- Sirius (stars.astro.illinois.edu)
SIRIUS (Alpha Canis Majoris). From Orion, look south and to the east to find brilliant Sirius, as if one really needs directions to find the brightest star in the sky.
- Geology and coal resources of the Centralia-Chehalis district, Washington (pubs.usgs.gov)
- Vast swaths of forests and swamps covered the land, which eventually became the coal beds characteristic of the Carboniferous stratigraphy evident today.
- The bedrock of Squak Mountain is made up of rocks that formed from sediments carried by rivers into an ancient coastal estuary, where their increasing weight caused the land to sink, only to be buried by even more sediments. In time, the sedimentary layers accumulated more than one mile of thickness. As the sediments slowly collected, sub-tropical forests flourished on the landscape. Trees died and were buried before they began to decay, slowly converting into peat. Further burial and heat, possibly from regional molten magma intrusions in the Cascade Mountains, reduced the water, methane and carbon dioxide in the peat, and changed it into coal. The coal seams are found today in a layer of sedimentary rocks that geologists have named the Renton Formation.
- The coal seams in the Renton Formation at Squak Mountain were identified as a possible source of commercially viable coal as early as 1859, but large-scale operations didn’t begin until rail transportation reached the area in 1887.
- Coal mines were the primary employer in the city of Issaquah (which also took its name from the Indigenous placename) at the beginning of the 20th century, with laborers ranging in age from 14 to over 70.