Most people do Roslyn in eleven minutes. They pull off I-90 at Exit 80, drive up to Pennsylvania Avenue, photograph the Roslyn Cafe mural, look at the front of The Brick, and leave. We know because our guests tell us that's what they did, and then ask whether it was worth the detour.
It is, but the eleven-minute version misses the town. Roslyn is a coal camp that the Northern Pacific platted in 1886, that peaked at 3,126 people in 1910, and that lost its last two mining companies in 1963. What's left is a small grid of early-1900s buildings, a hillside of cemeteries unlike anything else in the state, and a handful of businesses that have been open longer than the state has been a state. It's about twenty minutes east of our gate, a few minutes past Cle Elum.
Here's how to spend an afternoon there instead of a photo stop.
The Brick, and why the spittoon matters
Start at 100 W Pennsylvania Avenue. According to The Brick's own history, "John Buffo and Peter Giovanni opened a tavern in this location" in 1889, and "the tavern was rebuilt in 1898 using 45,000 bricks and took the name 'The Brick'." That 1889 date is the basis for the oldest-continuously-operating-bar-in-Washington claim you'll see everywhere, and the 1898 rebuild is the basis for the people who argue with it. We'll leave that fight to the historians; the building is old either way.
Two things inside are worth the stop on their own. The back bar "is 100 years old and originated in England. It was purchased in Portland, Oregon after following the European shipping lanes around Cape Horn." And along the foot of the bar runs the feature that gets the most photos: "the unique 23' running water spittoon still operates today." It's exactly what it sounds like: a trough of flowing water at boot level, running the length of the bar.
It's a bar and grill, not a museum, so you can eat lunch there. Seattle magazine lists live music on Friday and Saturday nights.
The Northern Exposure stops, done properly
The show filmed here from 1990 to 1995, and the Roslyn Historical Museum's account of why is the best short explanation of the town: "Roslyn's weather-worn architecture from the early 1900s and heavy snowfalls looked the part of a remote Alaskan village. And Roslyn was much more accessible to the greater Seattle metro area with sound studios for interior shots."
The practical facts, so you don't go looking for things that were never here:
- The Roslyn Cafe mural, at the corner of Pennsylvania and 2nd, is the opening-credits image. It predated the series — production added the apostrophe and the "s" to make it read "Roslyn's" for the fictional town of Cicely. The apostrophe is gone now, so the wall reads the way it did before the show.
- The Brick appears throughout the series, but the interior scenes were shot on a stage in Redmond, as was Dr. Fleischman's house. The bar you walk into is the real one; the bar you remember from television is a set.
- The museum keeps a map of filming sites, which is worth picking up if you're a fan, because most of the locations are ordinary storefronts with no signage.
- Outdoor scenes were also filmed at Lake Cle Elum and at the Easton airport — which is in our town, five minutes from the property.
Since 1975 the town has had a claim that has nothing to do with television: per HistoryLink, "William Craven was elected mayor in 1975, and became the first black mayor in Washington."
The museum: 203 W Pennsylvania Avenue
The Roslyn Historical Museum is small, volunteer-run, and the right place to understand what you're about to see on the hill. Its own framing is that the collection reflects "Roslyn, its tenacity, love of life and the richly seasoned ethnic mix that once represented more than 20 nationalities," a company town where "coal became the common denominator."
Two facts from that history explain the whole town. First, the mines drew workers from across Europe — HistoryLink lists English, Italians, Germans, Scottish, Welsh, Poles, Lithuanians, and "Austrians," which in Roslyn "meant Slovenes, Slovaks, Serbs and, most of all, Croatians." Second, during an 1888 strike, the railroad brought in "a trainload of about 50 African American miners" to break it. Many stayed and sent for their families, and by 1900 "Roslyn's black population was about 22 percent."
Hours are limited and seasonal. The museum's schedule page lists Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 11 to 3, asks for a "$3.00 per person (or more) donation," and says to "call 509-649-2355 to confirm open hours." Take that last line seriously; it's a volunteer operation.
The cemeteries on the hill
This is the thing that turns an eleven-minute stop into a two-hour one, and it's free. On Memorial Road above town, the nonprofit that maintains them counts "twenty-seven separate, but adjacent cemeteries forming the Roslyn, Washington cemetery complex", "open to the public during daylight hours for respectful visitation." (HistoryLink counts 25; the numbers differ depending on how you split the lodge sections. Either way, it is a lot of cemeteries on one hillside.)
The reason there are so many is the reason the museum exists: each ethnic community and each fraternal lodge buried its own. The Croatian Sokol Lodge has its cemetery. So do the Italian societies, the Lithuanian Alliance, the Serbian and Slovak and Polish communities, Mt. Olivet for the town's Black families, and the Eagles, Foresters, Odd Fellows, Red Men, Knights of Pythias, and Masons. Walk the rows and the headstones change language every few yards.
The oldest sections hold the town's worst day. On May 10, 1892, in the words of the Roslyn Cemetery Legacy Association, "45 coal miners lost their lives in a tragic explosion in Roslyn's No. 1 Mine in Washington's worst coal mine disaster." HistoryLink adds that it "created 29 new widows and 91 orphans." The association keeps a list of all 45 names and a grave-locator kiosk so you can find them.
The whole town, cemeteries included, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Roslyn Historic District in 1978 (reference #78002760).
A movie theater that used to be the mortuary
The Roslyn Theatre at 101 W Dakota Avenue was, in its own words, "originally the town mortuary and funeral home from 1903 to 1972." It reopened as a cinema — "the Roslyn Theatre was officially born on June 5th, 1979 with the opening movie of 'Heaven Can Wait'" — and has been a single-screen small-town theater ever since. "In 2022 the legacy of this incredible place was entrusted to Courtney & Joe Neese and their family," who still run it and opened a pizza-and-arcade spot in another historic building in 2025.
It shows first-run films. If you've got a rainy evening and kids who've had enough of the lake, this is the answer.
Beer, in a town that was built on it
The Roslyn Brewing Company at 208 W Pennsylvania Avenue has been brewing since 1990 and makes a mild, dark lager in the style the immigrant miners would have recognized. There's an outdoor beer garden, which in July is exactly where you want to be after the cemetery walk.
The town forest and the Coal Mines Trail
Roslyn owns a 300-acre forest on the ridge above town, the Roslyn Urban Forest, "a mixture of Ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and grand fir" with trails shared by hikers, bikers, and equestrians. WTA lists the full network at 12.0 miles round trip with 1,258 feet of gain to a 3,486-foot high point — but you don't have to do the whole thing. The named routes (Whitehead Road, Rat Pac, Main Ridge Road, Slick Rock) let you build a one-hour walk or a half-day loop. From the ridge, "views here extend across the Teanaway Valley to the snow covered peaks of the Stuart Range and even Mount Rainier in the southern distance."
No pass required. Dogs allowed on leash. Access: "From I-90, take exit 80 to Roslyn. As you enter town, turn right on E. Dakota Ave. and continue about two blocks to where the paved road either turns left or right onto a dirt road named Whitehead Road."
The flatter option is the Coal Mines Trail, the old mining railway grade that crosses Highway 903 right in Roslyn. Walk it west toward Ronald or east toward Cle Elum; it's wide, graded, and also pass-free. It's also one of the better deciduous-color walks on this side of the pass in October — see our fall foliage guide for timing.
Sunday mornings in summer
The Roslyn Farmers Market runs on Pennsylvania Avenue on Sundays, 9 to 1, from mid-June to mid-September (the 2026 season was June 14 through September 13). It's "a market place for farmers, specialty food producers, artisan/crafters, food preparers and entertainers," and it's the best time to see the street with people on it. If you're with us on a summer weekend, do Roslyn on Sunday morning and be back at the lake by two.
Planning notes
- Distance from us: about twenty minutes. Take I-90 east to Exit 80, then Highway 903 into town. Cle Elum's grocery store is on the way, so combine the two.
- Parking is street parking. Pennsylvania Avenue fills on summer weekends and during the market. Park a block off and walk.
- Check hours before you count on anything. The museum is three days a week and volunteer-run; the theater is a single screen with one or two showtimes; restaurant hours thin out midweek in the off-season.
- Cemeteries are daylight-only and are active burial grounds, not a park. Stay on the paths.
- Rainy-day ranking: museum, then The Brick for lunch, then a matinee at the theater. That's a full afternoon under a roof.
- Sunny-day ranking: Urban Forest in the morning before it warms up, cemeteries at midday, beer garden after.
For the rest of what's within reach of the property, see our activities guide, our hiking trails near Easton, and the Cle Elum guide above. If you're deciding where to base yourself for the upper county, our Snoqualmie Pass lodging guide lays out the options, and our cabins are the closest ones with a private lake out the door.
Conditions as of September 16, 2026
- Farmers market: the 2026 season ended September 13. The 2027 dates will be on roslynfarmersmarket.org.
- Museum: Friday-Sunday, 11-3, by donation; call 509-649-2355 to confirm before driving over.
- Urban Forest: late summer east of the crest is fire season. The Cle Elum Ranger District had active closures in the national forest to the north this month; the Urban Forest is city land and was not part of those orders, but check the Okanogan-Wenatchee alerts page if you're planning to continue past town into the Teanaway.
- Business hours, museum schedules, and market dates change. The linked official pages are the authority.