Enumclaw Library hours, closures and its 1923 start

As of October 2026, the Enumclaw Library at 1700 1st Street is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, according to the King County Library System (KCLS), which runs it. The library is closed all day on Veterans Day, Wednesday, November 11, 2026, and on Thanksgiving. The phone number on the KCLS Enumclaw Library page is (360) 825-2045.

The hook is the building. The brick library on 1st Street went to voters three times between 1988 and 1989. By the Courier-Herald's 2023 account, the second vote passed with 72 percent but still could not fund the building, because the ballot title was missing a phrase and the bond agent refused to sell the bonds (HistoryLink calls the vote voided). Enumclaw's first public library, meanwhile, was a single room in City Hall in 1923.

What are the Enumclaw Library's hours?

As of October 2026, the library is open every day of the week, 58 hours in all by our addition of the schedule KCLS lists. Monday, Thursday and Friday run 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday run 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday run 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The late Tuesday and Wednesday hours are an expansion. A KCLS news item dated September 24, 2026 announced that most KCLS locations would be open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays beginning October 20, 2026, "giving you more time to browse, study, print, or just have a place to be." The same notice said Monday, Thursday, Friday and weekend hours would stay the same "for the time being," and it exempted only the Greenbridge and Skykomish libraries.

Hours are a KCLS decision, made for the whole system, and the notice itself said the other days could change. The place to check is the location page, which also carries a status line above the weekly schedule saying when the doors open or close next.

Is the Enumclaw Library closed on Veterans Day?

KCLS lists the library as closed all day on Veterans Day, Wednesday, November 11, 2026. As of October 2026, the Enumclaw page lists these closures for the rest of 2026 and the start of 2027.

The closed-all-day dates are the Wednesday of Veterans Day (November 11, 2026), Thanksgiving Thursday (November 26) and the Friday after it (November 27, which the page calls Native American Heritage Day), and then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, December 24 and 25. New Year's Eve, December 31, is a short day, with closing at 5 p.m. The library is closed again on Friday, January 1, 2027.

The page lists holidays by date and year, so the list above stops being useful once those days pass, and the 2027 holidays will need the page itself. Separate from holidays, KCLS also announces staff-day closures in its news section; the Enumclaw page's Recent News list carried a notice dated March 25, 2026 about regional staff-day closures in April and May of that year. Check the news list before a trip on any date that is not an ordinary open day.

What is inside the Enumclaw Library?

KCLS lists a meeting room, a study room, computers and printers, a photocopier, a scanner, a fax machine, a microfilm and microfiche reader, Wi-Fi and a book drop. It also lists world language materials and an Enumclaw Library Book Group. For access, KCLS lists an accessible restroom, meeting room and parking, automatic doors at the main entrance, and service animals welcome.

KCLS also lists a ballot box among the building's facilities and links to King County Elections' ballot drop box page, which says a ballot must be in a drop box by 8 p.m. on Election Day. King County Elections, not the library, sets drop box rules and hours, so use that page for the box. Our guide to the November ballot dates covers the deadlines.

The Friends of the Library are listed too: dues of $5 for a family or individual and $10 for a business, an ongoing book sale in the library, and meetings on the third Tuesday of each month at 1 p.m., all as the KCLS Enumclaw page lists them in October 2026.

When did Enumclaw get its first library?

According to HistoryLink.org's essay on the library, the city opened its first public library in March 1923, using one room at City Hall. KCLS dates it to 1923 as well, after a 1922 fund drive by the Parent-Teachers Association and the Pre-School Circle. City Hall had been built in 1921, and the city's first Library Board was appointed that year. Our walking tour of downtown stops at that building and ends at the library on 1st Street.

Books had circulated in town before that. HistoryLink says Danish settlers started a Danish Community Library in 1907 with an estimated 450 volumes, and that the Presbyterian church opened a reading room with 350 books and magazines on May 18, 1915, after a Carnegie grant fell through. By 1924 the city library held 1,439 volumes. Of those, 450 were Danish-language books donated by the Danish Sisterhood. The first librarian was paid $16 a month and later told a reporter, as HistoryLink quotes her, "I read all the time anyway so figured I might as well take $16 a month for it." For more on the plateau's Scandinavian settlers, see our piece on the plateau's Scandinavian heritage, and for other long-running Enumclaw institutions, the oldest things still open in Enumclaw.

Where was the Enumclaw Library before 1991?

For most of the century it stood at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Wells Street. Mary Stevenson Yerxa, who with her first husband had homesteaded the land that became Enumclaw, died in 1928 and left the library her house at 1706 Wells Street and $100. HistoryLink dates her death to November 11, 1928. KCLS's timeline puts the library's move into the house in 1928; HistoryLink says volunteers moved the books in August 1929. The two accounts differ by that move date, not by the gift.

By the early 1950s the house was too small and in poor repair. HistoryLink reports that voters approved a $25,000 bond in November 1952, 1,097 to 311, that the house was demolished in March 1953, and that the new 5,000-square-foot library opened on Sunday, February 7, 1954. KCLS's timeline gives the bond as $20,000, so the figure depends on the source. The Scholtfeldt Family Pioneer Room was added in 1963, KCLS says.

How did the current library building get built?

The 1983 plan for a Town Center put the library on land the city bought from the Burlington Northern railroad, per KCLS and HistoryLink. The bond to build it was $1.25 million and it needed 60 percent to pass.

The Courier-Herald's 2023 history says the September 1988 measure was first reported as passing by 273 votes, then, in the final count reported a week later, fell under 60 percent by four votes. A May 16, 1989 measure passed with 72 percent. Then, the paper reports, the ballot title turned out to lack the phrase "in excess of regular property tax levies," and the bond agent refused to sell the bonds. HistoryLink dates the discovery of the error to September 1989. The third try, in November 1989, passed with 63 percent.

Groundbreaking was August 21, 1990. Volunteers moved more than 40,000 items on September 21, 1991, and the 10,541-square-foot building, designed by Lewis/Nelson Architects, opened on September 28, 1991. HistoryLink's sources for these votes include the Courier-Herald's own reports from the time, and Seattle Times and Enumclaw Eagle articles; our piece on the paper's history says where its archive is kept.

When did the Enumclaw Library join KCLS?

Enumclaw voters approved annexation to the King County Library System on April 17, 2012. The Courier-Herald reported the measure passed by 34 votes. Until then the city had run and funded its own library for 89 years, counting from 1923. Annexation moved operation to KCLS, which is why the hours and closures come from KCLS rather than from City Hall. The Courier-Herald announced a centennial event at the library for the evening of November 8, 2023.

Before you go

Open the KCLS Enumclaw page on the day. It shows the hours, the holiday list, the events calendar and any posted closure. The library's phone number, (360) 825-2045, is on the same page. KCLS sets hours for the whole system, so a system-wide change, such as the one announced for October 20, 2026, reaches Enumclaw on the same date as nearly every other branch.