Our Fall 2023 Window Display

Our Fall 2023 window display celebrated Bothell’s early history as a river town. Visitors to the Park at Bothell Landing could learn about the importance of boat travel on the Sammamish River, before the commercial boat traffic was supplanted by the railroad and paved highways. It finally ended when the Montlake Cut lowered the water level of Lake Washington and the river by several feet.

The name “Squak” may have come from the native language, as our area’s first inhabitants, the S-tsah-pahbsh (Willow People), part of the Duwamish tribe, named the river. White settlers adopted the name for both the river and the first commercial boat to travel its waters. Today we know the river as the Sammamish. Because of its slow current, and in memory of the days when it spread over much more marshy ground, many of us still call it “the Slough.”