In this, the first of a two-part series, Sammamish Heritage Society’s Phil Dougherty takes a wander back through the Sammamish Plateau of the 1960s – a place very different from the Plateau we all know today.

No, there wasn’t a Sammamish in the 1960s, and wouldn’t be for decades yet.

But by the ‘60s there had been settlement for 80 years in what would become Sammamish, and by this time the Plateau had a history, first as a logger’s paradise, then as a resort paradise.

However, in the 1960s many of the resorts would disappear and the Plateau would see the first hints of urbanization, which would eventually lead to the Sammamish we now know half a century later.

In 1960 what little development there was on the Plateau were ranches, farms, summer homes, and the resorts. The Plateau’s population was perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 people. But change was edging in from the south. The Sunny Hills Development was under construction as the decade began, first as a motley collection of dirt roads (loved by teenagers for dirt driving and parking) and soon followed by streets and houses.

If you wanted to get there from Issaquah, you took Vaughn’s Hill Road (now SE Issaquah-Fall City Road) up from East Lake Sammamish Road. SE 43rd Way, today’s primary southern access to the Plateau, wasn’t there in the ‘60s.

Sunny Hills was the first development in Sammamish, but it didn’t really resemble today’s new developments. The lots were larger and the houses were smaller than most new houses built here today.

Jim Dilorenzo moved to SE 32nd Street in the Sunny Hills Development early in 1965 and quips “I had to pay an outrageous price for one and a quarter acres — $3,600. The [cost to build the] house was $15,700; it was a rambler. It came out to about $11 a square foot.” (In 2010 dollars that equates to about $25,000 for the lot and $107,000 for the house).

Meanwhile, to handle the influx of families moving into the area, Sunny Hills Elementary, the first modern school on the Plateau, was built in 1962.

Despite the development, Sunny Hills was still far more rural than it is today, with nearby swamps and woods and all kinds of trails for bike riders. Since there were more woods and less people, there was more wildlife. This included chipmunks, which would sometimes visit Dilorenzo’s home for a snack. “We would hold our hand out the rec room window and shake our cup of cracked wheat, and they would come up to our cup and eat right out of it,” recalled Dilorenzo’s daughter Barbara Brueske.

Northeast of Sunny Hills, the southwestern edge of Beaver Lake featured Andy’s Beaver Lake Resort, which had flourished since the 1930s.

But 1960 was its last year. Owner Dick Anderson sold the resort, and its small brown lodge burned down soon after. In the 1960s, the site was a Catholic Youth Organization camp called Camp Cabrini. Farther to the west, the Pine Lake Resort — more commonly called Frenchy’s, in a nod to Reiff French, who ran the resort from 1932 to 1957 — lasted longer into the 1960s. And even in its final season it was still going strong, attracting happy swimmers who raced against swimmers from other area lakes.

When Frenchy’s closed after the 1966 season, King County bought the site, and by the end of 1969 had largely transformed it into Pine Lake Park, albeit a somewhat different version of the park we know today.

About a quarter mile south of the entrance to Frenchy’s on 228th SE stood a grocery store. It started the ‘60s as Braden’s, but by the mid-1960s was Stafford’s. About 1968 Joe Sadlier bought the place and renamed it Sadlier’s. The store was a popular place that became even more popular once Sadlier bought it, maybe because Sadlier added a meat market to the store (in the early ‘70s) or maybe because of Sadlier himself, a gregarious man who during the Christmas season might invite some of his better customers into his store’s back room for a festive holiday drink. But he was no pushover — he banned at least one smart-mouthed teenager from his store after she mouthed off to him.

Among Sadlier’s customers was an older couple who often rode their horses along the Plateau’s roads, accompanied by a sandy brown terrier riding its own horse.

“I had to do a double take when I first saw it,” said Dilorenzo. “The dog just stood up on that horse. I’ve got to tell you, it was a strange looking sight.”

Others remember the equestrian dog too; actually, it seems to have left quite an impression. And if the dog ever visited Sadlier’s, there was a hitching post out front for him to tie up his horse.

Farther to the north on 228th, another Plateau icon disappeared in the 1960s – the Sween (pronounced “Swinn”) Poultry Farm. In operation since 1914 and located just southwest of today’s intersection of SE 4th Street and 228th Avenue SE, the farm had been a steadily growing enterprise that during the ‘50s had processed as many as half a million fryer chickens a year in one of the largest such operations in the state. But owner Bill Sween retired in 1965, closed down his operations, and parceled the land out.

But even as some old icons disappeared during the ‘60s, new ones arose. One was the High Lonesome Ranch, located just east of 244th Avenue NE, about a quarter mile south of NE 8th Street. In 1960 Chris Klineburger bought the 50 acres that became the ranch, and within a year or so had built a “frontier town” to provide people with an authentic Western experience. There was a saloon there, as well as a bunkhouse, a working blacksmith shop, and horse rentals, where people just could rent a horse and explore the countryside.

And there was plenty to explore. In 1965 Klineburger established the High Lonesome Riders club, and its members often took long horseback rides through the wooded Valhalla that was then the Plateau. In the 1960s, 228th Avenue NE ended at the intersection of Inglewood Hill Road, but that wasn’t a problem for the riders who were looking to go north through the area where Sahalee Way is today.

Explains Klineburger, “There was a dirt road that went up the hill [north from Inglewood Hill Road] to an old boy scout camp. There was nothing left of the camp but a clearing. There was a horse trail from the camp that dropped down to the Redmond-Fall City Road — it might have been an old logging road. We’d ride down that road to the Redmond-Fall City Road and ride into Redmond that way. We didn’t like taking 244th [then the northern access route to the Plateau] because we had to ride on the [main] road all the way.”

Continued next week…