The Sammamish Valley Grange (SVG) has been engaged in the local community for more than one-hundred years. (Below is a list of Major Milestones.) For a more detailed history, download “Sammamish Valley Grange Centennial History,” written by Grange Master, Eric Clark, September 2010. (PDF file; 100+ pages.)
MAJOR MILESTONES
1909-1920
- Organizers gather 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, 1909.
- The first act secures Congress to commission a soils survey of the Sammamish Valley.
- SVG helps organize a Grange in Juanita, as well as the North Creek neighborhood.
- SVG organizes fairs in the town of Bothell.
- SVG organized a Cooperative Store, which lasts until 1920.
- Woodinville Grange is created is and operates in the hamlet of Woodinville in 1916. It merges with Sammamish Valley Grange in 1926.
1930’s-1940’s
- SVG works on gathering signatures in support of an Income Tax initiative and the Blanket Primary Initiative.
- SVG provides financial assistance to destitute Eastsiders who were ravaged by the Depression.
- Sammamish Valley Grange moves into the Hollywood School House in 1939.
- SVG helps organize a Grange in Maltby
- Group Health (now Kaiser Permanente) is organized, with the assistance of King County Pomona. A Sammamish Valley Grange member performs the legal work to get it going.
- SVG is the center of social activity in the Woodinville-Hollywood neighborhood, until the 1960s.
1950’s-1960’s
- SVG, along with other King County Granges, work to create a Public Utility District in King County.
- SVG organizes the Sammamish Valley Credit Union (then Eastside Credit Union) .
- SVG organizes a degree team, which is nationally known. This team was asked to go to National Convention in Oregon to put on degree work.
- SVG leases part of its land to the volunteer Fire Department. Several members of this Grange become volunteer fire fighters.
Meetings are moved from the Hollywood School House into the present location.
1970’s-1990’s
- SVG builds a produce stand to enable Hmong refugees to sell their locally-grown produce.
- SVG, with the assistance of Pomona Grange, initiates the process whereby King County changes the way they operate park levies.
- Members of SVG organize Woodinville Family Month, which becomes the Woodinville Community Roundtable.
- SVG assists in the fight to prevent the Woodinville-Monroe portion of SR 522 from becoming a toll road.
- SVG fights to preserve the lands at the bottom of the Sammamish Valley.
2000’s-Current
- A Heritage Garden is organized in some of the lands we worked to preserve in 1995.
- SVG members are at the fore of organizing Sammamish Valley Alliance.
- SVG members, along with members of other Granges, organize the Washington State Grange Small Farm Caucus.
- Some of our earliest members were quite prominent in the area—both Beardslee Boulevard and Simonds Road are named after past SVG 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.
- Rededication of the Grange Heritage Garden, Spring, 2023