- North Bend is a town in King County’s upper Snoqualmie Valley, the ancestral home of the Snoqualmie Tribe. The site, on the banks of the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River, was astride the old Indian trails over the Cascade passes. The first non-Indian settler arrived in the Snoqualmie Valley in 1858. The townsite was platted in 1889 by William H. Taylor (1853-1941) when he learned that a Seattle railroad wanted to establish a station on his farmland. The townsite’s original name was Snoqualmie, but the railroad asked Taylor to change it because another town just four miles away had the name Snoqualmie Falls. So the name was changed first to Mountain View and finally to North Bend, since it was on a bend in the river. North Bend became an agricultural and logging center and was incorporated in 1909. From the beginning, the town attracted tourists because of its spectacular setting at the foot of massive Mt. Si. It has long been a key stop for motorists on the way to and from Snoqualmie Pass, first on the Sunset Highway and today on Interstate 90. North Bend has recently evolved into a prosperous bedroom community for Seattle and its eastside suburbs. As of 2010, the population of North Bend was 5,731.
- Western United States (Wikipedia)
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost U.S. states. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term the West changed. Before around 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. The frontier moved westward and eventually the lands west of the Mississippi River were considered the West.