The early 1920s were far simpler times. Located south of State Route 169 and east of 140th Way S.E., was the Elliott family dairy farm. Had you been driving along the Renton-Maple Valley Road back then, the Elliott’s impressive barn and silo would soon come into view. Sometimes cars and trucks were forced to stop on the highway as 70 Guernsey cows made their twice-day trip to the barn for milking. The next-door neighbor, Bill Orton was operating his dairy farm where the Maplewood Golf Course now lies. Hundreds of acres of pastureland still lined both sides of the road. Next to the highway, steam locomotives pulled gondola cars of Black Diamond coal to market along Pacific Coast Railroad tracks.
Today, all vestiges of that agrarian past are gone. Five lanes of traffic now move 37,000 vehicles daily through a busy intersection where two sleepy county roads once met. The railroad was removed, replaced by walkers, joggers, and bicyclist strolling along the Cedar River Trail. The Maplewood Golf Course now occupies Bill Orton’s farm. Two years after the City of Renton bought the course in 1985, four new holes on the east side of the Cedar River were developed on fields where Elliott farm cows once grazed.
The barn, silo, milk-house, and stately Elliott home were torn down starting in 1997. The buildings were situated on a once-empty field currently being developed as an attached-housing community called River Trail at Elliot Farm. This site is squeezed between a 146-unit condominium complex called Molasses Creek and a 74-lot housing development known as Pioneer Place. Next door is the King County Housing Authority’s 109-unit mobile home park called Wonderland Estates. Further south stands the New Life Church of Renton complex where a neighboring farm once operated.
This 1921 photo of the Elliott Farm’s milking barn and feed silo come courtesy of JoAnne Matsumura, an Issaquah historian and collector of memorabilia. This is the first of a three-part series about the Elliott family whose dairy farm was the longest operating in the Cedar River Valley. Next week, more about the Elliott’s Craftsman-style home.
