Category Archives for 520 @ 50

RERUNS: 520@50: Garbage, time and habitat

Image: Montlaker via Seattle Municipal Archives #30545 – 30549

The recent news that Eva, Eddie the Eagle’s widow, has new eaglets in her nest was happily received by 520 commuters, park-goers and residents alike. The habitat around the freeway has come a long way since it was drained, dredged and regraded fifty years ago — and before that abused during its days as the Miller Street garbage dump.

When the Olmsted Brothers redesigned Washington Park into botanical gardens and an arboretum during the 1930s, someone from the firm went to the neighboring Miller Street dump and took this sequence of photos to document the wider panorama of the site (above, click for a larger view). Capitol Hill rises to the left on the horizon and the UW campus skyline sits just to the right of center. In the left foreground, you can see the garbage dump literally growing before your eyes:

Image: Seattle Municipal Archives #30545

Two trucks are unloading debris over the edge of the dump. A fire burns to the right. This process of dumping, lasting from the early 1900′s until 1936, created the landmass for what eventually became the WSDOT Peninsula. Because garbage and gardens generally don’t mix well, the Olmsted Brothers recommended the dump be closed — and the city then agreed.

Now for the freeway. The following two images show this same area before and after construction of 520; in 1961 and 1965 respectively:

Images: Pacific Aerial Survey via UW Map Collection

The before-image shows the scablands of the old Miller Street dump wedged between the Montlake neighborhood on the left, and Foster Island on the right. The paths of freeway ramps are just beginning to appear through the wetlands. The after-image shows the full extent of 520, completed in 1963. More interestingly, it shows the lagoons carved around the landmass of the dump – today’s WSDOT Peninsula – bounded by the Arboretum ramps.

That eagles and ospreys and turtles, herons, beavers and crows have returned to this area is testament to two things: time and a strong will to not mess things up.

This article was originally published June 7, 2012

520@50: Happy 5/20 Day to the I Love You Bridge

Image: PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, MOHAI

It has been a busy week for 520, with draw bridge openings, a community design meeting, new Portage Bay bridge designs and an architectural take-down of its silly sentinels. Also, a Montlake Community Club survey recently revealed that 520 is our highest priority issue. While many Montlakers live here precisely because of the bridge, we also have to guard against its future replacement turning the neighborhood into a 10-year construction project and a 75-year traffic jam. So yeah, while we’re pretty rough on the big ol’ floater, we should also confess our love for it — 520 means I love you in Mandarin Chinese after all. So here’s to you State Route 520: Happy 5/20 Day!

520@50: Shaping the WSDOT Peninsula

Image: via BOLA & Keist: Washington Park Arboretum Historical Review

This aerial photograph shows the Arboretum shoreline during the 1930s. It’s worth a close look. Note the Montlake Bridge in the upper right and the Arboretum entrance (Foster Island Road and Arboretum Drive) in the lower left. The photograph is pre-520, pre-MOHAI and pre-Husky-Stadium-grandstands. The lower part of the image shows the reclaimed marshland that was exposed when Lake Washington was lowered nine feet in 1916.

Note the finger of scorched earth that extends across the marshland. That’s the Miller Street Dump, where Montlake tossed its garbage from the early 1900s until 1936. Over time, as trash was thrown from the edge, the dump grew into a peninsula of garbage extending into the marsh.

Now compare the 1930s view with this aerial photograph of 520 freeway construction in the early 1960s:

Image: PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, MOHAI

The vantage point is similar – the Montlake Bridge is in the upper right – but the shoreline is very different. Lagoons were dredged following the peninsula contours of the Miller Street Dump, seen in the finger of land left between the new freeway ramps. This man-made landscape was born out of necessity: construction materials were to be delivered by trucks on terra firma (the dump) or by barges floating on water (lagoons), so the marshy lakebed was scooped up and dumped into a pile that became Marsh Island, seen on the far right.

The Arboretum lagoons were not created as a wetland park so much as they were a consequence of 520′s construction process.

520@50: Pouring Concrete in the Arboretum

Image: PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, MOHAI

This image shows a concrete pour for 520 just east of Foster Island in the fall of 1961. After this area was dredged, barges brought equipment and materials to the work site as seen in the foreground. Workers are guiding wet concrete into the wooden formwork of a beam across a row of columns extending above the water. When finished, these “column bents” will support long-spanning girders that in turn support the roadway.

Many millions of people have driven across this piece of concrete cast into the Arboretum wetlands. Significantly fewer people have rented a canoe and paddled under it.

Image: Montlaker

520@50: Dumping the Spoils

Image: PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, MOHAI

In the early 1960s the Arboretum wetlands were dredged into lagoons to facilitate the construction of S.R. 520. Where did all those dredge spoils go? Much of it west of Foster Island was heaped into a pile that became (still-sinking) Marsh Island.

The east side of Foster Island was a different story. The image above shows a crane bucket dropping a load of lake bottom onto a barge just off the Madison shore. In those days workers were allowed to tow the barges to the middle of the lake and dump the spoils right into the water. This practice stopped later in the project when concerns were raised about a cloudy discoloration in the lake (already heavily polluted by sewer drains). Barges then had to be towed at greater expense through the ship canal and dumped into Puget Sound.

The barge in this image is dredging the floating bridge’s western approach in February, 1961. Since then, this area has grown into a whole new ecosystem. Commuters and kayakers that pass through here know well the herons, turtles, eagles and summer lily pads that surround the highway. The building in the middle background is the Broadmoor Golf Club with Capitol Hill in the distance. Indeed, there are quite a few species that live around 520.
Sources: Plummer via the Department of Highways, Klingle

520@50: When Machines Appeared in the Arboretum Wetlands

Dredging the shoreline near Foster Island in preparation for SR 520. Image: PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, MOHAI

The 520 bridge turns 50 next year which marks the end of its serviceable life. In recent days, impressive looking cranes and barges have appeared out on Lake Washington to start construction for the replacement highway. So what kind of machines were used to build 520 in the early 1960s?

This image shows a floating crane dredging the west side of Foster Island in the Arboretum, just where 520 stands today. The lakeshore in this area was a vast wetland exposed to the sky when Lake Washington was lowered in 1916. But building a modern highway through wetlands proved to be difficult. Construction trucks can’t drive through muck and barges can’t float in muddy shallows. So the area was dredged into the “lagoons” we see today.

In the foreground, trees and vegetation are removed to make the dredging work easier. The crane’s bucket “eats” the shoreline to the left and puts the spoils on the second barge to the right. There is a worker standing next to the bucket giving the crane a sense of scale. In the distance, the Montlake Bridge is on the far right and Capitol Hill rises to the far left.