Roslyn, Washington — Twenty-Six Cemeteries Explain the Town

Roslyn's historic cemeteries may tell the mining story better than the surviving industrial buildings.

Coal companies recruited workers from around the world beginning in the 1880s. Croatians, Italians, Slovaks, Serbs, Germans, African Americans and many others brought languages, religions and mutual-aid societies into the upper Kittitas Valley.

Those affiliations followed people into separate burial grounds.

The result is a remarkable collection of adjoining cemeteries associated with ethnic, religious and fraternal organizations.

Roslyn also became important in Black history when African American miners were recruited during an 1888 labor dispute. Many stayed, establishing one of Washington's notable early Black communities.

Coal eventually declined.

Preservation and tourism supplied another public identity, amplified when Northern Exposure used Roslyn as its fictional Alaska setting.

The television landmarks are easier to photograph.

The cemeteries explain who actually built the town.