The Lake Washington Scenic Highway

BY margaret Laliberte, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

W.E. LeHuquet, owner and editor of Bellevue’s Reflector newspaper liked to call it the Lake Washington Scenic Highway. The Seattle Star newspaper preferred Lake Washington Boulevard.  Both were referring to the string of streets and highways eventually stitched together to form a continuous 52-mile route circling Lake Washington. In an opinion in 1919 urging readers to support the completion of a final four-mile segment between Bellevue and Newport, the Star exclaimed “Do you realize that this boulevard, when completed, will give to Seattle the most beautiful circuitous trip in the state and that it will be one of the principal scenic attractions of King county”?

L 84.028.1 - Ditty City 1928 illustrated map of Bellevue - John Ditty's vision of the future.

The final stretch was indeed completed, and on June 5, 1920 an autocade traveled from Seattle’s County-City Building around the north end of the lake to Bellevue’s Wildwood Park near Meydenbauer Bay for festivities showcasing speeches by officials of the Automobile Club of Western Washington as well as past and current county commissioners. The Bellevue District Development Club had decorated the town with flags and banners, and Eastside ladies’ committees served coffee, lemonade and sandwiches. The event was hosted by the Reflector.

During the 1920s and 30s, the Seattle Star sponsored an annual 52-mile walking contest around the lake. Contestants who decided that by the time they reached Bellevue they’d  had enough were offered transportation across the lake back to the City.  In 1928 the male winner of the race finished the entire course in 9 hours, 24 minutes.  His first-place cash prize of $250 would be worth about $4,000 today. The winning woman, a Monroe teacher, finished in 13 hours, 11 minutes. (The Seattle Times announcement did not mention whether she too received a prize.)

It is not likely that the all the roads constituting the entire route were ever known uniformly as  Lake Washington Boulevard.  In Seattle the Olmsted firm laid out the section running from Montlake to Seward Park along the lake shore; it is still Lake Washington Blvd.  On the Eastside in 1945 a long stretch of road called Lake Washington Boulevard ran north from Renton along the lake shore to Factoria.  It turned west along S.E. 32nd (which no longer exists there) and then angled diagonally across Mercer Slough to where the Winters House stands today.  It followed 104th Ave. NE to today’s Main Street, where it ran west along the lake to 84th Ave. NE.  At NE 28th it turned east to run along the south of Hunts Point and Yarrow Point on what is today called Points Drive to an intersection at Northup Way.  Continuing north towards Hougton it was called Lake Washington Blvd until it reached the Bellevue-Kirkland boundary.

From today’s perspective, one wonders why the route didn’t simply run due north along present Bellevue Way/104th Ave. N.E. Early developer James Ditty thought the same thing.  According to local history writer Lucile McDonald, when what later became Bellevue Way was just a “cow trail” called Peach Street in the late 1920s, Ditty bought 38 acres around today’s intersection of Bellevue Way and N.E. 8th St.  He granted King County an easement across his property, and in 1930 the newly paved road running north toward Kirkland was renamed Lincoln Avenue.

Remnant stretch of Lake Washington Boulevard

Ditty’s property became the new nucleus of Bellevue’s commercial district. But Lake Washington Boulevard continued to meander closer to the lake shore. An almost overgrown remnant of the old paved road can still be walked between Bellevue Way and N.E. 35th Place in Clyde Hill, just south of the sound wall of SR 520. In summer prolific brambles offer up ripe blackberries for the picking.

References

Reflector editions (is this kind of resource just called EHC archives?)

Seattle Times May 20, 1928

Seattle Star, July 26, 1919 (graphic of LWB route)

Lucile McDonald, Bellevue, Its First 100 Years

Kroll Eastside map book 1945

HistoryLink Essay #10244, “Lake Washington Boulevard”

A History of Snoqualmie: Transportation Across the Cascades

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

By Angeline Nesbit

The Snoqualmie Pass road project was first conceptualized in the 1840s, but construction of the road stopped and started with the political and economic concerns of the region and country. The road didn’t reach a point where it resembled a real highway until about 1895. Constructed with Cedar planks to help keep the road even and drivable, cars began to travel the route although often having to adapt to weather changes quickly.

Automobiles are just the most recent form of travel through the Cascades though. Native Americans walked across the mountains for thousands of years before a large road was cut out. Using a slightly different route than Snoqualmie Pass follows today, indigenous peoples were able to maintain trade routes between east and west. With the introduction of the horse these routes were even more readily traveled. Today one mile of the original route, which also laid groundwork for European colonizer’s eventual road, is preserved near Denny’s creek.

Early European and American settlers came in wagons and on horseback as well across the route, but they remained partial to travel by water until the road began to be more established in the late 1800s. Still freight wagons bringing goods out west used the road readily. In 1909 the Alaska-Yukon Exposition created a reason to improve the road as people flocked to attend the event.

Photo (above): Men with car on Snoqualmie Pass highway, probably near North Bend, taken in 1916.

This along with automobiles and tourists are sometimes credited with the final push to create a truly viable pass at Snoqualmie. US route 10, Sunset highway opened in 1915, a greatly improved road to allow easy travel for motorists. Still, the road was often perilous, and motorists were sometimes inclined to park their cars on railway flatbeds and take the train through the pass in inclement weather.

The Milwaukee Road was one of these railways. Building railroads and tunnels through the pass they transported goods, people, and other items. Milwaukee Road used some of the first electrified trains which traveled westward through their own protected tunnels to speed travel. Their train, The Olympian, was the first passenger train to go through the Snoqualmie tunnel in January 1915.

Dramatic changes in transportation are a part of what has shaped the Eastside. Without roads like the Snoqualmie Pass highway (known as I-90) our region of eastern King County would find travel to the east extremely difficult. Developing the road to allow for the safe travel of cars and trucks made the large community we live in today possible.

Resources

Eastside Heritage Center Archives