From the desk of Evan Robb

Since 1969, residents of the Central Washington towns of Roslyn and Cle Elum have named an annual Pioneer Queen–a woman whose life and contributions to the community embody the history of Upper Kittitas County.

Erin Krake, librarian at the Roslyn Public Library, wanted to shine a light of the story of these women, “who built [our] town from the grown up, just as their men did so from the coal mines beneath it.” Beginning in 2012, Krake, and a team of local volunteers began digitizing the documentary evidence of these lives, by directly interviewing surviving Pioneer Queens and scanning their family photograph collections.

The Pioneer Queens of Upper Kittitas County Collection is the result of that effort, which the Roslyn Public Library envisions as an ongoing, multi-year project to tell the story of the settling of Roslyn and the surrounding area from the women’s point of view. According to Krake: “In each case, the stories are vibrant and unique, containing the common themes of family, food, work and play, good times and hard ones.”