If not for a shift in economic fortunes, quaint Kirkland might instead be the “Pittsburgh of the Pacific” envisioned by its founders 130 years ago – an industrial metropolis centered on steel manufacturing.

Kirkland’s past reads like a great western novel and is the subject of the Redmond Historical Society Saturday Speaker Series on Feb. 11.

“Kirkland’s story is unique to the rest of the Eastside in that it was the centerpiece to a great speculative, high-stakes drama that played out during the meteoric 1880s rise of a young, ambitious newspaper owner/political kingpin, S.J. Leigh Hunt, who sought to create … the new ‘Pittsburgh of the Pacific’,” says guest speaker and historian Matt McCauley.

“In addition to some of the U.S.’s wealthiest men of the day, he sold his dream to an English steel manufacturer seeking refuge from impending British steel nationalization,” says McCauley. “That Englishman was Peter Kirk, “whose namesake town site became the center of an internationally famous boom that went bust on the event of a devastating national financial depression, the ‘Panic of 1893’,” he adds.

A Kirkland native, Kirkland Heritage Society life member and past board member, McCauley in 2010 published “A Look to the Past: Kirkland” – a compilation of 50 columns he wrote for The Kirkland Courier during the 1990s along with new research findings and photos from the society’s collection.

McCauley’s own Kirkland roots run deep.

“My grandparents came to Kirkland as ‘Dustbowl Refugees’,” he says, “denizens of Oklahoma and Arkansas who fled the drought stricken region in the late 1930s, first picking fruit in California and them migrating to Washington at the beginning of World War II.”

He even made some history of his own in the 1980s when he and a friend were sued by the U.S. Navy for salvaging a World War II dive bomber from Lake Washington. The two young men won that legal battle and recovered four other World War II aircraft before state lawmakers passed a law making it illegal.

The Saturday Speaker Series is presented by the Redmond Historical Society on the second Saturday of the month with three programs each in the fall and spring. It is held at 10:30 a.m. at the Old Redmond Schoolhouse Community Center, located at 16600 N.E. 80th St. Topics range from local, state and Pacific Northwest historical interest. There is a suggested $5 donation for non-members.

The Redmond Historical Society is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization that receives support from the City of Redmond, 4 Culture, Nintendo, the Bellevue Collection, Happy Valley Grange, Microsoft and 501 Commons as well as from other donors and members.