The most successful early pioneer in the Valley was Jeremiah Borst, who arrived in the spring of 1858 over the Cedar River trail from the eastern side of the mountains.

He settled in the area that formerly held Fort Alden, and used his sales of pigs and apples in Seattle to buy out much of the surrounding land from other settlers.

The first lumber mill in the Snoqualmie Valley was established at the mouth of Tokul Creek around 1872 by Watson Allen.

Within five years, there were 12 logging operations on the Snoqualmie River, providing lumber to the entire Seattle region.

This extremely successful venture (billed as "The Largest Hop Ranch in the World") would fall prey to a combination of market and pest factors, and fell into relative obscurity by the end of the 1890s.

In response, a group of Seattle entrepreneurs funded and built their own railway in an attempt to cross the Cascade Range.

The oral history of the area places the first residents of Snoqualmie as Edmund and Louisa Kinsey, who established the first hotel, livery, general store, dance hall, post office, and meat market – in addition to helping build the first church in the town.

This development provided both power and jobs to the region, and a small company town grew up near the falls to house the workers.

In response to these high prices, people had created a large "squatting" community, building where they wanted regardless of land ownership or interests.

The first challenge that the city council faced was lowering lot prices and migrating these buildings off the public right-of way, establishing the basic layout of the town that exists to this day.

For the first half of the century, the timber industry provided the city and valley with a stable source of income and employment, even as World War I drew away workers and the Great Depression took its toll across the nation.

This prosperity was moderated during the Depression, and with the changes in culture and mobility in the latter half of the century, Snoqualmie and the majority of the valley stagnated.

The city was bypassed when US-10 was built across the Cascades (now Interstate 90), and this led to a shift in commerce to the east (into North Bend) and west (into the Bellevue/Issaquah areas).

The city council has continued to balance the desire to retain the rural and historical feel of Snoqualmie with the needs of a growing population.

While dairies were a significant local industry into the early 1950s, agriculture is no longer a major economic force in the community.

With the completion of Interstate 90 in the 1970s, Snoqualmie became more accessible to Seattle and the Eastside region, resulting in more residents working in the communities to the west.

The Snoqualmie Ridge Business Park was developed in the 1990s on 180 acres (73 ha) of land that was divided into parcels for over a dozen facilities.

The business park's major employers include Space Labs,[citation needed] Motion Water Sports, Technical Glass, T-Mobile, Zetec, and the King County Department of Permitting and Environmental Review.

[13] Philips Oral Healthcare has hundreds of employees in Snoqualmie that manufacture the Sonicare electric toothbrush.

[17] In April 2013, the city of Snoqualmie retained the Economic Development Council of Seattle and King County (EDC) to conduct research and make recommendations that would guide and support a marketing effort aimed at increasing occupancy in the Snoqualmie Ridge Business Park.

On March 8, 2014, the Snoqualmie Police Department began providing law enforcement services to the neighboring city of North Bend.

[25] The city of Snoqualmie has designated the following landmark: Many of the exterior shots for David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks television series and movie (Fire Walk with Me) were filmed in Snoqualmie and in the neighboring towns of North Bend and Fall City.