Editing Roslyn, Washington (section)

===Early history===
[[Coal]] deposits were first noted in the Roslyn area in 1883, with a large vein discovered at the upper Smith Creek canyon in 1885 by C.P. Brosious, Walter J. Reed, and Ignatius A. Navarre.<ref name="majors">{{cite book| last = Majors| first = Harry M.| title = Exploring Washington| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=CoWrPQAACAAJ| date = November 1, 1975| publisher = Van Winkle Publishing Co| isbn = 978-0-918664-00-6| pages = 89–90 }}</ref>  Roslyn was [[plat]]ted in 1886 by Logan M. Bullet, vice president of the Northern Pacific Coal Company, at the time that the company initiated the first commercial coal mining operations there, to support railway operations.<ref name="BlackPast">Goodloe, Trevor. "[http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/roslyn-washington Roslyn, Washington (1886-- )]". [[BlackPast.org]]. Retrieved January 19, 2018.</ref>

Throughout the mid-1880s, the [[Northern Pacific Railway]], the parent of Northern Pacific Coal Company, pushed from the east to reach [[Puget Sound]] across the [[Cascade Mountains]]. The Northern Pacific began building across [[Stampede Pass]] just west of Roslyn, approaching from [[Wallula, Washington|Wallula]] in the east and [[Tacoma, Washington|Tacoma]] in the west. A 77-mile (124-km) gap remained in 1886. In January of that year, Nelson Bennett was given a contract to construct a 9,850&nbsp;foot (3,002&nbsp;m) tunnel under Stampede Pass, completing it in 1888. Roslyn, which lies on the route to Stampede Pass, provided the coal for the railway construction work as well as the continuing railroad operations.

Between 1886 and 1929, immigrant workers from countries such as [[Italy]], [[Poland]], [[Slovakia]], [[Germany]], [[Lithuania]], [[Slovenia]], [[Serbia]] and [[Croatia]] as well as from [[England]], [[Ireland]], [[Scotland]] and [[Wales]] came to work in the mines.<ref>{{Cite web |title=City of Roslyn |url=https://www.ci.roslyn.wa.us/ |access-date=2025-03-13 |website=www.ci.roslyn.wa.us}}</ref>

In 1892, 45 miners were killed in an explosion at Mine No. 1 near Roslyn, the deadliest mining accident in [[Washington (state)|Washington]] history.<ref>{{cite news| last=Meyers | first=Donald W. | title=It Happened Here: Explosion kills 45 miners in Roslyn | newspaper=Yakima Herald-Republic | date=May 5, 2019 | url=https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/happened/it-happened-here-explosion-kills-45-miners-in-roslyn/article_670c38e7-dba6-574e-bc06-03f4c4231abf.html | access-date=June 7, 2024}}</ref>

Roslyn's [[peak coal]] mine production of nearly 2 million tons was reached in 1910. As coal-fired steam trains were being replaced by [[diesel locomotive|diesel]] power, the last mine in the area closed in 1963 as business became unprofitable.

As Roslyn was a "[[company town]]", life in the early years was centered around the production of coal. Most of the citizens of the town worked either for the Northern Pacific Coal Company or in one of the smaller businesses monopolized by the company, or were family members of someone who did. A hub of life in the town was the [[Northwestern Improvement Company Store]], now listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]]; it still stands at the corner of First Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.<ref name=nris-2>{{NRISref|2013a|dateform=mdy|access-date=September 9, 2017|refnum=73001881|name=Northwestern Improvement Company Store}}</ref>

Most of the town's 500 homes were built in the 1920s on land owned by the railroad. The 1920s-era commercial district consisted of four square blocks, of which about one dozen buildings remain as representatives of western frontier commercial architecture. Roslyn has many examples of [[Victorian architecture|Victorian]] elegance in its surviving buildings, as well as simple miner's shacks. The town of Roslyn was listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]] in 1978.<ref name=nris-1>{{NRISref|2013a|dateform=mdy|access-date=September 9, 2017|refnum=78002760|name=Roslyn Historic District}}</ref>