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Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 24, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 27, 2026
Soles and the Soul
New guide charts unsung walks along
the Olmstedian necklace of Seattle
By Clay Eals
The moment you think you know a city, something arises to trip you up.
That’s what makes “Emerald City Trail” so delightful. The new Mountaineers book by Peter Hendrickson leads readers on an undulating 75-mile loop of walking routes around hourglass-shaped Seattle. The route traces the visionary, 1903-1908 park and boulevard planning of the famed, Boston-based Olmsted Brothers. Discoveries dot the handy guide.
Case in point: Hunter Boulevard Park, just three long blocks encompassing a tree-lined, grassy, 60-foot-wide median in South Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood. Its official status as a park could be easy to miss. But it’s hardly off the beaten path.
For 35 years until 1940, its north end was the terminus and wye (turnaround) for a streetcar line from downtown by way of Jackson Street. Since then, trolleys have boomeranged around the same intersection, just as King County Metro Route 14 does today.
The park’s origin was hardly innocent. The Hunter Tract was the first neighborhood to be folded into the Omsteds’ Seattle comprehensive plan. Its developer, encouraged by John Olmsted, paired “aristocratic” aesthetics with covenants to prevent minorities from buying homes “to assure the quality of the development.” Two court cases in 1909-1910 individually thwarted the practice, but it took six more decades, in 1968, for the city to finally disallow such discrimination throughout Seattle. That same year, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act, making racially restrictive covenants and housing bias illegal nationwide.
Today the quiet, shady 0.2-mile stretch serves all comers amid stately homes built just before and after World War I. To Hendrickson, a medical researcher and retired school principal who first came to Seattle in 1980 for graduate school at the University of Washington, the park resembles a pendant in what he considers Seattle’s Olmstedian necklace.
Such spaces, he says, feed both the soles and the soul. “They became part of the landscape, part of the pleasure. They tended to be refuges from what in the turn of the last century were the ravages of the city, so they’re a little quieter and safer. They’re places where you can recreate or just be yourself and relax.”
Still a Mountaineers walk leader in his early 80s, Hendrickson delights in the 12 sections of his “Emerald City Trail,” which can be enjoyed separately, or “you can link them together,” hoofing from prominent spots to the lesser-known. And there’s a bonus:
In dozens of city walks each year, his “rule No. 1” is to “talk to everyone. Most folks are happy to tell you about their neighborhood or a special feature, like a hidden stairway or a landmark. It’s amazing how far you can get in a couple of hours on foot.”
WEB EXTRAS
Big thanks to Peter Hendrickson, Nancy Temkin, Sandy Briggs and Marissa Litak 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 while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below, you will find 1 additional video, 3 additional photos and 10 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
