Newcastle is suffering from an identity crisis.

No, I’m not talking about anything that the city is or isn’t doing. This crisis, it so happens, is simply out of City Hall’s control.

The problem would best be described as a “social media identity crisis.” Go ahead; search ‘Newcastle’ on Twitter. What do you see?

You’ll likely see a lot of tweets about Newcastle United FC, a soccer team in the English Premier League. Though the majority of Newcastle tweets are about the Magpies, they, incidentally, have nothing to do with our Newcastle.

You’ll probably see a few mentions of Newcastle Brown Ale and its #NoBollocks campaign. Again, not in the least related to our Newcastle.

You might fall into the trap that I do at least once a day. You see a tweet mentioning a cool event or the opening of a new restaurant in Newcastle; you click it, only to find that it isn’t our Newcastle. Rather, it’s happening at a Newcastle in Australia or England.

In an age where social media is such an integral part of everyday life, it’s very, very difficult to find an online presence of Newcastle, Washington, the one in the United States.

Social media is increasingly becoming a more important part of my job. In addition to Newcastle News’ online channels, I also manage the Twitter and Facebook profiles of The Issaquah Press and Sammamish Review.

Social media allows us to interact with our readers, find breaking news stories and see what’s going on in the community. I’ll tell you, it’s infinitely easier to do that with unique city names like Issaquah and Sammamish.

When someone tweets about an event in Issaquah, you know it’s happening in Issaquah, Washington. The same goes for Sammamish, though, I often have to filter through tweets mentioning Sammamish High School, which believe it or not, is not in Sammamish.

Some in the Newcastle community utilize the #NewcastleWA hashtag on social media to distinguish our city from the others. It’s a great start, but it will only work if we all commit to use it when we are talking about our Newcastle.

I try to include it in every Facebook post and Tweet I send, as does the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce and the account for Newcastle Earth Day.

So, Newcastle, my plea to you is, let’s make it easier to talk to each other on social media. If you see breaking news in Newcastle, take a really pretty picture at Lake Boren Park or just have something you want to say about your city, use the hashtag #NewcastleWA.

It not only helps me have a better grasp of what’s going on in Newcastle, it will also help you interact with your neighbors and local businesses.

Stop filtering through the soccer, beer and Newcastle upon Tyne tweets, let’s make #NewcastleWA ours and start taking back our identity.

Newcastle pioneer Milt Swanson passes away

Family, neighbors and community leaders gathered Jan. 25 to honor the life of Milt Swanson, a titan of Newcastle history and a man with an unceasing, warming smile.

The Newcastle pioneer, born and raised in this community, spent all of his 95 years in the same area, 90 of which were in the same company house that still stands at the edge of town near the Cougar Mountain trailhead.

Swanson died Jan. 20 after a Jan. 14 fall sent him to a hospital, where he lapsed into a coma.

He knew more about the city’s vast coal-mining history than anyone, because he actually lived it. He worked in the mines, as his father and grandfather did before him, and it was vital to him to tell his story, making sure the history of Newcastle never died.

“It was important to him to allow as many people who were interested to understand the beginnings of the city they live in,” Newcastle City Councilman Rich Crispo said. “He loved this community.”

Council elects new mayor, deputy mayor

The Newcastle City Council ushered in 2014 with elections for the mayor and deputy mayor positions at its Jan. 7 meeting.

Steve Buri was elected mayor, while newcomer John Drescher is the new deputy mayor. Both will serve two-year terms.

Buri was elected to the City Council in 2007 and re-elected in 2011. He served as deputy mayor from 2008-2011.

Drescher was the new face on the council, having defeated opponent Mark Greene to fill the seat vacated by retiring Councilman Bill Erxleben in the November election.

Prior to that, he served on the Newcastle Planning Commission for four years, and as the board’s chairman for the past year and a half.

Neighbors voice concerns about Energize Eastside

A Puget Sound Energy project to bring higher capacity electric transmission lines to a growing Eastside caused controversy across affected cities, including Newcastle, in 2014.

Olympus residents in particular voiced their concerns about Energize Eastside at City Council meetings and public forums.

PSE’s Community Advisory Group recently presented its recommended routes, and both include a line that goes through Newcastle.

This story appears far from over though, as affected cities, led by Bellevue, come together to hire an independent consultant to research the project, and work through the Environmental Impact Statement process.

Old Hazelwood comes down to make way for middle school

The Renton School District demolished the old Hazelwood Elementary School in 2014 to make way for a new middle school.

The district’s fourth middle school comes at an important time, given that Renton’s middle schools are among the largest in the state.

The new school is slated to open in fall 2016.

Newcastle Days celebrates 20 years

The city of Newcastle celebrated its 20 years as an incorporated city with a special Newcastle Days celebration.

New to this year’s annual festival was a parade featuring youth groups and individuals dressed as coal miners in a nod to the city’s history.

“Really, when you think about it, 20 years isn’t old for even a tree, but there’s been a huge amount of change here in Newcastle in the last 20 years,” said Community Activities Commission Chairwoman Diane Lewis, one of the festival’s organizers.

Newport Woods community concerned about proposed development

A proposed multifamily, mixed-use development along Newcastle Way, just beside City Hall, has Newport Woods neighbors wondering how much longer the city will remain the quaint Newcastle they fell in love with.

The application calls for a 76-unit, 64-foot mixed-use building set on just under an acre of land in what is now a wooded area next to Newcastle City Hall. A trail along the Olympic pipeline is about the only thing that would separate it from homes on the edge of the Newport Woods community.

If approved as is, the six-story building would be the tallest in the city.

Renton History Museum features Newcastle exhibit

The Renton History Museum partnered with the Newcastle Historical Society to create an exhibit dedicated to Newcastle’s past.

“Newcastle: Little Giant of the Eastside,” feature pictures, maps and objects from Newcastle’s coal-mining past. The exhibit has information about the cemetery, as well as the Baima House, a still-standing Pacific Coast Coal Co. house, considered among the oldest buildings in King County.

The exhibit will be on display at the Renton History Museum through February 2015.

In that year, a couple of explorers found something that would change that landscape forever — chunks of coal along a creek (later to be named Coal Creek).

The first coal wasn’t mined until 10 years later, but when it began, it was in earnest. In the 100 years between 1863 and 1963, the Newcastle coal mines produced 10.5 million tons of coal.

The coal was of good quality, and the proximity to Seattle made it an important commodity. In 1870, Seattle had only 1,107 residents, but because coal was being shipped to San Francisco and the growth of the port, that number grew to 42,837 by 1890, only 20 years later.

In 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes and General Tecumseh Sherman visited Newcastle during a trip to the Northwest. In 1886, Newcastle also had the only post office and voting district on the east side of Lake Washington, and in the late 1890s, Newcastle was the second largest town in King County with 3,000 residents.

Coal was king, but Newcastle was also a leader in the process of justice. There was a resident justice of the peace who oversaw proceedings from verbal and spousal abuse to assault and battery and murder.

Miners were frequently witnesses and jurors. The process of dispensing justice was so important that failure to appear as a witness or juror could result in a fine 50 times as great as the fine for the crime heard at trial. Jurisdiction was not limited to Newcastle. The court also heard cases from Renton, Bellevue and Issaquah.

Mine operations continued at an uneven pace in the early 1900s as demand for coal varied. In 1916, that all changed with the threat of World War I.

From 1916-1918, the mines at Newcastle produced 1 million tons of coal to support the war effort. After the war, demand dropped.

As 1929 rolled around, cheaper coal became available from Montana, oil burst onto the scene, the Depression crippled economies and a fire in Newcastle’s main bunkers caused the Pacific Coast Coal Co. to cease operations.

Newcastle was a company town and with the selling of the homes, dismantling of some buildings, removal and reuse of equipment, and the pulling up of the railroad tracks, by 1937, the town of Newcastle no longer existed.

The Pacific Coast Coal Co. moved operations out of the area, but did sell and lease land to contract-basis mining operators known as “gypos.”

Gypos went into the existing mines and cleaned out smaller pockets of coal. These smaller outfits worked the mines from 1932 until 1963, when all coal mining stopped.

During that time, they produced 536,000 tons of coal. One of the gypos, the Strain Co., strip-mined an area 80 to 90 acres in size that later became a landfill, and in 1999 became the site of The Golf Club at Newcastle.

Seattle continued to grow and the Newcastle area was a prime location as a bedroom community, so it also grew in population. In 1994, the city of Newcastle was incorporated.

The city has 150 years of history that has included discovery, growth, decline and growth again.

By Greg Farrar
Rich Crispo, Newcastle councilman, stands next to a display case with Milt Swanson’s coal miner helmet and an information poster honoring the late 95-year-old Newcastle native’s contributions to preserving the city’s history. The Renton History Museum’s Newcastle retrospective exhibit is on display until Feb. 7.

The first thing visitors see upon walking into the Renton History Museum’s Newcastle exhibit is, appropriately, a tribute to a man that means so much to the city’s history.

Milt Swanson’s mining helmet emblazoned with his name along the side greets museumgoers while sitting in a clear display case.

It’s appropriate because Swanson, the Newcastle pioneer born and raised in the community, spending 90 of his 95 years living in the same company house that still stands at the edge of town near the Cougar Mountain trailhead, cared immensely about Newcastle’s history, and made it his mission to preserve it.

Swanson passed away in January, but his memory and coal-mining history are preserved in the new exhibit, featuring many of his own artifacts.

“Milt would’ve been really, really happy,” Newcastle City Councilman Rich Crispo said of the exhibit. “It really honors not only his memory, but the memory of the city. I think it’s just great.”

“Newcastle: Little Giant of the Eastside” debuted Sept. 9 and is set to run at the Renton History Museum until Feb. 7. It features pictures, maps and objects, most on loan courtesy of the Newcastle Historical Society, from Newcastle’s coal-mining past.

It’s the first time the museum has collaborated with another historical organization, collections manager Sarah Samson said.

“Mostly, what we were trying to convey is what it was like to live in Newcastle during that time period,” she said. “It was pretty much strictly a mining town, so a large part of the exhibit focuses on the mine and life in a mining town.”

There are features about the still-standing Baima House and the Newcastle Cemetery, as well as a wall-sized present-day map pinpointing several historical locations.

“People can figure out, my house is here, but this is what used to be here,” Samson said.

The artifacts range from mining tools to wine-making devices, because, as Samson noted, “there were a lot of Italians” in Newcastle. But it’s not the exhibit objects that stand out, Crispo said, it’s the history behind them.

“The artifacts themselves are not as important to me as the stories that they tell,” he said. “The best part about all of this for me, is that if somebody were to say, ‘Tell me a little bit about this picture,’ I can tell them a story. I learned so many stories from Milt that I’m able to do that with just about everything that’s in here.”

It made sense to do an exhibit about Renton’s Newcastle neighbor, because there is so much shared history among the cities, Samson said.

“The exhibit is a really good comprehensive introduction to Newcastle history,” she said. “Personally, I am a history person, but I think it’s really important to understand the history of where you’re living.”

Newcastle’s coal-mining history dates back to the mid 1800s, when the city was second only to Seattle in population.

The Newcastle mining site operated for about 100 years, until the mid-1900s. Workers extracted nearly 11 million tons of coal during that period.

Vestiges of that history remain scattered across the city in the form of landmarks such as the Baima House, a century-old company house that used to house miners and their families, and the Newcastle Cemetery, the final resting place for a number of Newcastle pioneers.

The stories and the history of the people that set the foundation to make Newcastle what it is today are now on display in a special Renton History Museum exhibit, “Newcastle: Little Giant of the Eastside.”

In it you will see the faces of the men, women and children who called Newcastle home during its coal-mining heyday; the tools that workers used to extract the coal; and a special tribute to the late Milt Swanson, the Newcastle pioneer who deservedly gets much of the credit for championing the preservation of the city’s history.

Every resident that calls Newcastle home should make an effort to see this exhibit. It should be mandatory viewing for every single person working at City Hall. Anyone that has a stake in Newcastle’s future needs to make it down to the Renton History Museum.

As the saying goes, “You have to know where you’ve been, to know where you’re going.”

We once used this space to decry the lack of attention paid to preservation of the city’s history. It is now so thrilling to see Newcastle’s story not only being shared, but also celebrated in both this exhibit and display cases of artifacts at City Hall.

The Renton History Museum spared no detail in bringing Newcastle’s history to life, but the exhibit is only temporary. At some point, the artifacts Swanson so graciously donated to the Newcastle Historical Society will need to find a permanent home.

Our hope is that one day, the city can fund its own museum to house the treasures of its past.

Contributed
Invasive mudsnails like the ones above have been found in May Creek.

A King County report confirmed the positive identification of invasive New Zealand mudsnails residing in May Creek, according to a city of Newcastle news release.

The mudsnails were positively identified just upstream of a culvert crossing with Lake Washington Boulevard and could be throughout the watershed.

The millimeter-sized snails are harmful because they are a non-native species with no natural predators. They can multiply very quickly and have the potential to become a serious economic and ecological problem for the Puget Sound region.

Special decontamination precautions or dedicated gear should be used when working in the watershed. The city offered the following tips to prevent the mudsnails’ spread:

• Don’t move damp or muddy clothing and gear between water bodies.
• Clean your gear at the site.
• Completely dry your clothes and gear in a dryer on high heat for at least 2 hours or air dry for at least 48 hours.
• If you visit streams, lakes, rivers, or wetlands frequently, then it is recommended you retire any felt-soled waders or wading boots and replace with rubber-soled boots.

Learn more about New Zealand mudsnails here.

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has recognized 82 cities — including Newcastle — that have been chosen as a Tree City USA for their efforts in keeping urban forests healthy and vibrant. It is the sixth year Newcastle has been recognized as a Tree City.

Washington celebrated Arbor Day on April 10. There are events in communities throughout the state during the month of April to celebrate Arbor Day.

To be acknowledged as a Tree City USA by the Arbor Day Foundation, a city must designate staff to care for trees, appoint a citizen tree board to advocate for community forestry, establish a tree ordinance, spend at least $2 per capita on tree care and celebrate Arbor Day.

Learn how to properly plant and care for new trees by going to the International Society of Arboriculture website at www.treesaregood.com.

Ten years ago this week, King County Sheriff’s Deputy Richard Herzog was tragically killed in the line of duty while working in the city of Newcastle. Herzog had worked in Newcastle for several years and knew many of the residents and businesses.

“One thing we most often hear from people about the way they remember Rich is his great connection with the public,” said Newcastle Police Chief Melinda Irvine.  “Citizens knew Rich and enjoyed interacting with him.”

This year, the City of Newcastle and the King County Sheriff’s Office will honor Rich’s memory by honoring the way Rich interacted with the public he served at Police Day in the Park from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on June 23 at Lake Boren Park.

Residents will be able to check out tools used in law enforcement, meet patrol officers and special investigations deputies and interact as a family to learn how to solve crime via a CSI Newcastle demonstration, where kids of all ages can search for clues.

There will be K9 and marine unit demonstrations, members of search and rescue and members of the 911 communication center on hand. Guardian One, the KCSO helicopter, will also be onsite for residents to view.

The AFIS unit, or the fingerprinting unit, will also be available for residents.

Car stolen from driveway

A man reported his 1991 red Volkswagen Golf was stolen from his driveway on the 12100 block of Southeast 75 Place on Aug. 26. The theft was believed to have occurred around 4:15 a.m., and the car was worth about $1,500.

Assault arrest

A 35-year-old woman was arrested for fourth degree assault on Aug. 29 at her Coal Creek Parkway apartment after she reportedly bit and hit her male roommate. The incident was reported at about 12:30 that morning.

Trailer spray painted with gang signs

A trailer registered to the Talerico Excavation Company out of Puyallup was reportedly spray painted with gang-related symbols on the 7100 block of 133 Avenue Southeast sometime between Aug. 19 and Aug. 22. The vandalism will cost about $200 to paint over.

Personal items stolen, window broken in vehicle prowl

A woman reported her $220 Coach purse and her $250 iPod Touch were stolen from her Honda Odyssey after someone broke in through the front passenger window, causing $480 worth of damage. The incident occurred sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. Aug. 24 at Cougar Mountain Park.

Baby stroller swiped

A baby stroller was reportedly stolen from a Newcastle man’s 2011 Volkswagen Toureg sometime between Aug. 21 and the morning of Aug. 22 on the 7000 block of 115 Court Southeast. The stroller was worth about $720.

MIP given to 14-year-old

A 14-year-old boy was arrested for minor in possession of alcohol and released to the custody of his mother after an officer found him hiding in some bushes located near 132 Place Southeast on Aug. 24. The officer recognized the boy from a previous runaway bulletin, and the mother said they were looking into youth at risk programs for the boy.

House ransacked while owners ate lunch

About $6,500 worth of electronic equipment, silver coins, baseball cards and jewelry, including two wedding rings, was stolen in a residential burglary Aug. 25 on the 13000 block of Southeast 79 Drive.  The burglary occurred between 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., as the homeowners left the house to go to lunch.

Car stolen

A 1996 green Honda Civic was stolen from the 14000 block of Southeast 85^th Street on Sept. 3. The vehicle was worth about $3,000.

Two congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Newcastle area will hold a one-day food drive to refill the inventories of local food bank Sept. 17.

The first annual event was held last year, which raised 4,500 pounds of food for the Emergency Feeding Program. In total, more than 30,000 pounds of food to six Eastside food banks along with $8,000 in cash.

“We were able to feed 5,000 people six meals each,” said Robert Johnson, president of the Bellevue South Stake, who oversees 10 congregations in five cities.

“We are striving to be members of the community, helping our neighbors, strangers, those our members may not interact with just on Sundays,” Johnson said.

Church members will leave fliers on doors the week prior to the food drive. Residents can set food out on their doorstep for pick up, or donate canned food at any local participating grocery store.

All food collected within the Newcastle area will be provided to the Emergency Feeding Program.