12: The Plateau Was Built on Horseback
The Plateau Was Built on Horseback
Before Sammamish was a city with a Costco headquarters four milesaway and a spot on Money magazine’s best-places list, it was chickenfarms, dairy farms, and open land, and for a lot of families who livedhere through the 1970s and 80s, it was horse country. That historyhasn’t disappeared. It’s just gotten quieter, tucked into a handful ofboarding barns, a genuinely dedicated riders’ club, and trails thatstill carry the word “horse” in their rules even as the plateau aroundthem filled in with rooflines.
My stepfather lived here through the 1970s and into the 80s, on aplot of land on the Pine Lake side of what’s now Klahanie. They kepthorses, and rode them under the power lines and across the open landthat’s now the neighborhood’s own Powerline Trail, the same stretchresidents walk, run, and bike today without necessarily knowing what itused to be. A ride usually meant a trip down to Sadlier’s Country Store,near where the Pine Lake QFC sits now, where a hitching post out frontsaw as much use as the parking lot. It’s a detail that’s easy to losetrack of on a plateau that’s grown as fast as this one has: twenty yearsbefore Klahanie was a neighborhood, it was still a place you’d ride ahorse to the store.
A hitching post at the general store
Sadlier’s Market, Pine Lake (Sammamish, WA)
Sadlier’s Country Store, known as Braden’s before that, sat at what’snow 2902 228th Avenue SE, the current address of the Pine Lake QFC (the building itself stood roughly where August Moon Chinese Restaurant istoday). Roy and Arminta Braden built it in 1946 and opened it in 1948;Joe Sadlier bought it around 1968 and the Sadlier name stuck until thestore closed in 1984. It was the only store on the plateau that soldmeat in its later years, which helped it outlast its smaller counterpartacross the lake. And it had a hitching post out front that localsgenuinely used, a detail confirmed independently by a 2011 Seattle Timespiece, in which a resident who arrived on the plateau in 1981specifically remembered horses tied up next to the cars right up untilthe store closed a few years later.
The Sammamish Saddle Club
The plateau’s horse community never fully went away, it organized.The Sammamish Saddle Club has spent years working to keep equestriantrail access intact as development filled in around it, includingreconstructing a trail link that was severed by a new housingdevelopment. The club’s advocacy work runs deeper than trailmaintenance, too: former club vice president Michelle Petitti’s horseadvocacy on the plateau led directly to her serving on the SammamishCity Council, a nice reminder that the horse community here has realcivic weight, not just a hobbyist’s footprint.
Today the club maintains an “adopt-a-trail” relationship with agenuine loop: Soaring Eagle Regional Park connects through the HazelWolf Wetlands (managed by the land trust Forterra) to Beaver Lake Parkand back, a roughly two-hour ride if you’re doing the whole thing onhorseback.
Where to ride and board today
RockMeadow Equestrian Center, on SE 34th Street, isthe plateau’s best-known boarding and training facility: a 10-acreproperty surrounded by more than 100 acres of pasture, wetlands, andtrails, with both an indoor and outdoor arena and ahunter/jumper-focused instruction program for riders from beginnerthrough competitive levels. A handful of other boarding and trainingoperations, including Gold Creek Equestrian Center, Red Gate FarmTraining, and Tashunka (which started in 2002 as a youth horsemanshipand leadership program before growing into full boarding and training),round out the options for anyone looking to keep a horse on the plateautoday.
The trails that still say“horse”
Equestrian use is folded into the plateau’s existing trail systemrather than set apart in its own network. Soaring Eagle RegionalPark carries real equestrian trail access as part of the SaddleClub’s adopted loop. Duthie Hill’s shared multi-usetrails are open to hikers, trail runners, and horses alongside mountainbikers, with horses holding the right of way. It’s a small detail, butit’s a real one: even a mountain bike park built in 2010 was designedwith the plateau’s older horse culture in mind, not around it.
Where things sit
Official City of Sammamish street mapannotated with callouts for Klahanie and the Powerline Trail, RockMeadowEquestrian Center, and Soaring Eagle Park
Base map: City of Sammamish Public Works – Engineering – GIS,Sammamish Street Map (April 13, 2016). Callouts and markers added by us,plotted from real coordinates; not an official city product.
This is a supplementary post in our Why Sammamish? series. We’realso looking into the plateau’s other historic general stores, includingBarker’s Store (Pine View Grocery) on the other side of Pine Lake, for afuture post and companion video in our Then & Now series.
Kelly Azzarello Real Estate | Compass 📧 kelly@kellyazzarello.com 📞(425) 830-6457 🌐 kellyazzarello.com
