Seattle Environs Places

Snohomish

Snohomish is an undeniably quaint and quiet residential town. First Street is the center of the historic district, where elegant 19th-century buildings now house shops, restaurants, and small inns. Dutch Colonial-style homes, English-style cottages, and gingerbread Queen Annes are close-set along the narrow lanes. Not surprisingly, the town is the self-proclaimed "Antiques Capital of the Northwest," with more than 400 stores, shops, and vendors selling old treasures.

A string of former logging and mining towns lines Highway 2 southeast of Snohomish. Sultan, at the confluence of the Sultan and Skykomish rivers, was founded as a gold-mining settlement, and some folks still pan the river. Gold Bar, a rough mining camp in the 1800s, is now a quiet resort town. Follow signs on First Street to the 2-mi trail winding uphill to 250-foot Wallace Falls, one of the highest waterfalls in the northern Cascades. East of Skykomish, U.S. 2 crosses the Cascade crest along 4,061-foot-high Stevens Pass; farther east is the faux-Bavarian village of Leavenworth. Wenatchee, the orchard-filled apple capital of Washington, sits even closer to the sunrise in a valley at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia rivers.