Monroe is situated at the beginning of the Cascade foothills, 32 miles Northeast of Seattle along Highway 2 as it meanders upward into the mountains reaching for Stevens Pass. Indigenous people lived and hunted here for hundreds of years before the whites came to the Monroe area. As the settlers’ numbers multiplied in the valley, the Indians diminished and by the 1870’s the primary human activity had become logging and farming rather than hunting and gathering. A state corrections facility was built, Carnation Milk established a farm and plant and support businesses grew up to service them and their workers. After transportation links to Everett and Seattle were finished, growth began in earnest and today Monroe is a burgeoning community attracting new residents with economic opportunity.

Mountlake Terrace is a community of mountain views, beautiful parks, and quiet residential neighborhoods located 13 miles north of Seattle. Prior to the coming of the whites, the area was a heavily forested region used infrequently as a hunting ground by the Snohomish. The land was cleared by the arrival of the settlers who brought logging, farming, and mink, chinchilla and poultry ranches. Known in the early 1900’s as Alderwood Manor, Seattleites found it a rural refuge away from the action of the city. Growth accelerated after World War II and the residential community of Mountlake Terrace began with the speculative construction of affordable homes for returning WWII veterans. Within ten years the city had grown to 5,000 and was incorporated in 1954.