During World War II the Cougar Mountain AA Peak had a ring of 90mm "Skymaster" anti-aircraft guns to protect Puget Sound against possible Japanese attack.
From 1957 to 1964 during the “Cold War” era this area became an air defense missile installation. An open field near the Sky Country Trailhead was an anti-aircraft Nike Ajax missile launch installation ready to protect the region from nuclear attack by Soviet long range strategic bombers. All that is left from that era are a few concrete pads, landscaping features, a deteriorating chain-link fence, and an interpretive sign.
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The following is an abbreviated excerpt from “Best Winter Walks & Hikes Puget Sound” by Harvey Manning and Ira Spring. This is the last book by this duo. Manning abruptly and famously severed the tie with Ira Spring and the publisher Mountaineers Books in a feud over a simple book-title change to add the word “winter”.
The “tiger” may have been: the cougar, mountain lion, catamount; the tiger lily which blooms so gaudily in late spring; a Scots word, taggart, meaning, rocky: or a rocky Scot named Taggart. In Issaquah it used to be called Issaquah Mountain: in Preston, Preston Hill. In 1863, coal was discovered on Cougar Mountain. The surveyors Philip H. Lewis and Edwin Richardson made the discovery while surveying the area for the General Land Office. Over the next 100 years, miners tunneled six miles under the mountain and strip-mined the surface, eventually hauling out 11 million tons of bituminous coal from the mountain before finally sealing the mines in 1963. All that coal prompted folks to call the area "Newcastle Hills," after England's coal-rich city of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Mount Si is named for a local settler Josiah "Uncle Si" Merritt. Josiah Merritt was an early pioneer of the Pacific Northwest. Merritt built a cabin at the base of the peak in 1862. He raised vegetables and hogs and kept an orchard. According to local historians, he was a rugged man who sometimes hauled bacon to the large settlements in Seattle. He had a Native American wife but when his legal spouse, 'Aunt Sally' as the settlers called her, arrived from the east, the native woman had to go back to her people. He was known for playing the fiddle. Josiah Merritt died in 1882 and was buried in the old Fall City cemetery.
Squak Mountain first appears in the history of European settlement after the discovery of coal on the mountain in 1859. This helped fuel the establishment of the first commercial coal mine in Issaquah in 1862. The name "Squak" comes from the Southern Lushootseed placename /sqʷásxʷ/, which is also the source of the name Issaquah Creek and the city of Issaquah. Some accounts record /sqʷásxʷ/ as meaning "snake". Other accounts say it meant "little stream" or referred to the call of the northern crane, which was common in the area.
Dirty Harry’s Balcony has nothing to do with Clint Eastwood movies. Harvey Manning, hiking advocate, christened the eastmost peak of West Defiance Ridge “Dirty Harry’s Peak” in dubious recognition of Harry Gault, whose logging operations were notorious for both their devastating thoroughness and ingenuity. To this day, one of Mr. Gault’s trucks rests on the slopes of his eponymous mountain.
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