North Bend was originally settled by the Snoqualmie, the “Moon People”. In the 1800s the whites came, prospered and by their numbers and culture pushed the natives out of the valley. They developed an economy based on hop farming, timber and dairy production. Then the railroad came to transport the product of their labor and it too helped to change the economic and human landscape of the valley by bringing tourists. The city was originally called Snoqualmie and then Mountain Valley and finally was incorporated in 1909 as North Bend after its location on a bend in the Snoqualmie River.

The Sammamish River Valley is filled with water, green hills and sky and is tucked into the foothills of the Cascade Mountains just east of Lake Washington 16 miles from Seattle. For hundreds of years the Sammamish People lived in the valley subsisting off of the land and residing at the mouth of what they called the Squak River. But in the mid 1800s an explosion of white immigrants, bringing their own culture and industry, overpowered them. Called Salmonberg, then Melrose, the town’s first postmaster, Luke McRedmond, officially recorded the city’s name as Redmond. Logging and timber products operations created a rollicking town with a stagecoach office, saloons and hotels, blacksmiths and eateries and attracted the railroad in 1888. As logging operations moved eastward, dairy farms, chicken ranches, and truck farms sprang up. Redmond was eventually “discovered” and within 30 years transitioned from a rural farm town, to a bedroom community and finally to a complete commercial and residential city on its own.