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Issaquah History Museums 2006-34-1Issaquah Oral Interview with Ruth Kees

September 29, 2006

Narrator: Ruth KeesDate: September 29, 2006Interviewed By: Maria McLeodPlace: Home of Ruth Kees on Tiger Mountain

RUTH KEES: OK, we’re situated in an area where the old joke is “How did Squak get its name?”

MARIA MCLEOD: Oh, yeah. I think I’ve heard this, huh? Tell me the joke.

RK: “You would too, if you had Tiger Mountain on one side and Cougar Mountain on the other!”

MM: I like that joke.

RK: But we are just at the foothills, and Lake Sammamish is to the north. And Lake Sammamish receives some, oh, 79 percent of its recharge from this valley, which makes it very important.

MM: Let me say first who I’m interviewing. I’m interviewing Ruth Kees, and it’s September 29 [2006], and I’m at her house on Tiger Mountain. And this is Maria McLeod, oral historian. And Ruth knows a lot about the environment.

So you were saying that the recharge to Lake Sammamish all comes from this area.

RK: It doesn’t all come from it, because it receives some from Redmond and from the [Issaquah] Highlands area. But the Highlands is considered part of this area, too. So the main recharge area for Lake Sammamish is in this area. And it provides also the aquifers and wells, from which people get their water in this area.

We do not get the water from Cedar River, except some of Bellevue does, of course. And some of the outlying areas do receive water from the Cedar River, which goes through Seattle.

MM: Ruth, can you tell me some personal information about yourself? Your name is Ruth Kees. What is your maiden name?

RK: My maiden name was Moore.

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September 29, 2006

MM: And when were you born and where?

RK: I was born September 30, 1923 in Beatrice, Nebraska, which is a small town south of Lincoln, Nebraska and north of the Kansas-Nebraska border. And near the stone that has set – uh – it’s the marker stone from which all – gosh, I can’t think of the word right now – from which all surveys have been started, you know, marking off the survey markers. And that stone is just south and east of Beatrice.

MM: How interesting. Who were your parents and where were they from originally?

RK: My parents were born in Beatrice, Nebraska, believe it or not. Or outside. Not Beatrice itself but on a little farm south of Beatrice. And of my grandparents, three of them came from Germany in the big migration that occurred about the turn of the century [into the twentieth century]. It’s a German community.

And my husband’s parents, grandparents, also arrived in that wave of immigration. And they started the Kees Manufacturing Company, which now is owned by a Chicago outfit. But it was in business many, many years and made windmills. And you’ll probably see some windmills that are made by the Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company with bent-up parts that were made in the Kees Manufacturing Company.

MM: So they have some environmentalist roots. They want to harness air power, so they were harnessing air power a long time ago.

RK: You betcha, for pumping water.

MM: That’s really great. And what were your parents’ names?

RK: My father’s name was Paul William Moore. And my mother was Myrtle E. Schultz S-C-H-U-L-T-Z.

MM: That’s a real German name, Myrtle E. Schultz. So tell me about growing up where you grew up in Beatrice, Nebraska.

RK: Beatrice [Bee-A-tris]. Just the way Seattle is not See-tul, it’s Seattle.

MM: I’m putting the wrong emphasis. Beatrice. I have an aunt name Bea, and it’s Beatrice [BEE-uh-tris]. Beatrice is different, I’ll have to separate them in my mind.


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September 29, 2006

RK: Beatrice was named after [Julia] Beatrice Kinney, who was the first white woman born [west] of the Missouri River. 1

MM: Really? Now, that’s something interesting by itself.

RK: So that’s how Beatrice came into being. I grew up on a little farm south of Beatrice. And we – my dad was, even back then when I think [back], he was way ahead of everybody as far as trying to observe the ecology of the area.

And he was very knowledgeable about all the – He kept bees. And, of course, we had a cow and a horse and goats and pigs and a cat and a dog. And whenever a bird fell out of a tree, we nourished it back to health until it flew away.

And then we also – Some doves will tame down, and we had one dove that just loved my mother and would follow her all around the kitchens and wherever she went. And I saw her once sweep the bird out of the way with her broom, because he was getting in the way all the time and following her around. So, I’ve had a background in empathy.

When school was out – I did go to a public school; we happened to be within the confines of a big public school. It wasn’t a country schoolhouse. But after school was out, I had to go home and do my chores. And my job was to pump the water so Mom could do the washing.

We lived in a house with no electricity. And we had coal oil lamps and big Monarch range. We heated with the Monarch range, which Mom cooked on, of course, and a big base burner.

And some of the bedrooms – it did have three bedrooms in the house, but the windows in the wintertime would have a half-inch of ice on them from the sweat that had congealed and turned into ice. They weren’t cold. When Mom put us to bed, we did not move.

MM: Did you have brothers and sisters?

RK: I had two older brothers and one older sister. I was the baby of the family.

MM: Did you share a bed with your sister?

1 Julia Beatrice Kinney was the 17-year-old daughter of Judge John F Kinney, a member of the Nebraska Association that founded Beatrice, Nebraska.


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RK: I shared a bed with my sister. And the brothers, of course, shared a bed. And Mom and Dad had the third bedroom.

MM: I bet you were thankful for your sister’s warmth in Nebraska.

RK: No, you know, [chuckles] that would have put too much air space between us! Mom would tuck us in at nighttime so that the covers were pushed down around us. We heated sadirons on the stove in order to warm, and would wrap them up in towels and take them to bed to warm up a spot, so it wasn’t too icy-cold.

MM: Like an old-fashioned bed warmer.

RK: In the wintertime, Mom would hang the sheets – we would have the kitchen just festooned with drying clothes. And if she couldn’t hang – sometimes if it were sun-shining, she would hang them outside. But she’d have to be very careful when she folded them up and took them off the lines, because they’d crack.

MM: She had frozen sheets out there. I thought this was a myth. I’ve heard that you can hang clothes on a clothesline when they’re still wet and they freeze. How does that work that they dry?

RK: Well, you know, you have to be careful when you put foods in the freezer that they are well covered up, or else they do dry out. There is a freeze-drying method. It’s just that when you freeze the water out of something, it kind of leaves what it’s in.

MM: It’s amazing. Tell me more about how your parents instilled environmental values in you. And are you the only child to carry these values, or do your siblings also do environmental work?

RK: My siblings were more practical people. My oldest brother became a carpenter. No, really, the other people did not have the leanings that I had.

And my sis just stayed back in Beatrice. And she had some environmental leanings, and we did contribute – there was an Oregon Trail marker on – Dad had an 80-acre piece of farmland, right on the Kansas-Nebraska border. And the society for the Oregon Trail had to have – wanted to have – a piece of property to put that marker on, which was just sitting there in the middle of a dirt road.


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So she and I – I was still a co-owner of that property – contributed that piece of land to – not the whole piece but about … oh … a block, in order to make a park there.

MM: Oh, that’s really wonderful. So what are some of the things earlier in your life, even before college, when you were a kid, what were some of the ways that you were becoming environmentally aware and environmentally active?

RK: Dad would never kill a rattlesnake. We had rattlesnakes back there, but he would never kill a snake because they ate mice and rats. And he showed us where the snakes lived. And they do live kind of in colonies. And he said they were dangerous and to be careful, or stay away from it. So actually, he kind of put it back in our own hands to take care of things.

And, of course, we had – uh – whenever there was a – we raised rabbits. And you had to feed these things. And we – back in those days, too, you had to shock your wheat and stack it up in little piles so it could be picked up and threshed. So we were embroiled in all those ecological things anyway.

And whenever we had a new calf born, we got to take care of it for a little bit. Generally – And Mom would start her chickens. We had about one chicken a week. So Dad would buy the chickens – even back then you could buy chickens, in boxes. And in order to get – this was during the month of February, so they’d be big enough in the summertime. So she would make a pen behind the Monarch range and put the chickens there.

So we had plenty of animals to play with. And instead of playing with dolls, we would put a chicken in our doll buggy. We always had a tame chicken. Somehow we tamed things down all the time.

And birds would fall out of their nests. And we had a mockingbird that we kept on the porch. Mom had him for about twelve years.

MM: Oh, really? And did your mockingbird talk? Sometimes they talk, don’t they?

RK: They don’t talk, they just sing a lot of different tunes.

MM: Shows how much I know about mockingbirds. You know, you came of age and you were coming up – let’s see, if you born in [19]23 – at a time when the country was really transitioning from a more agricultural past to the Industrial Revolution. And I wondered, were there things about industry and progress that


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you saw going against your own environmental concerns? And what those things were.

RK: Where I was, it wasn’t impactive. In fact, Beatrice had 10,000 people then and it has only about 11,[000] or 12,[000] now. It hasn’t grown. The farmland is still there. So I did not get to observe it.

We did have the Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company, and the Storecraft’s and the Keyes Manufacturing Company. But they were all in the old town. And I did not observe any radical changes in particular until I started going back about 1900s, early 1900s. Then Storecraft had expanded and things were getting to be a little bit more commercialized.

MM: Tell me about attending the University of Nebraska. What did you study there?

RK: I studied art. I was going to be an artist. And we had – uh – I had – even now, I can give you a lot of the muscles in the body and how they are articulated, because I had an art teacher who believed that we had to know the basics.

And so she hired live models to model before us. And that way, you got to know what muscle did what, and how it looked in different positions.

MM: So you were doing life drawing in like 1943 or thereabouts?

RK: I was there in 19 – uh – let’s see … I graduated in 1941, in the spring. And in the fall, I attended the University of Nebraska. And that was during the time when World War II started and the fellows just melted out – that age group was the age group they wanted – and all the men just melted away.

So next spring when school was out and Dempster Mill was hiring, I went to work as a government inspector of war materiel. I worked for the government and, in effect, I was in the Army.

MM: What was it called? You were an inspector?

RK: I was inspector of ordinance materiel. And it was – in essence, right then, it was the 90-milimeter shell, which was about 20 inches – the projectile of the – of a bigger shell. It was the part that carried the explosives, and when it exploded, it would go into shrapnel.


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MM: Oh, is that like – I might be wrong, but I’m kind of envisioning almost like a gun that’s a little more like a cannon that’s shooting a very, very large shell? Is that right?

RK: The projectile is at the end. And then you have a large cartridge behind it, which has to explode to project the projectile. [laughing]

MM: Right, right. So that’s interesting. Here you were, studying art at the University of Nebraska, doing life drawing, and then you end up working as an ordinance inspector looking at ammunition.

RK: Of ordinance materiel.

MM: So why did you take that job? What interested you in that job? You just wanted to support the war effort or …?

RK: I was supporting the war effort. And I could shut that whole machine shop down, and I did one night. I was working on the graveyard shift, and they started trying to see if they could send some shells through that were borderline. And I just shut the whole shop down!

And they got my boss, who was a colonel or something, down to the shop and he said I did right, and he made them go over the whole work and re-inspect everything before I let it go.

MM: That’s really amazing. How did you end up – So you had a position, almost a managerial position. As an inspector, you could make those decisions. How did you – you didn’t have to work up the ranks to get there, they just accepted you? Is it because you had a university degree or something? Or did you have to take a special test to get that position?

RK: I don’t remember anymore!

MM: Well, it’s kind of impressive to me, I have to say. It’s impressive, it really is.

RK: I think they took me because I’d had a little college behind me. And it illustrated that I – Now, I was hired along with five other ladies, and they were all older than I. And I think they all kind of resented the fact.

MM: Were you working with mostly women? Were the people putting the shells together women?


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RK: At first there were a few men, and a few men did remain. But it turned out women were running the big machinery and everything. The whole war effort was in full swing then. Not just the way [chuckles] we’re piddling away our resources now, but everything was just geared for the world war.

We had rationing. And you had to watch, because you only got so much meat. Only certain kinds of meat.

Then when armistice was signed, the day the war stopped, it just stopped. And everybody went back to what they were doing before.

MM: How did you and others, particularly women, experience that transition? Because women who hadn’t done that kind of work before were suddenly realizing they could do that kind of work. So how do you remember the after-effects of that?

RK: Well, I was so concerned with my own being, I guess, that I really didn’t observe. Mom went back to being a housewife. [Tape recorder turned off]

MM: OK, thank you.

RK: So, we’re at the end of World War II.

MM: Exactly. We’re at the end of World War II.

RK: I had no problem of finding work after World War II.

MM: What did you do after World War II?

RK: I went to work for the doctor that had been saying that he was going to hire me all these years. So I went to work for him and worked for seven years as – You know, back then, doctors still traveled around the country and they went to different houses. And I gave his shots and, you know, did all that other stuff.

MM: He taught you all the medical –

RK: He taught me medical-type things. And I’d had the background of all these drawing classes, too, and I had a pretty good idea what the human body was like.

But going back to the very beginning, I was – Have you ever heard of Robert Taylor? A big movie actor.


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MM: Oh, yeah.

RK: During the time of Clark Gable and all those other big – His father was a doctor in Beatrice, and he delivered me. In fact, he delivered all four of us. At home. We weren’t in the hospital, we were delivered at home.

And Dr. Brugh delivered me, and he’s the father of Arlington Spangler Brugh, which was the real name of Robert Taylor.

MM: Really? [laughing] I guess you can’t get very far with a name like Arlington Spangler Brugh! I guess as actor, you needed a name like Robert Taylor.

RK: Right. He was a handsome guy.

MM: So did you work with his dad? Is that the man you worked with, the man who delivered you?

RK: No, I worked for a different doctor. I don’t know – Mom never had him after she had her kids. And for some reason, Dr. Wildhaber became our doctor. So I worked for him for seven years.

But right after World War II, my sister worked for the booster station, you know. Five different pipelines run through Beatrice, putting oil and, you know, the gasoline pipelines. And she – north of town, there’s a booster station – she worked there.

And she drove past the airport all the time. And so she stopped in one night and they gave her a ride. And she started flying lessons.

MM: And around what time was this?

RK: That was the end of 1945.

MM: After the war?

RK: After the war. And mostly [19]46. She got me to go out with her and I got hooked, too.

MM: Did you learn how to fly?


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RK: So I had my license before she did, my flying license. And the money I’d saved up to go back to college, I spent – we went together and bought an airplane! [chuckles]

MM: You’re kidding me!

RK: No!

MM: What kind of airplane?

RK: Piper PA-12, which was a three-seat Super Cruiser.

MM: A Viper? Say that again.

RK: Piper P-I-P-E-R.

MM: And how many seats are on that plane?

RK: Three.

MM: And you called it a Super Cruiser?

RK: It was a Super Cruiser.

MM: And where did you fly to?

RK: All over. It was our magic carpet. We hadn’t gone traveling very much and boy, we just took off like big birds.

MM: Really!

RK: And … well, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

MM: Yeah, but you and your sister – You were both single at the time, I take it?

RK: Right.

MM: Boy, you know, it’s so funny. I just have to comment on this. Because I grew up, and I’ve studied women’s history, and I knew about women being very active during the war effort and the kind of work they did. But the more women I talk to, the more I realize that women were doing a lot of things at that time. That they didn’t all just go home and become housewives.


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RK: Well, if you lived on a farm, my goodness, you were doing a heck of a lot of work, because women were expected to do that.

And the kids – like I said, we had to learn how to shock. We didn’t hoe corn. We did the hoeing by hand so that we wouldn’t hurt the cornstalks. And we –

MM: So you were strong.

RK: And it was our job also to go get the – turn the chickens out in the morning, and turn them back at night, and gather the eggs and do a lot of the extraneous feeding of these animals, too.

MM: Did you feel really confident at the time? And did you ever feel intimidated by anything?

RK: No. It was expected.

MM: And what about flying in an airplane? Were you intimidated at first?

RK: A little bit. But then, it wasn’t bad at all. Back then, too, to get your license, you had to learn to do a loop and – uh – an out – well, I don’t know what they call them now. But anyway, you had to be able to do a few tricks in a plane.

MM: Did you have to fly upside-down?

RK: Yeah. And now they don’t require that. But I … [Some discussion, not transcribed, regarding whether she needed to take a break or several breaks, and whether the interviewer should come back another day.] You’re sitting in Grandfather Kees’s chair.

MM: I am? Really? Are these chairs both from his house?

RK: Right. This is the “mama” chair. It’s a rocker. And the little table goes with it, too. It has the barleycorn legs on it.

MM: Yeah, they’re really beautiful pieces. Your grandfather, was he also a kind of environmentalist, too? I read on one –

RK: I never knew him.


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MM: You never knew him. I read on one of your plaques – and they could have had the story wrong – but on one of your awards, I thought I read that both your father and your grandfather had influenced your interest in environmental issues.

RK: No, that was the Moore side of the family. He died when he was – uh – when my father was about eleven years old. People didn’t live too long back then sometimes.

Anyway, in 1948, there – well, I’ll give you the history. I met my husband. He wanted to fly someplace, and we had the only airplane to take someone somewhere. [Tape recorder turned off]

MM: Let’s turn this back on. OK, so we were in I think [19]48 and you were meeting your husband. And you were going to tell me about that. He needed a flight somewhere, you said.

RK: He needed to go to Nebraska City, Nebraska, so I flew him over to Nebraska City, which was about 40 miles. [Tape recorder turned off]

MM: OK, you’re flying to Nebraska City.

RK: So I flew him over to Nebraska City, Nebraska, where he wanted to see an old uncle of his who was in the farm machinery business.

Dan was just back from working for Martin-Marietta back east. He was an engineer. And he’d been working during part of the war for Martin-Marietta, who made the big airplanes.

Then he went to work for what is now NASA. And then he was over at the Bikini bomb testing, while they were testing the atom bombs. And then he came back to Beatrice. He didn’t go back to working for Martin-Marietta.

And he went to work for his mother, who had a ladies ready-to-wear shop. And that wasn’t the first time that I flew him someplace. [chuckles]

MM: What was your husband’s name?

RK: Thomas Daniel Kees.

MM: And he went by Dan, right?

RK: Dan.


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MM: And his mother had a ladies ready-to-wear? What was that called?

RK: Miriam Kees' Shop.

MM: And so you started flying this man around. [laughter]

RK: And pretty soon, he wanted to fly. So I let him fly a little bit. And he didn’t have a good sense of direction. We got lost once! [laughing]

MM: Really? In the air?

RK: In the air. And we found a big road, you know, a main highway, and followed it until we came to an airport. Landed at the airport in Indiana and asked where were we. And took off and went home. I flew the rest of the way.

But on our first anniversary, he had his pilot’s license. Well, this proceeded until we got married in 1948 on October the fifth. And then on our first wedding anniversary, he got his pilot’s license. So after that, we flew around quite a bit.

And then a friend of his – well, it was a high school playmate – came back to Beatrice and he worked for Boeing as personnel manager. Woody McKissick. And Woody said, “Come to work for Boeing,” and so we –

MM: To both of you?

RK: Well, Dan. And it didn’t make too much difference whether or not I had a job. So we took off, left the airplane with my sister, and we –

To give the history of that airplane, Helen used it to fly around to ninety-nine meetings by herself. And occasionally, when I was back there to visit, she’d let me fly maybe out to Denver so I could pick up the bus coming back home.

And she – uh – so she kept that airplane in pristine condition, until I sold it about … oh golly, it’s been … I’d better say it’s about eight years ago now.

MM: Really? You had it that long? Ohmygoodness.

RK: And it was in awfully good shape. And I guess I’ve got to brag a little bit, but we sold it for five times as much as we paid for it.

MM: That’s great! Do you remember how much you sold it for?


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RK: $14,000. Somebody wanted it badly, an airplane in good shape like that.

MM: Yeah, I’ll bet. Geez, I’m amazed that you –

RK: And we only paid $3,500 for it in the beginning.

MM: Really? What color was it?

RK: Cream and red.

MM: Like cream with red trim on it? Single propeller?

RK: Single propeller and three-point landing.

MM: Did you learn anything about airplane mechanics when you had that?

RK: Not really.

MM: You just let other people fix it.

RK: We knew enough to take care of it, how to take care of it. And how to start it. We knew the mechanics well enough.

MM: When was the last time you flew a plane?

RK: I’d say it’s ten, fifteen years ago now.

MM: What purposes did you use it for besides just entertainment and fun? Were you ever hired out? Well, by your husband, I guess, to fly him places.

RK: Yeah, we – And once I flew the banker up to South Dakota because, you know, the roads were all closed then, and he wanted to go see his new grandchild. So I flew him up to South Dakota – Rapid City, South Dakota.

And while I was waiting for him to get his visit over and done with, he – I got to see Mount Rushmore.

MM: Oh wow. I’ve never been to Mount Rushmore.

RK: It’s very spectacular. And [inaudible] the hills in that area is rather unusual. But that formation is being utilized yet for – aren’t they putting an Indian in – well,


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that’s going to be in a different spot, but somebody’s carving some big Indian relic there.

MM: Yeah, yeah, I’ve read about that. That’s so interesting that you did that. So, you came to Boeing and your husband worked at Boeing? Did you work at Boeing, or no?

RK: Yeah, Boeing hired me, too.

MM: What did you do at Boeing?

RK: I was an engineering draftsman.

MM: Really? They decided to use someone with artistic skills.

RK: They put me to – uh – sent me to their school, because Boeing has such a spectacular way of doing things. You have to learn their way of doing it so everybody can understand it. Otherwise, if you get people coming in who are a little bit different way of managing things, why, it upsets everything.

So, I worked as an engineering draftsman until – Isn’t this going to stop? - I worked as an engineering draftsman until I – for ten years. And that was 1960. Let’s see … [19]52 … eight years. And then I worked two more years till we found –

We spent our time hunting for this place. And Issaquah was the area. And we got 20 acres here. But we were the first people in. We brought the road in, brought the electricity in, a telephone line in. And what has happened since then is, of course, since then.

MM: And so when you say you were the first people to bring the road in, we should say where we are on Tiger Mountain. What side of Tiger Mountain is this?

RK: This is the east side – uh – the west side of Tiger.

MM: West side of Tiger Mountain. And so was the road always called 240th

Street, what we’re on now? What was the road called then?

RK: There was no road there.

MM: What did you call it when you –


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RK: We didn’t call it anything, but we found out that it was an extension of 240th. Because it was on the section line, or the division line. We just bought 20 acres that’s in the north – I mean in the southwest corner, next to the Tiger Mountain State Forest.

Now, Tiger Mountain State Forest, back then, was not Tiger Mountain State Forest. It had – every other section belonged to Weyerhaeuser. You know, they got this way back in the early 1800s as a grant. And in order to get people to do something out here, the government let them have every other acre. And the schools got every other – uh – section line, I mean, not acre.

So that while I was working for Boeing and we started building the house, I just decided that I was worth more building the house. And we had a contractor at first that got things going. In other words, there was a kind of framework. No roof on it or anything.

MM: Foundation …

RK: Foundation. And got it to a point where we could work on it. And with the help of Lawrence Hampton, who lived right down the hill – he was a retired – uh – he had rheumatism or arthritis so bad he couldn’t work as a carpenter anymore. But he bought our materials for us and …

Before we started building, when we were hunting for a place to build or to buy, I wanted this kind of rock.

MM: This is, we should say, a kind of river rock? Would you call it river rock?

RK: It’s not river rock. There are a few pieces of river rock in it. But we found it in Mount Baker. They had just put a new road in up there, and they had been dynamiting and bulldozing.

MM: The Mount Baker Highway?

RK: Well, no, it runs up the hill.

MM: Highway 20?

RK: I don’t know. But it was just in there. So we got a permit for ten bucks and we were spending time going out and picking up rocks on the weekend.


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MM: So these are, we should say, kind of gray rocks with a lot of beautiful white lines through them and almost looks like a kind of granite, in a way.

RK: It’s – uh – I think it’s got a little blue-gray to it. It’s more than a dead gray.

MM: Right, it’s bluish. I bet it’s beautiful when it’s wet, actually. I mean, you probably don’t ever get it wet.

RK: No. Never.

MM: How many feet across is this wall?

RK: I don’t know. And then the outside wall, too.

MM: I’d say this is at least – we’re at least looking at 20, 25 feet. And in the middle, you have your woodstove, and this goes about, I would say, maybe 8 feet high maybe? Oh, it’s gorgeous.

RK: And this one is … you know, it goes clear down to the floor over here.

MM: Yeah, because this one that we’re looking at with your woodstove, has a kind of tile ridge. And beneath it, that’s where you store your wood. That’s so handy.

And is this a wood floor? It sort of looks like tile, but then when you look at it, it has wood grain in it.

RK: We got – Dan always wanted one, because they used these under printing presses and manufacturing places. And since he’d grown up in the Keyes Manufacturing Company as a little kid, he was quite impressed with it.

MM: So, these are squares that are probably 8 feet by – I mean, 8 inches by 4 inches, maybe.

RK: And 2 inches thick.

MM: And 2 inches thick. And somebody – what kind of wood is that, do you remember?

RK: Just a fir wood. We bought 20-foot beams, 4-by-8 beams, and cut them up.


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September 29, 2006

MM: Well, I thought it was tile when I walked in. Until I just now looked at it and you can see the wood grain. It’s gorgeous! And you put grouting in-between, so it looks like tile because of the grouting.

RK: Right.

MM: That’s very smart. And very beautiful. And your ceiling, what kind of wood?

RK: It’s all end grain cedar. You can’t buy that cedar anymore because it’s end grain clear. It doesn’t have any knots in it. And same way with most – some of the walls.

MM: So end grain, what does that mean? Does it mean cedar that’s more inside the tree so you don’t see the knots?

RK: Right.

MM: Oh gosh, it’s gorgeous, it really is. And just the way it’s architecturally designed, every wall seems to be at some kind of an angle. It almost makes your home look circular, because the ceilings cut out a diagonal, too, but it’s a square house.

RK: This house is square.

MM: But you wouldn’t know it.

RK: But everything’s been put in diagonally. This beam runs the long way, from one end of the diagonal to the other.

MM: And these are skylights in the center. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and what I can’t believe is how modern it must have been for its time. It must have been very unusual for its time.

RK: People accuse me of designing from like Frank Lloyd Wright. This is a design that I had kind of laid out, and then we had an architect finish it up to make sure that it fit in with the – uh – get the right windows where we wanted them.

MM: Yeah, and so this whole side of your living room-dining room area, this whole corner, this 45 degrees, is all pretty much glassed in. And that’s just beautiful.


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September 29, 2006

RK: And we put Thermopane in, too. Because we came from Nebraska and those sweating windows. And even out here, when you don’t use it, the windows sweat.

And the place we lived in Bryn Mawr [WA] before we moved here, in an apartment house and then a little cottage, but those windows would sweat. I’d come home from work and mop up the windows and get up in the morning and mop up the windows.

MM: You weren’t going to have anymore of that.

RK: I wasn’t going to have anymore of that.

MM: Tell me what physical work you did in this house. We don’t need to talk about that long, but I’m curious. Did you help lay the floor, or did you help put in the rocks, or did you do some of this work?

RK: The rock work, we did not do, I’ll admit. We happened to get an itinerant bunch of rock layers. Somehow, it was their way to do things. And they were on their way back to Arkansas when we gave them a job. And they did a wonderful job, I think.

MM: Oh, yeah, it’s great. It does look very professional. I know someone who made his house out of rocks, and he refers to it as the “double hernia” house. So it’s a good thing that you didn’t put your own rocks in, because it would have been terrible.

RK: We had gathered up the rocks, weekend by weekend.

MM: So you would handle them?

RK: Oh, you bet I handled them.

MM: Ohmygoodness. And did you lay the floor, did you help put in the floor?

RK: Dan marked it off and I pasted them – you know, you have to use an asphalt, so I fixed the backs of them. And I did every bit of this floor.

MM: Ohmygosh. How long did it take you to build this house?

RK: Seven years.


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September 29, 2006

MM: And what was your goal?

RK: We didn’t have any goal, we just lived in it, you know. I don’t think we would have gotten away with what we got away with in that they won’t let you live in a house until certain things are done in it. And … however, we had the bathroom and – None of the tile work was done in the kitchen or in the bathroom. And I don’t know if you noticed all the tile work, the tile in the kitchen.

MM: It’s a lot of tiling. It would take a long time to do that.

RK: It did. And so I put in the floor in here, and he did run the [inaudible] – it’s what Boeing used to use to seal up the airplane. And he thought it’d be pretty good for the floor, and it’s held up. But there are a few places where the wood has shrunk a little bit, but it doesn’t …

MM: This house is pretty old. How long have you lived in this house?

RK: Well, we started building in 1959 and we moved in Christmas Eve of 1960. We always said we were going to be in by Christmas and by golly, we were.

MM: Where did you sleep? Were the bedrooms done?

RK: No, they weren’t done, and we hadn’t even brought any furniture in. But we brought in couple of sleeping bags and slept on the floor.

MM: Did you have a fire?

RK: Well, yeah, we could have the fire built then.

MM: That’s beautiful. That’s really a nice story. So tell me about how you became involved in environmental issues in the area. Did you start to think about environmental issues before you arrived here in the area, or did you wait till you’d settled at your house? How did that all come about? [Tape recorder turned off]

OK, I asked you one question, but I’m going to change my tack for a second because I haven’t finished all my questions about this place. The one thing I forgot to ask you is, you had roads built. Do you remember who built your roads? To come up to this house?

RK: [Pause as Mrs. Kees thinks about the question]


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September 29, 2006

MM: Was it one of the Campbells?

RK: Yes! George Campbell.

MM: Oh, good. Yeah, yeah. They’re a Tiger Mountain family, I think.

RK: Yeah. And George tried to open a sand and gravel pit on up the hill, and south of Round Lake, and he didn’t get away with it. [chuckles] That was kind of my first fight, I guess.

MM: Really? So, how did that come about?

RK: Well, just that he was going to put in a sand and gravel pit, and he was hauling sand and gravel out, down past our place. And we found out he didn’t have the right – uh – permits to do this, so that stopped him.

And since then, also another person tried to open a sand and gravel pit up there. And that’s the reason the area south of Round Lake is a little bit deeper than Round Lake.

And you would think that Round Lake would drain into that depression, but there must be a ridge of impervious surfaces there, south of Round Lake.

And according to a survey that was done by Puget Power, the water drains off in that area toward the northwest, and south of Round Lake it comes this direction, and it runs down our little creek, there. And our little creek pops up as a spring up there. It has no beginning except it just pops out of the ground.

So it gets the recharge from higher elevations, and also a little bit from Lake Tradition. Lake Tradition drains, has no outlet. Round Lake has no outlet. It just overtops and goes underground.

Tiger Mountain is – a tongue of a glacier came down, and when it receded, it dropped all of its sand and gravel here. So Tiger Mountain has sand and gravel; Squak does not have it.

It’s just a little tongue that happened to go as far south during the Ice Age as right here.

MM: What were you afraid would happen, environmentally, if they started taking out sand and gravel?


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September 29, 2006

RK: Well, you’ve seen sand and gravel pits. They’re an eyesore. And it destroys all the vegetation, and it certainly would have disrupted the groundwater.

Now, I did not get too involved in the understanding of the groundwater around here until I’d been here a little while. But … our little stream almost goes dry in the summertime, but it keeps running. And it’s a tributary of Issaquah Creek, and it has salmon in it down at the bottom.

And the salmon cannot get up where it gets steep here, but from here, from our property on down to Issaquah Creek, it’s wetlands. So I became intrigued then with – uh – I connected with the salmon in Issaquah Creek.

Now, this may not go too well, but people did not like the big salmon spawning and then dying in front of their houses. [The] Sycamore [housing development south of downtown Issaquah] started being put in about 1962, and the people objected to a dead salmon in their yard.

So for a while, salmon were not allowed to come up the stream. And only – So, you know, this is happening, too. They’re going to allow just so many salmon to come up. And now, they’re packing them up and sending them off to canneries and …

MM: So people, because they didn’t want the salmon in their yards or near their houses, to die in that stream near their houses, because of the smell, is that right?

RK: Right.

MM: It was just sort of an aesthetic thing, and they didn’t want it. And back then, people didn’t have – At least now, things aren’t perfect, but people have sort of a sense of “Let’s save the salmon.” [This] seems to be a popular refrain.

But back then, salmon had been plentiful. People didn’t understand that they were being compromised, right?

RK: Well, I don’t know if people understand it or not. Because, as I was telling you, the fish hatchery only let so many salmon come up. They’ve got a dam there that keeps them. And they fill up those ponds, and if they decide there aren’t enough tributaries up here to raise salmon, then they kill them off.

MM: Oops, sorry. [Tape recorder turned off]


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September 29, 2006

End of Analog Audio Tape 1 of 1 for September 29, 2006, Side A

MM: Are they stopping the wild native salmon and they’re trying to just keep the fish that are in the fish hatchery, or what are they doing right now that you said they were “stopping salmon”?

RK: Well, I’m not sure. I kind of hear the television and I’m doing something else usually. But it’s in the Issaquah Press, I think, about how many salmon they’re permitting to go up, if they’re permitting any. I think they’re trying to find out which are the wild salmon, and which are the tame ones that were released, you know, raised there and released.

That, to me, is something that should be looked into and find out exactly what’s going on there. I don’t know. I wish I did.

MM: When you started talking about salmon and allowing them – you know, when you became aware of the activity of the salmon by living here and what was happening in your creek, and you started activities to protect the salmon, how did people respond to you?

RK: Well, you know, the schools responded – In the beginning, I had what was known as “Friends of Issaquah Creek.” And it was a case of trying to figure out what benefited the creek.

But the east fork of Issaquah Creek, when they put I-90 through, they changed some of the little creeks that run down the north side of Tiger Mountain. And there was one area where they had installed the creek in a whole bunch of weirs going down to the creek.

And a whole bunch of little salmon had gotten trapped in there. They were little fish. So I got a whole bunch of high school kids, and buckets, and we transferred those fish down from the weirs on down to the east fork, and spent a couple of days doing that.

And it’s never – I guess fish don’t get up there anymore. So they – uh – that was the only one time that we did that.

MM: What was the response of people? The kids were interested?

RK: The kids were very interested. I had no problem with getting the kids to do that.


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September 29, 2006

MM: Did anyone change the systems that allowed the salmon to get up there without getting caught?

RK: Well, the salmon can’t get up there because of the weirs that they put in there. But the salmon got caught coming down that had been there before they put the weirs in.

MM: Oh, I see, I see. What year was that that you did that? Or around what time?

RK: Whenever I-90 was first put through, when they first started cutting away Tiger Mountain to enlarge I-90. I really can’t say. In the 1800s – I mean, the 1980s! [chuckles]

MM: How do you think that I-90 coming in – what other ways did I-90 sort of disturb the ecology, the environment?

RK: Well, they certainly disrupted the recharge areas, you know. Both sides of Tiger [Mountain] and the Tradition Plateau had these underground recharge areas, and it took many, many years – It didn’t do enough damage to – uh – back then because we still had a lot of backup to take care of the damage that was ever done. But along about that time … is it Costco?

MM: The store?

RK: I think it is Costco. The developer, Langston Sligh, came to town, and he bought the Pickering farm. And that was a real environmental fight. We tried to preserve at least the [Issaquah] Skyport but we couldn’t do it. We lost.

We were $80,000 in debt and so – and we’d gotten nowhere with the legal disruptions that we were trying to pull off.

MM: When you say “we,” had you joined forces with someone? Did you have kind of an environmental group or organization at that time?

RK: You know, Issaquah – uh – I [have to] get things arranged here a little bit. Harvey Manning – I forgot to mention that Harvey Manning – have you done anything on him? [Sounds of voices and hammering in the background throughout this section]

MM: No.


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September 29, 2006

RK: He’s had more to do with this area than almost anybody as far as the environment is concerned. At the time that we traded Weyerhaeuser off of Tiger Mountain and made it into Tiger Mountain State Forest, Brian Boyle was the Department of the Interior for the state. And he was the first person that’s listened to us.

And he came out, took a look at Tiger Mountain, and he made a deal with Weyerhaeuser to trade Weyerhaeuser off for some other land where they wouldn’t be bothered all the time.

Because every time they wanted to make a [clear] cut up there, we’d have people out with protest. But they could – uh – Hello! – cut right up to the stream edges. There was no protection for the stream edges or anything.

And so every time that happened, even when they would replant, then they would spray in order to kill all the leaves for the other saplings that were coming up, and this would poison the streams that were coming off there.

And we had a whole bunch of people that would go up there and they would do it by hand, and show them that doing it by hand worked just as – in fact, better – and clear it out for them.

So every time they tried to do a clear cut, why, there would be protests and at that time in the Issaquah Environmental Council was getting started, too. [Loud voices in the background]

MM: The Issaquah Environmental Council? Yeah, I’m recording. [Said to someone who just entered the room] Sorry, you said the Issaquah Environmental Council was getting started. Around what time was that?

RK: You know, I should know because I organized it.

MM: That’s all right.

RK: Well, it got started in the 18 – uh – late 1980s.

MM: Yeah. So you were part of the organizers of the Issaquah Environmental Council. What other things did the council take on?


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September 29, 2006

RK: Now, at that time, Harvey Manning became the Issaquah Alps. And he’s taken in a lot more of Tiger Mountain and Cougar. In other words, he’s gotten these parks to going.

MM: So when you say the Issaquah Alps, are you – the Issaquah Alps generally refers to Tiger Mountain – or specifically Tiger Mountain, Squak Mountain and Cougar Mountain. That’s what the Issaquah Alps are.

RK: Right.

MM: And you’re saying that he started parks on top of all these. How did you accomplish getting Tiger Mountain from Weyerhaeuser, to make a park there?

RK: Brian Boyle, the Department of Interior, somehow swung that with the help of Harvey Manning, and the support of the organizations around here.

MM: Can you tell me – the other thing I really want to talk about is I know you’ve maintained rainfall data for Issaquah Creek valley since the flood, I think, of November 1986?

RK: I got started just after that flood. That was a big flood, but you know we’ve had bigger floods since then.

MM: Uh-huh.

RK: And in 1993, Issaquah Creek met Tibbetts Creek on Gilman Boulevard. And that’s the first time that’s ever happened.

MM: Because the waters were so high. [Loud voices again in background] When you are doing rainfall data, do you have a weather monitoring station as well?

RK: I had this station until about four months ago and my health just got down too far.

MM: What was your weather monitoring station? Where was it and what did it look like?

RK: Well, it was a tube within a tube, so that the inner tube measured in 1/100th

of an inch of the rainfall. It had a big funnel that caught it and directed it there. And if we got more than 5 inches of rainfall, it would fill up a big outer rube. And we have, on occasion, gotten, oh, a couple inches of rain in the outer tube.


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But I kept that for the Department of Ecology for many, many years. And lately I’ve been doing it for the Issaquah Press and so it appeared on the front page of the Issaquah Press. So I have books that have records. And I’m wondering …

MM: About the records?

RK: About the records.

MM: Well, I was just curious as to, you know, what sort of prompted you to keep that data, and what purpose has the information served for the Department of Ecology?

RK: Because I always wondered how much rainfall we got. And I did it for my own edification. And since these other environmental agencies need the information, too, to track from one year to another as to what’s transpiring in our – uh –

MM: The watershed?

RK: The watershed, and to track – You know, Lake Sammamish didn’t have any outlet until they were connected to – and I don’t know what year that occurred that they connected it to Lake Washington.

MM: Yeah, through the Sammamish Slough? Yeah, there was that connection. I don’t, unfortunately, know either. But that impacted the kind of salmon that were coming into the area, didn’t it?

RK: That’s right.

MM: The salmon that come from Lake Washington are –

RK: But we still have our native Kokanee. And they’re not counting very many Kokanee coming up the streams anymore. They’re deemed to be the better of the fish.

But that is a cause that somebody needs to pick up on, and I wish the Environmental Council, which is doing a good job now … But there are so many things to look into, you can splatter yourself all over.


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September 29, 2006

MM: I know, there are a lot of things. But I think I noticed that you had focused on – actually, I’m going to shut this door for one second. [Comment is made by Mrs. Kees about a person talking loudly in another room, not transcribed]

So I wanted to ask you about the Issaquah Creek, I wanted to ask you about the watershed, and I wanted to ask you about water quality, and what you’ve noticed about water quality, and what ways water quality has been compromised, or that you fear it’s been compromised since doing your work.

RK: Well … mainly I think what’s affecting this country now is that the fermenting of little urban areas, areas of urbanization. They permit people to dig a well, and if the well will produce 5,000 gallons a day –

And I don’t think they’ve ever run a test on any of them to make sure that they would produce 5,000 water a day. They figure, we can put six houses on 5,000 gallons of water a day. And we’ll group them all in one little spot, and that will keep them from sprouting out all over the country.

Well, I think I’d rather see one house per 5 acres than these little urban areas, which require all kinds of amenities that these other houses don’t require. And you won’t get people watering their lawns. In other words, we’re urbanizing the area whether it wants to be urbanized or not, by permitting these little colonies. [Sounds of material being rattled around in the background]

MM: Are you worried about the kind of growth that’s occurred in Issaquah since you’ve – I mean, in recent years, and that compromising water quality and the environment here?

RK: Every road that they put in is putting a dike in the ground. And this disrupts the transmission of ground water. Or every little urban area that they put into, also disrupts – uh – it increases runoff because of having more – uh – gosh what do you call it? Ground that won’t permit …

MM: Impermeable?

RK: Impermeable surfaces. Every road is an impermeable surface. And this creates runoff. And the water doesn’t get back into the ground where it does any good.

And look at Lake Sammamish now. Lake Sammamish used to be a lake that did not respond to rainfall. It was fairly static. People have built docks and they’ve


28


September 29, 2006

built all kinds of wood structures along the edge of Lake Sammamish, and by golly, now some of the – after a rainfall, they’re under water!

And this never happened before. And that’s because of increased runoff. So that all the water has just poured into Lake Sammamish, instead of going into the ground where it will replenish the aquifers.

MM: Ruth, I wanted to ask you about some of the awards that you’ve received. And I notice in particular there was a Resolution 2003-5 naming a tributary of Issaquah Creek as Kees Creek Number 0199, which one that is, the one right outside your door.

RK: The one right outside the door.

MM: Because of your stewardship over that creek.

RK: We’ve kept it pretty much natural, all the way down. The church has property down, but that’s wetlands area. And they haven’t – well, they dug a well and they’re withdrawing the water, but they haven’t been enough to disrupt things that badly.

However, there are a couple of churches that are a little bit further down the line that are expanding madly. And everything like that has an effect. Those impervious surfaces are no good.

MM: Yeah, when I worked with the Department of Ecology, they talked about making permeable surfaces, permeable driveways. And then there’s actually things in the works to do with – uh – asphalt roofs are bad as well. So anyway, there’s technology that exists. It’s really hard getting developers to adopt the technology.

RK: Well, it’s so much more expensive. And the education people want things they’re used to, cement or blacktop.

MM: I know. I wanted to read you something that you wrote in 2001 in your Memory Book and I was wondering if you could comment on it. You wrote:

All mayors, from Herb Harrington to our present day, are notable for the promotion of increased tax base, with very little regard to loss of quality of living, increased infrastructure costs and the loss of watersheds and recharge areas.

Can you tell me what you were thinking about when you wrote that?


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September 29, 2006

RK: Well, even our present mayor, Ava Frisinger, she talks a good environmental, but look what’s happened under her being here. And that has been….

Development has not been slowed down. Recognition of this area as being a special area that should be preserved has not been done. More people like it, they move here. And the mayors have so far been the ones who have been selected by the Chamber of Commerce.

And you know the Chamber of Commerce is made up of people who do not live here. They only want to make money here. On the whole, they are. There are a few local ones, but they don’t seem to swing very much.

So, it’s politics as usual. And somehow, you cannot – it’s been a case of too much I guess you feel that things are out of hand. You can’t stop them. And I wonder if I’ve done any good at all.

MM: Oh, I think you have. I want to tap a little bit into your wisdom. I want to ask you, kind of for the future, in what ways we can develop as a society, or even grow as a society, and still exercise some kind of environmental conscientiousness? I mean, do you think that progress is incompatible with environmental compassion? Or do you think that there’s a way to bring those two things together?

RK: I think we’ve got to keep building in places that are already built up. And just higher, if you have to, which is what Bellevue and Seattle have done. And we’ve got to do that in Issaquah, too.

Although Issaquah, you know, is on a wetlands area. They’ve built –

MM: The whole town?

RK: The whole thing is on a wetlands area! And occasionally, we – just like when they were putting in SR-900, and they were trying to put in a walkway along the edge of that, they drove in pilings and had to pull them back out, because everything liquefied. The ground liquefied. And they had to put longer ones in or something.

Anyway, that just illustrates that that land looks like it’s dry on top, but it’s not dry. And we’ll get a good earthquake someday, and I’m afraid things are just going to …


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September 29, 2006

MM: Slide away.

RK: Yeah, float away.

MM: Oh, that reminds me. Do you remember the earthquake of [19]65 here? Because I think you’d already moved here at that time. And do remember what kind of damage resulted, and what was done with the resulting debris?

RK: I don’t remember what happened in Issaquah, but we had no problem here. We’re on solid bedrock, I think, or something.

I do remember that I heard this rumbling and I couldn’t figure out what it was. And I happened to look out the door and the car was a foot off the cement slab out there. And yet, we had no damage, but the car had been bounced up off the cement slab.

MM: Wow, that’s really lucky.

RK: But it didn’t last long, and I think that was the savior of it.

MM: Right.

RK: If it had lasted a little bit longer, there would have been a lot more damage. And I don’t recollect that there was too much damage at that time even.

MM: Yeah. I think that the school suffered some damage.

RK: Oh, yeah. The big school up on top of the hill, particularly. Yeah.

MM: Yeah, I read that somewhere. Let’s see … oh, I wanted to ask you about the salmon hatchery, and how do you think that’s impacted Issaquah and the native wild salmon populations? We talked a little bit. You talked about how they don’t really want to see the native salmon coming up, and that was problematic. But what other ways do you think the hatchery works for or against the salmon population?

RK: Well, they have changed their talking about the salmon in that the native salmon are the ones to be coddled and encouraged. They had almost dropped down to not being any. And I – that really is – in other words, it’s being managed. But one thing that gets me, though, is how are the salmon going to


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September 29, 2006

get into Issaquah Creek when all these motorboats are running around? And all the skiers and …

MM: So the salmon are coming up from Lake Sammamish, right?

RK: Right.

MM: And so then they’re coming up in the creek. Hmmm. That’s a very good question.

RK: And all the noise and having … that is the place, you know, they want to develop that park there now [along the shores of Lake Sammamish]. And I’m against it. I think it should be left just the way it is, for people to stroll and.…

And the usage it gets, low usage, it should be kept low because that’s the entrance to Issaquah Creek. And especially this time of the year is when the fish are coming up. And then there’s a spring run, and there’s the summer run, too, of the native Kokanee.

And this is – I wish I had enough left to go fight that park, because I think that is an essential way for the native Kokanee to get back into the stream. And the north fork and the south – uh – the east fork …

Now, the north fork, I remember it when it was full fish. And I don’t think there’s a fish in there now. And that has been routed and rerouted by that development up on the Plateau, the Highlands.

MM: Providence Point? I may not know which one you’re talking about. I keep thinking Providence Point but …

RK: Well, the Issaquah Highlands has engulfed Providence Point. And you go up there and it’s nothing but a desert of houses. They have leveled everything, you know. You had your knolls. And they just smoothed everything out, put all these houses, in, these huge houses.

Now, that was, here again, it was our government. They permitted this to happen. But it was supposed to be this urban village. It was proposed as an urban village. And it’s no urban village. Those people have to get in their cars and go places. And it is – you go up there and you’re just amazed at house after house after house.

MM: You can see it from a lower level. You can look up and see it.


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RK: And all the knolls are gone and it’s just … Now, we’re not going to – they’re had to reroute some wetlands from going into Issaquah Creek over to the north fork, and north fork goes over into south fork. Then they had that breakout last spring, and I’m afraid I welcomed that very much. [chuckles]

MM: You did? Because you wanted to show them?

RK: It would show them what they’re doing here.

MM: Yeah. Have you ever worked with the Army Corps of Engineers or talked to the Army Corps of Engineers about the design of rerouting things? Is that who comes in and reroutes creeks and wetlands, the Army Corps of Engineers?

RK: No, they don’t. This has to be done with the Department of Ecology, doesn’t it?

MM: I get confused who all is involved. I mean, I think –

RK: You know, I have lost out on – I’ve turned my back on that development up there. Because it’s over and done with now, and we’re just going to have to suffer the consequences.

But 26 percent of the recharge of Issaquah’s aquifers comes from the Highlands. And that won’t be – you know, water travels sideways only a few feet per year, so it’s going to take a long time before the groundwater is really going to be affected by it.

MM: But it will be.

RK: But I think it will be. And this will be hidden by the amount of development we’ll be getting in that time, too. And they can blame it on the development.

MM: What do you feel were your biggest successes, in terms of being a steward of the environment in this area? In what ways do you feel that you’ve been successful?

RK: Tiger Mountain State Forest becoming a state forest. It is not a park, it’s a state forest. They permit some – uh – in fact, I’m still on that – there’s a bunch of civilians that are supposed to look over every clear cut that is permitted up there.


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And the permits now are mostly for experimental type of clear cutting, in that different methods are being utilized that will have less effect on the environment. And I think this is a good step, if we can just shepherd our efforts into education.

And the University of Washington Forestry Department have their interests here, too, so they participate. So there are several different agencies participating there with citizens’ involvement. And Harvey Manning is also on that, but Harvey is probably as bad off as I am right now.

MM: Need some people to pick up the torch.

RK: Right. And I think that the Issaquah Environmental Council is doing a pretty good job now.

The year that Tiger Mountain became a state forest – and Brian Boyle brought that about – Issaquah Salmon Days, I was the – what do you call it?

MM: Oh, I know what you mean. You were the …

RK: I was the head honcho. [laughing]

MM: Ruth, I know the word that you’re looking for.

RK: Anyway, I rode in this car, and I insisted that Brian Boyle be part of it, because he was the one who brought it about up there.

And – oh gosh – there’s another guy. His name is … Fishnailer? And he works with – uh – who’s that big billionaire that has put the [Mountains to the Sound] Greenway through?

MM: Oh, you don’t mean Microsoft, Gates?

RK: No. No, no.

MM: Ruckelshaus? No.

RK: He’s a billionaire. And he got the Greenway going.2 And the Greenway is a marvelous thing, too. That’s a great thing to have happen. I didn’t have anything to do with that, though.

2 Jim Ellis founded the Greenway in 1991, and Paul Allen made a significant donation to it in 1998.


34


September 29, 2006

MM: That is really – there’s some people doing some good work still, I think. I just wanted to ask you – and this is the last question, and you’ve already answered this, in part – what do you see, based on past and current trends, will be the environmental issues that Issaquah will have to address in the future, in order to preserve the quality of life? [Tape recorder turned off]

But what is your concern for the environment? And for the quality of life in Issaquah, what do you think will be the issues that keep coming up that people will have to take on?

RK: Well, they have a list of what they think is a good – the treasures of Issaquah. And one of the treasures is the forested hillsides. And I see that we’re losing the forested hillsides.

I see a push – you’ve heard of the Southeast Bypass? I haven’t brought that up yet, but the goldarn Southeast Bypass will not die. And that has been going on since about 1987.

And Issaquah is spending – they’ve spent, oh golly, almost four million bucks on just studying the thing! And yet they say that the Environmental Impact Statement will not have the final picture of it, because there’s a lot of engineering to be done yet.

Now, that Southeast Bypass would cut a – put a big ditch on the west side of Tiger, which would cert – The northwest corner is the high recharge area for Issaquah’ aquifer, besides this whole, steep hillside on here.

I see that there’s going to be a loss of – it’s going to look like Bellevue. So many of Bellevue’s forested hillsides – used to be forested – aren’t anymore. And when you’ve lost your vegetation, you have lost the permeable surfaces, I mean the impermeable – uh – permeable surfaces.

And we’ve got to preserve every permeable surface. We’ve got to preserve our quality of living. Because vegetation clears out the air and – uh – we have to recognize that it serves more than just being a – something that’s pleasing to the eye.

And it is not a place for future homes. There’s got to be something saved for its environmental effects.

MM: Very good. Thank you so much, Ruth. You’ve been great.


35


September 29, 2006

RK: Well, I’ve talked your ears off.

END OF INTERVIEW WITH RUTH KEES


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