Name Jeremiah Borst | Died 1890 | |
Jeremiah (syrus) Borst (1830–1890) was the first permanent white settler in the region and is considered to be the father of the Snoqualmie Valley community.
Born in 1830 and raised in Tioga County, New York, Borst traveled west by ox team in 1850 to seek gold in California. He found gold and used it to rent a farm near Sacramento. By 1858, he had made $8,000 from raising barley, and moved north to Seattle.
In the spring of 1858, Jeremiah Borst was on his way to Eastern Washington over the Cedar River trail, decided that the Valley was too good to pass up. He settled down in what was left of Fort Alden, a blockhouse that had been abandoned the previous year. Jeremiah raised hogs and apples and carried the goods for sale back to Seattle. He owned land in what is now Snoqualmie and North Bend.
In 1865, Borst accompanied Seattle pioneer Arthur Denny, William Perkins and a Snoqualmie native guide visited the pass to make a plan to widen the trail to a wagon road. He became one of the first non-Native American to travel over what is now Snoqualmie Pass. In 1868, Borst took charge of building the first road through the pass.
In 1875, the first small steamboats began bringing supplies up the Snoqualmie River. The Boham Brothers sold their claims to Jeremiah Borst. Borst hired the firm of Gordon & Dockery to harvest the timber. Sometime in the mid-1880s, Borst and his wife, Kate, moved to Fall City. He hired B.C. Majors to survey and plat the town of Fall City with the anticipation of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern coming through the property. The plat was recorded in 1887 but, to Borst's disappointment, the railroad missed the town by a mile when the tracks finally arrived in 1889.