Train Lore, the CKC, & Kirkland History

Matt McCauley will speak to the Rotary Club of Kirkland on the topic of train lore as it relates to club’s railroad project on the Cross Kirkland Corridor, Northern Pacific Railway, Lake Washington Belt Line, and Kirkland history. The Cross Kirkland Corridor is a 5.75-mile rail trail and linear park in the city of Kirkland, Washington. It is Kirkland's segment of the multi-city Eastside Rail Corridor on the Eastside Seattle suburbs. After acquisition, the corridor was approved by the city for future light rail and other transit use.

A native Kirklander, Matthew W. McCauley has written about his hometown's history for over 20 years. He combed through the Kirkland Heritage Society and governmental archives, local collections, and private photographs of Kirkland's earliest families. Here, he presents many never-before published images, providing a taste of the adventure and the triumphs over often-overwhelming adversity that shaped Kirkland's earliest decades.

Matt McCauley's family built a house on Juanita's Little Finn Hill in 1963, the year before his birth. When Matt was a young boy, Juanita was part of unincorporated King County and it still had a rural sensibility. In his early years he was surrounded by woods, undeveloped wetlands, livestock grazing in pastures, dirt roads with wheel ruts, and a scattering of neighbors, most of whom knew one another. Matt moved to Mercer Island in 1976 and graduated from Mercer Island High School in 1982. He returned to Kirkland in 1988 and participated in the Kirkland Heritage Society's 1993 resurrection. He was the founding editor of its award-winning newsletter, Blackberry Preserves. McCauley is an alumnus of both Seattle University, where he majored in journalism, and Seattle University School of Law.