 Skykomish's population peaked at around 8,000 in the 1920s and shrank to under 300 by 1990 due to the loss of businesses and jobs.Waste disposal practices, common during that era, resulted in the contamination of its soil, its groundwater, and the Skykomish River by oil and heavy metals.BNSF (then BN) and the Washington State Department of Ecology began remediation discussions in the mid-1980s, and in 2006, agreed to a plan whereby the railroad would pay up to $50 million to clean up the area over a three-year period (completed in 2009).