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Rainwater that can always be counted on, wide open valleys, and rolling hills are make the ideal farm ground. Washington has been known to have some of the best grain farming in the country. Yearly rain water and ideal weather conditions have created Edgewood’s fertile valley. Puyallup Indian tribes enjoyed the valley’s fertility long before Europeans settled in. Fishing salmon was their primary commodity along with gathering and hunting. William Fraser Tolmie was the first in a group of 34 Europeans to travel through the Puyallup valleys on their way to Fort Nisqually in 1833. Tolmie was a well known Scottish surgeon, scientist, fur trader and politician in his time. After he and an Indian guide went through the Puyallup territory several other settlers became interested in settling the area.

The following spring 34 people from 5 of the families returned to Edgewood to begin farming. After dozens of claims were purchased by settlers and the railroad, European settlements became widely popular and began to push out the northwest Indian tribes. Tutors in Edgewood can help you learn more on the native tribes in the city. The area became a territory, leaving the native people to be forced into a reservation with talks of treaties. In 1854 the Puyallup and neighboring tribes decided to work with the US government in creating the Treaty of Medicine Creek. This included several territories and reserved several rights, including fishing. Originally a total of 1,280 acres was designated to the tribe’s reservation. However, soon after the treaty was revised and the reservation was enlarged to 18,062 acres. Much of the land became dedicated to farming oats and hay on natural meadows.

Not too many years later the treaty opened the land for sale to non-natives in effort to encourage farming in the area. Selected acreage was publicly auction and more land would not be sold for another 10 years. Unfortunately, when those 10 years came half of the reservation was sold to non natives. Thankfully, the majority of the land sold was put into farming rather than development. Edgewood slowly developed, adding a school in a log cabin whose first teacher Mrs. Morris is credited for naming the town after her hometown in Maryland. Edgewood also sat along a an interurban line that ran from Tacoma to Seattle. Interurban trails and their street cars became the new “go-to” form of transportation in the early 1900s. Between several world wars and depression in the nation, interurban trails in the US yo yoed between being successful and failing completely. Eventually, the interurban trail between Tacoma and Seattle was neglected and forgotten. The trail became abandoned. Luckily, many efforts have been put in to restore the trail. Much of the trial is still abandoned but a vision remains that one day people will be able to walk from Tacoma to Seattle using the same route.