Most of our guests meet Cle Elum as a supply run. It's the nearest town with a full grocery store, about fifteen minutes east of us on I-90, and that's how the trip usually starts: someone forgot coffee.
It's worth more than that. Cle Elum is a coal town that never got tidied up into a theme, and an afternoon there is one of the better rainy-day answers in this valley. The name comes from the Kittitas language and means "swift water," a name the city notes was given to "a river, a town, and also a beautiful tranquil lake." The town incorporated on February 12, 1902, and the 2010 census counted 1,872 people.
Here's what's actually worth your time, with the practical details.
Start on First Street
Downtown is a few walkable blocks, and two of the businesses on it are older than most of the state's institutions.
The Cle Elum Bakery has been running since 1906. The Osmonovich family bought it in 1947 and still owns it, and the made-from-scratch French bread still goes through the building's century-old brick oven. Look for the red brick building with the emerald green sign. Go early; weekend mornings clear the cases.
Owens Meats opened in 1887, two years before Washington was a state. It was founded in Roslyn by Morgan Owens, moved to its current First Street spot in 1937, and now has five generations of the family involved in running it. They put the claim carefully on their own history page, and so will we: "It is thought that Owens Meats is the oldest continuously operated family business in Kittitas County and perhaps one of the oldest in the state of Washington." It's a proper butcher counter and a smokehouse, which makes it a useful stop when you've got a cabin kitchenette and a fire pit waiting.
Two small museums, and one very good story
The Telephone Museum at 221 East 1st Street is the one to prioritize, because the building is the exhibit. Until September 18, 1966, every call in or out of Cle Elum went through an operator physically plugging and unplugging wires inside it. The town was the last place in the entire Pacific Northwest Bell service area — Washington, Oregon, and northern Idaho — to get rotary dial phones. When Bell finally cut it over, it handed the building and its equipment to the Northern Kittitas County Historical Society, which runs it today. The city describes it as "the oldest complete telephone museum west of the Mississippi," covering telephone technology from 1876 to 1970, with a collection of coal mining artifacts alongside.
Plan around the season: it's open Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 4.
The Carpenter House Museum is the other one. The city calls it a "marvelous 1914 mansion, with its spacious rooms, tiny alcoves and third-floor ballroom," built for Cle Elum's first successful banker. Check hours before you drive over; both museums run on volunteer schedules.
Walk the Coal Mines Trail
This is the best free thing to do in town. The Coal Mines Trail follows an old mining railway grade from Cle Elum through Roslyn and on to Ronald — 5.5 miles one way, 11 miles round trip, with just 453 feet of gain and a high point of 2,375 feet. It's wide, well graded, and open to hiking, biking, running, and horses.
The good part is that you don't have to commit. Walk out as far as you like and turn around, or start in Cle Elum and stop in Roslyn, which sits about halfway along where the trail crosses Highway 903. Old mining structures line the route. No parking pass is required, which is genuinely rare around here.
The rail yard most people drive past
Across the river in South Cle Elum, the Milwaukee Road rail yard at 801 Milwaukee Avenue was a division point on the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific — the place where crews changed and trains got serviced. The depot, substation, and bunkhouse survive and were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. A quarter-mile loop with no elevation gain circles the buildings and ruins, and the depot holds exhibits on the railroad.
It's also a trailhead for the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail, the same rail-trail that runs through Easton five minutes from our front gate and, further west, through the Snoqualmie Tunnel.
Suncadia, if you want the resort version
Suncadia covers 6,400 forested acres just outside town at 3600 Suncadia Trail. Two of its three golf courses, Prospector and Rope Rider, take public play; Tumble Creek is private. Glade Spring Spa is there too, and it's the closest spa to us by a wide margin — worth knowing, since we don't have a hot tub anywhere on our 54 acres.
You don't have to stay there to eat, golf, or book a spa treatment, which is how most of our guests use it.
Up the valley: the lake, the river, and the Teanaway
North and west of town the valley opens into the Cle Elum River corridor and Lake Cle Elum, the reservoir behind Cle Elum Dam. It's the summer swimming-and-boating side of the area, and it's Forest Service and Reclamation land, so check current status before you commit a day to it — 2026 has been a heavy closure year up there (see the conditions note at the end).
Further north, the Teanaway Community Forest is a 50,241-acre block the state bought in 2013, making it Washington's first state-owned community forest. It's roughly 22 miles north of Cle Elum, with 29 Pines Campground at the end of North Fork Teanaway Road. Hiking, fishing, hunting, horseback riding, camping, and birding are all allowed, but camping is restricted to designated campgrounds and stays are capped at seven days in any 30-day period.
Roslyn, just up the road
You can't write about Cle Elum without Roslyn, and the Coal Mines Trail connects them on foot.
Roslyn played Cicely, Alaska in Northern Exposure from 1990 to 1995. Per the Roslyn Historical Museum, the town got the part because its "weather-worn architecture from the early 1900s and heavy snowfalls looked the part of a remote Alaskan village." The Roslyn Cafe and The Brick were filming locations, though the Brick's interior and Dr. Fleischman's house were shot in a Redmond studio. The famous Roslyn Cafe mural predated the series — production added the apostrophe and the "s" to make it fit the fictional town.
The local detail we like: outdoor scenes were also filmed at Lake Cle Elum and at Easton airport, which is in our town.
The Brick has been in business at 100 W Pennsylvania Avenue since 1889.
Planning notes
- Distance from us: about fifteen minutes east on I-90. Roslyn is a few minutes further.
- Seasonality matters more than you'd think. The Telephone Museum is a summer operation, and small-town restaurant hours thin out midweek in the off-season. Call ahead in winter.
- No pass needed for the town stuff. The Coal Mines Trail and the rail yard are free. Forest Service trailheads up the valley need a Northwest Forest Pass, and state park land needs a Discover Pass — they are not interchangeable.
- Groceries and gas: this is the closest full-service town to the property, so it's the right stop on the way in. Our cabins have kitchenettes and the tiny homes have full kitchens — see the cabins page for what's in each.
For the rest of what's within reach of the property, see our activities guide and our hiking trails near Easton. If you're coming for fall color, the Coal Mines Trail shows up again in our fall foliage guide.
Conditions as of September 15, 2026
- The Cle Elum Ranger District has three active closures. The Three Queens Fire closure (order #06-17-03-2026-36, effective August 24, 2026) "prohibits entry or use of roads, recreation sites, campgrounds and trails" within a defined area, covering the Three Queens, King, and Goat fires. There is also a Cle Elum River Restoration Area closure (#06-17-03-2026-10) and a Gold Creek Restoration Project closure (#06-17-03-2026-12). Check the Okanogan-Wenatchee alerts page before heading up the river corridor.
- Telephone Museum: Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 4.
- Museum hours, closure orders, and restaurant schedules change. The linked official pages are the authority.