Inspiration for cleaning up Washington’s public lands and waterways came to Wade and Tania Holden in 1995, when they camped near the Snoqualmie River and found their site full of trash. Wade founded Friends of the Trail the following year. Supported by public and private entities, the non-profit group works at many sites in the state, focusing on large and hard-to-remove rubbish. Eventually, this became a full-time job for the couple, who supervise volunteers and people needing community service through the courts.

On August 25, 2022, the Holdens and twenty Friends of the Trail volunteers cleaned a stretch of the Snoqualmie River near Carnation, using four rubber rafts and large “poker poles” to dislodge underwater rubbish. Here, four volunteers maneuver one of their trash-filled rafts.

Caption information source: “Garbage day on the Snoqualmie River”, by Mike Roarke, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 26, 2002, pages B1, B3.
Caption information source: “Friends of the Trail”. Retrieved from http://friendsofthetrail.org/index.html on August 23, 2024.