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 in 2010 by Grange Master, Eric Clark. (PDF file; 100+ pages.)
MAJOR MILESTONES
1909-1920
- Organizers gather a group of interested individuals in the town of Bothell 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 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 both an Income Tax and Blanket Primary Initiatives.
- 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, works 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 Hall 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 forefront 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