In Search of the Original 'Seattle'

Every child growing up in Seattle when I was a kid learned the following story: On Nov. 13, 1851, 10 adults and 12 children arrived at what we now call Alki Point. Known as the Denny party, the group comprised the founding families of Seattle. The first thing the men did was to start cutting trees for cabins. The women, on the other hand, cried under the dripping forest.

I refer to Seattle's origin not to cast light on any difference between the sexes but to focus on the trees, the dominant feature of the landscape on that rainy day. This story and subsequent pictures of early Seattle created an image in my head of an unbroken Douglas fir and cedar forest from the shores of Puget Sound to the Cascades. I pictured trees so big that it took "two men and a boy to look to the top," as one early writer described them, and a forest "whose dark verdurous hue diffused a solitary gloom—favorable to meditations," as Archibald Menzies wrote in 1792 when he was the botanist on George Vancouver's exploration of the Northwest Coast, including Puget Sound.

These were the pictures I carried until I acquired an intriguing book called Reading the Landscape, by May Theilgaard Watts. Published in 1957, the book is sort of a primer for naturalists who want to be detectives. Watts' theme is that by looking carefully, you can find clues that help you put together the ecological story of a particular landscape.

Inspired by Watts, I decided to read the landscape of Seattle to see if I could find clues to what the city's plant cover looked like at the time the Denny party arrived. Could I take her strategies, such as looking at the shape and location of plants, deciphering place-names, and moving beyond first impressions, to piece together a picture more complex than Menzies' dark forest? In addition, I wanted to make connections to the place I call home. I have long known that the better I understand the natural history of a landscape, the more I enjoy it.

Bubbling Springs And Ancient Oaks

Licton Springs in North Seattle. The name derives from an Indian word for "red," referring to the iron-rich waters that still bubble up today. (Kevin P. Casey)

I began close to home with the name of the area where I live, Licton Springs, a little-known neighborhood located just east of North Seattle Community College between about 90th and 100th streets. Licton is a corruption of the Lushootseed word liq'ted (LEEK-tuhd), which means "red" or "paint," and refers to iron oxides deposited by springs bubbling out of the ground. At present, the springs are preserved in the 9-acre Licton Springs Park.

Hoping to learn more, I visited the park and found water spilling out of a rusty-rimmed concrete cistern and flowing down an ochre-colored rivulet to a stream that feeds a pond at the park's south end. Most of the vegetation was nonnative, but a recent restoration project had begun to alter the wetland formed by the springs. I saw a few small cedars, red flowering currant, and devil's club. In 1851, these species would have been joined by a diverse suite of water-loving plants including horsetail, cattail, and nettle, as well as odd-shaped blossoms such as yellow monkey flowers and hooded white ladies' tresses, flowers now less common in Seattle.

Other place-names also indicate a moist past. Spring Street honors the former principal source of Seattle's drinking water, a spring on the west side of First Hill. Ward Springs Park, at the base of Queen Anne Hill just north of Seattle Center, commemorates the spring that once provided 80,000 gallons a day of drinking water. It is safe to assume that tens and maybe hundreds of small seep-created wetlands once dotted the Seattle landscape.

Concrete and piping have eliminated most of the springs, but one can still see signs of their persistence. When I see a dense growth of horsetails, nettles, or devil's club, I know I have found one. The persnickety flows often appear as wet spots on pavement, damp patches on lawns, or small pools at the bottom of slopes. This is especially true in winter when it appears that city streets have sprung leaks.

So many springs existed and persist because the glacier that plowed through Seattle between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago deposited a thick layer of permeable sand atop an equally thick layer of impermeable clay. When it rains, water percolates down through the sand until it meets the clay. Springs occur where water flows along the clay and out to the surface. Although these wet areas would have done little to disrupt my image of unbroken forest, the wetland plants would have added at least some color to Menzies' gloom.

Another neighborhood name provides an additional clue to Seattle's early-day plant life and reveals a complexity that I hadn't imagined. Oak Tree Village, at North 100th Street and Aurora Avenue North, refers to Oak Lake School, which stood on that site from 1886 to 1982 and made reference to a nearby pond, where a grove of large oak trees grew. Neither the oaks nor the lake remains.