Snohomish: Charm Without the Kitsch

The Historic District along First Street in Snohomish has hit just the right level of quaint, not too twee nor too shabby. There is nothing Disneyfied about the place. Sure there are cute shops and cafes, but there are also three bars. Not sanitized fern bars. Decent dive bars where any self-respecting drinker can be guaranteed to find company in the middle of the day. That’s Snohomish: beer and champagne.

Walking along the street, the dichotomy is exemplified by looking at the banks of the Snohomish River. Design shops and restaurants on one bank, lumber mill on the other. Snohomish has gussied itself up as a tourist destination but hasn’t lost sight of the fact that people still live and work in the industries that created the town in the first place.

Snohomish started out as Cadyville in 1859, springing up from the local lumber mill, the steamboat line and the Seattle, Lakeshore & Eastern Railroad. The town has had its economic booms and busts; in the mid 1960s civic leaders planned to demolish most of the historic buildings along First Street to make way for an enclosed shopping mall. Luckily, financing for the project never materialized. Today most of the historic business district is on the National Register of Historic Places.

There are boutique clothing stores, antique malls, organic juice bars, and not one but two cupcake shops. And there is the Snohomish Pie Company which often ends up on “best of” media lists. You can walk off your desert indulgence (no reason to choose between cupcake and pie) along the paved river walk along the Snohomish River.