One of the oldest homes on Lake Sawyer was built by the pioneering Hanson family on a peninsula of land that was a part of their original homestead claim. The patriarch, Carl M. Hanson owned a sawmill in his native Sweden. After learning of Washington’s vast timber tracts he immigrated to the U.S. in 1883. For a year Hanson cleared land in Seattle before moving to Lake Sawyer where he filed for ownership of 160 acres under the 1862 Homestead Act. Carl built a log cabin, proved up his claim, and in 1891 was issued a deed personally signed by President Benjamin Harrison. Around 1890, the Hanson family opened a sawmill near Lake Wilderness before moving the business to Enumclaw in 1897 where their White River Lumber Co. operated mills and bought timberlands in the surrounding foothills.
The family built this summer home on Lake Sawyer in 1926. Next to it was a caretaker’s cottage. In 1939, Rufus Smith and L.G. Olson, grandsons of Carl Hanson filed a plat called the North Shore of Lake Sawyer. The lake front portion of their 160-acre homestead was developed into 139 lots and included dedication of a two-acre park now owned by Black Diamond and called Lake Sawyer Boat Launch. Their summer home on 17-acres was not part of the plat, but remained with the extended Hanson family until 1997 when it was sold to David & Maryanne Tagney Jones for $2.2 million. A recreational guest house was added to the estate in 2007. This Dec. 20, 1939 image of tax parcel 042106-9001 comes courtesy of King County Assessor photos held at the Puget Sound Regional Archives in Eastgate.
