 16, 1909 to form the Sammamish Valley Grange. It is chartered on January 29 of that year.

· The first act is to get Congress to commission a soils survey of the Sammamish Valley.

· This Grange organizes a Grange in Juanita, as well as the North Creek neighborhood.

· The Sammamish Valley Grange organizes fairs in the town of Bothell.

· The Sammamish Valley Grange organized a Cooperative Store, which lasts until 1920.

· Woodinville Grange gets going operates in the hamlet of Woodinville in 1916. It merges with Sammamish Valley Grange in 1926.

1930s-1940s

· This Grange works on gathering signatures in support of an Income Tax initiative and the Blanket Primary Initiative.

· This Grange provides financial assistance to destitute Eastsiders who were ravaged by the Depression.

· Sammamish Valley Grange moves into the Hollywood School House in 1939.

· This Grange helps organize a Grange in Maltby

· Group Health is organized, with the assistance of King County Pomona. One of Sammamish Valley Granges’ members does the legal work to get it going.

· This Grange is the center of social activity in the Woodinville-Hollywood neighborhood, until the 1960s.

1950s-1960s

· This Grange, along with other King County Granges, works to create a Public Utility District in King County.

· This Grange organizes the Sammamish Valley Credit Union (now the Eastside Credit Union)

· This Grange organizes a degree team, which is nationally renown. This team was asked to go to National Convention in Oregon to put on degree work.

· Sammamish Valley Grange leases part of its land to the volunteer Fire Department. Several members of this Grange become volunteer fire fighters.

· We move our meetings from the Hollywood School House into the present location.

1970s-1990s

· We build a produce stand to enable Hmong refugees to sell their locally-grown produce.

· This Grange, with the assistance of Pomona Grange, initiates the process whereby King County changes the way they operate park levies.

· Members of this Grange organize Woodinville Family Month, which becomes the Woodinville Community Roundtable.

· We assist in the fight to prevent the Woodinville-Monroe part of SR 522 from becoming a toll road. We benefits because two subsequent Masters will eventually come from Monroe.

· We fight to preserve the lands at the bottom of the Sammamish Valley.

2000s-Current

· We get a Heritage Garden organized in some of the lands we worked to preserve in 1995.

· Grange members are at the fore of organizing Sammamish Valley Alliance.

Some of our earliest members were quite prominent in the area—both Beardslee Boulevard and Simonds Road are named after past Masters. In addition, a few of our members were State Officers—Wilma Baker was State Lecturer, Gladys Myers was State Flora, and Cheryl Saiz was State Ceres.

This link leads to a biography of Oliver Hudson Kelley, the founder of the Grange.

You can also read about our Centennial celebration in this link from the Woodinville Weekly (scroll down to page 4) and this link in the Grange News (scroll down to page 4).

SAMMAMISH VALLEY GRANGE #286

Working to preserve the Sammamish Valley’s rural heritage—since 1909!

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