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Published in The Seattle Times on-line on Sept. 26, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 29, 2024

A buried maritime treasure sleeps beneath Seattle streets

by Jean Sherrard

It’s safe to assume that Seattle is the only American city with a nearly forgotten sailing ship buried below its downtown streets.

5:45 p.m. on Dec. 30, 1876, the Windward ran aground at Whidbey Island’s Useless Bay, having mistaken a beach fire for the Admiralty Point Lighthouse during what a keeper called “a perfect gale.”

Hauling 525,000 board feet of lumber from James Colman’s mill on Seattle’s waterfront, the 650-ton bark was bound for San Francisco, helmed by Capt. A.E. Williams with a crew of 15.

Williams, wrote the Puget Sound Dispatch, returned to Seattle by canoe on New Year’s Day with grim news. The Windward, he reported, “is now lying, dismasted and on her beam ends … about a mile from the beach.” Owned by Colman (known for Colman Dock) and partners, the vessel was only partially insured, though most of its cargo was saved.

Declared a complete loss, the Windward was towed back to Seattle and deposited on tide flats.

For years to come, its distinctive oak hull photobombed panoramic portraits of Seattle’s waterfront. Colman used it for storage and allegedly maintained a ‘pied-à-mer’ in its deck cabins.

One day, teenaged Charles Kinnear, whose father, George, donated Queen Anne Hill’s Kinnear Park to Seattle, swam to the hulk at low tide. “We boys tore copper from her bottom and dived from her decks,” he later recalled. Though the tall masts had long disappeared, “they provided,” Kinnear said, “many souvenir canes” for local dandies.

On occasion, the derelict hosted festivity. On July 2, 1877, the Daily Intelligencer suggested, “Walking a greased pole, for a ten dollar prize, off the old bark Windward will be very amusing.”

In the late 1880s, with the filling in of then-Railroad Avenue (today’s Alaskan Way), the vessel was buried intact. Debris from the 1889 Great Seattle Fire extended the fill.

Every few decades since then, Seattle historians remembered the Windward’s underground presence.

Clarence Bagley in 1901 reminded readers of the “dismantled craft … [that] still lies in the mud” on Western Avenue “with her stern projecting into Marion Street.”

In 1949, Seattle Times columnist C.T. Conover re-imagined it under the same streets “throbbing with modern traffic, its bow pointed … toward the harbor as if eager to be once again at the scenes of its former glory.”

And in 1982, Paul Dorpat whimsically suggested that the Windward “no longer sways with the tides … [but] permanently jaywalks below Western Avenue.”

Today, aiming time’s arrow once again, we encourage waterfront visitors to take a dreamy breath and envision Seattle’s buried maritime treasure beneath their feet.

WEB EXTRAS

To view our narrated 360 video of this column, please click here!

Quick thanks to Bill Kintner who sent a note that indicates San Francisco also has ships buried under streets.

Also Patrick Poor, who finds evidence that New York does too!

Chalk one up for the wisdom of the crowd.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 19, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 22, 2024

Success of First World Flight in 1924 drew monumental fanfare

By Clay Eals

Its base covers just 6 square feet of ground. Its alluring feature, a pair of eagle wings, hovers 15 feet up, far above eye-level. And while the wings are elegant, they don’t instantly signify aviation.

Those factors may help explain why few Seattleites probably have appreciated or even glimpsed the monument at Magnuson Park (formerly Sand Point Naval Air Station) that celebrates a Seattle-to-Seattle achievement dubbed the First World Flight.

The feat was truly monumental — a cadre of pilots in open-cockpit biplanes enduring storms, snow, crashes and rescues while touching 22 countries in a 175-day, 74-stop sojourn, as recounted in “Now & Then” last spring. It began with a Sand Point take-off on April 6, 1924, and culminated at the same airfield when 40,000 cheered the odyssey’s final landing 100 years ago this Saturday, Sept. 28.

It’s a centennial worth celebrating, and a doozy of a bash is planned.

But first, the monument. Created by Seattle sculptor Victor Alonzo Lewis and unveiled upon the round-the-world flyers’ return, the marker had three other locations near the airfield from 1924 to 1938. Today, it anchors a narrow median at the park entrance, hemmed in by signs and a small tree.

At Northeast 74th Street, with drivers heeding traffic signs and a signal and passing beneath the park’s weathered brick overpass or entering busy Sand Point Way, small wonder that few gaze skyward to view the granite-and-bronze marker’s backlit wings. Sadly, it’s more a faceless near-irrelevance instead of the tribute it’s meant to be.

Elisa Law and a contingent of aviation buffs respect the monument but also look past it for different ways to herald the First World Flight. Friends of Magnuson Park, directed by Law, aims to convert an onsite empty ex-gas station to a visitor center. The Friends also want to otherwise elevate the stature of the 1924 feat. As Law says, “We should have it written at Sea-Tac Airport: Home of the First World Flight.”

Centennial festivity, however, comes first.

The Museum of Flight plans displays and programs Sept. 26, 27 and 29, and the Swedish Club hosts a Sept. 27 dinner, all in support of the big day: Sept. 28. That’s when from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Magnuson Park is the site of a vintage aircraft flyover, a Navy band performance, pilot storytelling, historic film screenings, an exhibit, plus a rare chance to experience the adjacent National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s outdoor Seattle Sound Garden. Details are at FirstWorldFlightCentennial.org.

The day honors a marvel that started and ended here. If you go, look for the monument!

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Elisa Law and Lee Corbin for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals’ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you also will find 5 additional photos and 15 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Here, as well, is a KOMO-TV story from 1987 about the flight:

You also can click here to download an illustrated pdf showing the four locations of the flight monument over the years.

Plus, here are several great background links:

• The “Now & Then” column on the First World Flight takeoff last April, including extra photos, videos and news clips.
• The Wikipedia page on monument sculptor Alonzo Victor Lewis.
• The King County proclamation of First World Flight Centennial Day.
• Feliks Banel’s story on the First World Flight.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 12, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 15, 2024

Presidential puzzle jogged Evans-led governors session in 1974

By Clay Eals

However unfathomable this year’s presidential marathon may seem, certainly it’s memorable. Oddly enough, that’s how many of us felt a half-century ago, in 1974.

It wasn’t a presidential-election year, but the nation’s top job topped the country’s consciousness. In Congress, 51 days of Watergate hearings had supplied riveting television. By the time of the National Governors Conference, hosted June 2-5, 1974, by then-Gov. Dan Evans in Seattle, impeachment hearings had begun against the scandalized Richard Nixon. The guvs’ hottest speculation focused on who would become the next elected president.

Presciently depicting this puzzle on the June 2 Seattle Post-Intelligencer front page, artist Stu Moldrem drew Evans anchoring a Space Needle crowded with political celebs.

On top were six attending governors, including two future presidents: Reubin Askew, Florida; Dale Bumpers, Arkansas; Ronald Reagan, California; Wendell Ford, Kentucky; Jimmy Carter, Georgia, and Winfield Dunn, Tennessee. Riding the Needle’s elevator was Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, who spoke to the conference in favor of national health insurance and was presumed to top the 1976 Democratic ticket.

Conferees fished for salmon in Westport, visited the Longacres horse track and dined black-tie at the Olympic Hotel. A few even stopped by Spokane for the Expo ’74 world’s fair. But they also speechified and swapped presidential predictions. From the KING-TV studio, six governors, including Evans, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” during which Evans three times cited “this time of national turmoil.”

Two months later, Nixon resigned. A month after that, his successor, VP Gerald Ford, drew scorn for granting him “a full, free and absolute pardon.” Talk about turmoil!

Kennedy, it turned out, didn’t run in 1976. Carter became the Democratic nominee and defeated Republican Ford. Four years later, Republican Reagan defeated Carter.

This July 24, Evans repeated his pose in person at the Needle. Just shy of 99 and revered as a liberal Republican and environmental champion, the former three-term governor (Washington’s first) and six-year U.S. senator fondly recalled the 1974 conference.

He also tersely eyed today’s political scene. No fan of re-nominee Donald Trump, he lamented, “There aren’t any Republicans left in Seattle.” Is democracy on the ballot this November? “No. We’ll survive OK.”

News artist Moldrem died in 2015 at age 90. For 34 years, he produced countless creations on myriad topics, mostly sports. The P-I labeled them “Sportraits.”

His daughter Lisa Moldrem, of Kirkland, rates his elaborate end-of-year sketches, in which he incorporated hundreds of names of Seattle sports celebs, among his best work. “He knew that people enjoyed it,” she says, “but he always wondered if they would remember it.”

We do!

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Dave Eskenazi, Lisa Moldrem, Genny Boots and especially Dan Evans Sr. and Jr. for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals’ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you also will find 14 additional photos and 36 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column. Plus, there’s a bonus at the bottom!

These items focus first on Evans and the governors conference, then on Moldrem’s art.

 

 

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on Sept. 5, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 8, 2024

In Suquamish hearts, long-burned ‘sacred’ longhouse lives on

by Jean Sherrard

Last week, we visited the Suquamish reservation, a vibrant stop on the 35th anniversary of an annual canoe journey that began with 1989’s Paddle to Seattle.

For Suquamish elder Barbara Lawrence, the event bracingly reinvigorates her culture. “Today, my children and grandchildren only know canoe life,” she says. “They assume that making canoes, paddles and cedar hats, and bringing back our songs, dances and languages, is just a normal part of their lives.”

But celebrating gains doesn’t negate almost unfathomable losses that devastated Indigenous peoples.

Lawrence, a tribal education outreach specialist, directed me to the site of a legendary longhouse burned to the ground 154 years ago. Although white settlers called it “Old Man House” from Chinook jargon, its original Lushootseed name has not yet been recovered.

Built around 1800, the vast, cedar-plank structure housed up to 600 people, including Chief Kitsap and his close relation, Chief Seattle. It served as a winter village, hosting weighty rituals and potlatch celebrations.

The largest construction of its time in the Northwest, its massive cedar posts and beams supported what historian David Buerge has called “the most remarkable structure ever created on Puget Sound.”

Following Lawrence’s directions, I walked a half mile past waterfront homes (with signs asserting that the beach was private property). I discovered a one-acre park given by Washington State Parks to the Suquamish Tribe in 2004. While nothing remains of the original longhouse, this sliver of land chronicles trauma and erasure.

The decades after its construction exposed its inhabitants to explorers and settlers — “the invasion,” Lawrence calls it — along with disease, religion and broken promises.

When she was a young researcher collecting oral histories for the Suquamish Museum, she elicited a story from elder Bernard Adams about the last hours of the longhouse.

In 1870, federal authorities, intent on removing the symbol of communal living, ordered its destruction.

When Chief Seattle’s daughter, Kikisoblu (aka Angeline), living in his namesake town, heard that the longhouse was burning, “she got into a canoe and came over. As it burned down, she was screaming and throwing sand on the cedar posts in a desperate attempt to save anything, crying out, ‘Me Sapa house!’ [my grandfather’s house] over and over again.”

Defying federal pressures, however, remaining tribal members soon erected a cluster of “little houses … just above and behind where the longhouse had been, as close as they could be to each other.”

While the Suquamish continue to address painful legacies of the past, they are no less committed today to revitalizing community and culture. As Lawrence says, “All the doors are open for us now.”

WEB EXTRAS