By LARRY LANGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The first white settler, James Entwistle, canoed up the Snoqualmie River in 1858 and homesteaded in what is now part of the town. The settlement that grew at the confluence of the Snoqualmie and Tolt rivers originally was named Tolt, which means "rushing water" in the Snoqualmie language. The name change to Carnation happened almost a century after Entwistle arrived.

Entwistle tried farming hops but failed when prices dropped. He turned to cattle and other crops and ran a trading post near Everett for a time. He drowned in Elliott Bay in 1902, but his place in Carnation's history is memorialized in the name of one of the town's busier streets.

Logging became the town's biggest industry late in the 19th century. Boats hauled logs to mills and lumber to markets. Later, the Great Northern and the Milwaukee railroads came to town, taking over that job and carrying passengers to and from Seattle.

"I remember kids sitting on a fence and seeing 100 carloads of logs come out of here in a day," says Wes Larson, 83, whose grandfather, John Larson, built an early-day sawmill in town.

Early in the 20th century there were several such mills, including a shingle mill that roared away on a hill north of town, old-timers recall. Those that weren't destroyed by fire eventually closed for lack of logs to mill. "It's all been logged," says Isabel Jones, Wes Larson's sister and president of the town's historical society.

With the coming of the highway and the drying up of the big timber, the railroads left the town, first the Great Northern in 1917 followed by the Milwaukee in 1973.

By that time the town's permanent namesake appeared. The Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Co., which began operating in Kent in 1899, was renamed Carnation after founder Eldridge Stuart noticed that brand name on a box of cigars in Seattle's Pioneer Square, not far from the company's office.

The name "just struck him then," says Marie Nelson, spokeswoman for Nestle USA, which bought Carnation in 1985. Carnation, as a symbol, meant something "enduring, wholesome. That was the impetus behind it."

"He checked with the patent office to see if anyone had rights to Carnation for milk products, and no one did," Nelson says.

In 1910, Stuart begin buying acreage and built a huge dairy farm six miles north of town. The dairy still stands today, operating as a working dairy and training center for Nestle.

Long before the white settlers came, the valley was home to the Snoqualmie Indians. Though they lost much to encroaching settlers, the tribe recently won federal recognition, a move that may help them reassert themselves in the valley. They opened an office seven years ago in the town's historic Eagles Hall, just off Tolt Avenue near the town's south entrance.

"This is our tradition ground, so we decided to come home," says Mary Ann Hinzman, tribal vice chairman.