About Us

The purpose of the Snowden Community Council is to be actively involved in the welfare, environment, and orderly growth of the community.

Snowden Community Council Bylaws

Snowden Community Council Organization

The Council

• The Snowden Community Council is currently comprised of a 10-member board. September 2022 Elected Council Members, Officers, and their Terms:
  • Bob Connor – Board Member and Fire Commissioner Fire District #3, thru 2026
  • Roger Gadway – Current Chair, thru 2024
  • Charles “Chuck” Kliesh – Treasurer, thru 2026
  • Bea Lackaff – Secretary (Pro-Tem, not council), thru 2024
  • Tom Montag- Board Member and Fire Commissioner Fire District #3, thru 2024
  • Lloyd Olson – Vice-Chair, thru 2024 (?)
  • Jenn Sharp – Board Member, thru 2026
  • Chris Stein – Board Member, thru 2026

Bylaws

Origin of the Snowden Community Council

Told by Roger Gadway-

I purchased land in the Snowden area with my then wife, Diane in 1974.  We moved onto the land in 1975 to begin constructing a house and life here.  We were attracted to the rural open natural setting with drier (than Portland) weather but still having forests as well as open fields.  Land was also considerably cheaper than land in Oregon where we had looked previously.  

At that time most of the people in Snowden either ran cattle or raised hay and had fairly large holdings.  There were also loggers and mill workers who might have purchased a small parcel to live on and build a modest dwelling.  This enabled them to live economically through periods of unemployment.  The area was considered to be ‘economically depressed’.  Most of the area was open range where cattle had the right to go anywhere that they weren’t properly fenced out of, although part of the central area was in a ‘herd law district’ where cattle had to be kept in.  Telephone service was via 10 party lines where each party had a different ring.  Fires were also announced by a special ring to summon volunteers to the antiquated equipment located in lower Snowden by the cherry orchards.  (That is why the current fire station is called ‘Cherry Lane.’)  The volunteers were generally loggers who were experienced fighting fires in the woods but had no special training fighting house fires but showed up when summoned.  They may or may not have been able to get water out of the trucks once they came up the hill and arrived.  Engines may, or may not have started.  Or, rust in the tanks may have fallen off and clogged the system while driving to the fire.  Roads in the area were plowed so that school busses could get through, but there was seldom any gravel applied during icy conditions.  Snowden Road was paved out past Mt. Brook and a stretch of Bates Rd. was paved, but most roads were gravel and curvier.  Some were impassable.  Guard rails were non-existent.   

In the winter of 74-75 there was a bank foreclosure on 1400 acres of land scattered throughout Snowden.  The sale of that land was handled by an out of the area real estate company called ‘Frontier Lands.’   Fire sale prices prompted a dramatic pickup in real estate activity.  

The first thing that drew the community’s attention was a proposal to build an airstrip along N. Major Cr. Road.  The agents selling the land had purchased some of the property themselves and intended to develop lots and sell them to people in Seattle to fly to.  They had retained a 60’ easement along the road and planned to use that (along with the public roadway) as a landing strip.  (We learned later that they also planned to use the easement to pipe water from a pond and wells that they would construct to create a lake in a dry valley further up Major Cr. Rd.)  This proposal brought all of the neighbors together to oppose this plan which would have planes taking off and landing over their homes and generally bring significant unwanted activity into the place to which they had moved for its bucolic values.  That plan was defeated, in part because the county had no right to allow the road to be used as a runway, and because land owners objected to having to cross an air-strip to reach their property.   

In the process of researching the airstrip issue, we became aware of the development plans that were being hatched.  A couple sub-divisions were being proposed for intensive development and short plats were being filed on many of the properties sold in the bank sale.  These short plats allowed land to be divided without any of the surveys or road building required for sub-divisions, and were being approved with little scrutiny or fact checking.  Land was being sold by drawing lines on aerial photographs.  Sometimes adjacent property buyers disagreed about who owned a particular desirable feature. 

At the same time as this was happening, the county was starting to implement the state mandate that all land be zoned.  (Previously all the land outside of the White Salmon area was listed as “Unmapped usage” which allowed lots to be sold as small as ½ acre.)  Zoning maps were being advanced by a ‘Land Use Committee’ which advised the planning department.  The committee consisted mainly of real estate professionals plus some land owners who were interested in selling their land.  All of the land from White Salmon out to the East end of Bates Rd. was mapped as 2-acre minimum lots, with all the land further out mapped as 5-acre minimum.  Additionally, a sizeable chunk on the lower end of Courtney Rd. (which at the time was nearly impassable and not even clearly located) was mapped for ½-acre minimum.  Needless to say, we were alarmed about what we found out.  There was clearly no infrastructure for such development.  Where would the water come from?  Surely there weren’t nearly as many people wanting to move up here as lots were being created.  We realized that the people buying the land were expected to petition the county to create the roads and other needed infrastructure that the ‘developers’ were not providing.  Meanwhile the land served as a speculative investment that could be sold, divided, and re-sold, with sales commissions created by each sale.  

A petition was created demanding that all of the land above Locke Hill be zoned 20-acre minimum, the largest minimum available and that the current process be paused.  A sizeable group of people went door to door and contacted all of the residences in the area.  Most people were happy to sign.  We then called a community meeting at the newly constructed fire station in its current location.  90 people attended the meeting in the middle of a snow storm.  The planning department was called upon to explain the situation and a county commissioner attended.  The commissioner apparently expected to explain local reality to a bunch of newcomers, and was flabbergasted to see local ranchers and farmers that he knew by name in the crowd.  The crowd voted 85 to 5 to support 20-acre zoning for the area, and the people from below Locke Hill asked to be included.  The planning department recommended that we form a community council.   Community Councils had been authorized by the state to help plan the new zoning.  That was how the how the energy of Snowden residents gave birth to the Snowden Community Council.  It has and continues to represent the interests of Snowden residents these last 45 years.