Who were the Pioneers of the McCleary area?

We have an exciting new project at the Museum.  We want to find out who was here in the McCleary Area before Washington became a state.  We know some information about who was here in 1900 but the records for earlier are a little harder to find.

The state Historical Society is pushing to put together a database of all the pioneers of Washington state that arrived before Statehood in 1889.  We are using that as a challenge to collect that information for as many of our Pioneer families as we can.

We feel that it will benefit not only that Statewide project, but give us valuable information that can be used and shared in our Museum.

We know the Beck and Anderson families were early arrivals to the area.  I also think that the Hicklin, Forbes, and Sine families were in the area pretty early. There are many listed on the 1900 census for Summit that were probably here before 1889 but I don’t have proof for any of that yet.

If you are willing to help, the research on this topic will be ongoing until at least 2026.  The state website lists all the rules and what we need to submit to the State wide database.  Check it out at

Website:         https://wasgs.org/cpage.php?pt=96

For more information, email WAPioneerPursuit@gmail.com

If  you are interested in helping with this project contact the museum. Or Karen Lystad at lystadk@olynet.com.