We gratefully acknowledge the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today.

Here’s what we learned about Cottage Lake’s history:

Prior to the 1800’s and well before the appearance of white settlers, the Simump Tribe lived in the area along the Squak Slough (today’s Sammamish River). They didn’t live on Cottage Lake, but traveled east from what is now known as Hollywood Hills along the southern side of Cottage Lake (approximately the location of today’s NE 165th Street) to what we now know as Avondale Road. Then they traveled north to what is now Woodinville-Duvall Road and then east and south to Carnation, the headquarters of the Snohomish Indian tribe.

Millions of years ago, the Ice Age melted into icy streams that dug grooves like our river, created valleys like ours, and left hillsides that had been icy banks. Woodinville’s first settlers knew our sluggish stream as Squak Slough (from the Indian word Squowh meaning swampy) when they rowed upriver in 1871 to homestead. The slough initially had been used by the Simump Indian Tribe for fishing and travel.