A history of Cosmopolis,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Cosmopolis from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The area around the mouth of the Chehalis River is the ancestral home of indigenous Coast Salish peoples who are today referred to as the Lower Chehalis. The first white settler in the area, James Pilkington, staked a Donation Land Act claim to 155.5 acres (62.9 ha) on the south bank of the river in 1852. The site was later used for unsuccessful negotiations between indigenous representatives and the Washington territorial government for the 1855 Chehalis River Treaty. Pilkington built a cabin on the land, but later sold the property in 1853 to Kentucky-born emigrants David F. Byles and Austin E. Young. Byles and Young proposed a plat for a town named Cosmopolis on the south bank of the Chehalis River. The origin of the name is unclear; one account is that it came from an indigenous chief's name, and another claims that an earlier settler asked for a name that means "city of the whole w…
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Cosmopolis’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
3 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewSaw mill on the Chehalis River at…, c. 1892: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Cosmopolis
See all 1 →Cosmopolis, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Saw mill on the Chehalis River at Cosmopolis, ca. 1892 (c. 1892) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (5) and the Library of Congress (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.