Sec N1/IAS218
Bothell Landing and the Sammamish River / Slough What causes a natural place to evolve over time to the way it looks now? Some of it is obvious, but I would propose that the development of business and commerce in the area have a bearing on how things evolve. In exploring this idea, I am drawn to the town where I live and what is now called Bothell Landing. The first time I saw Bothell Landing, was at the 4th of July celebration. They call it Founder’s Day. I remember walking down to a large cement amphitheater situated next to the Sammamish River. The slough is reminiscent of a very slow moving river with hardly any current. A foot bridge crosses the Slough and on the other side is a bike trail. I later found out that this is part of the Burke Gillman Trail. I had heard about it, but did not realize it parallels the slough through the Sammamish Valley. Standing on top of the bridge I began to notice how perfectly the banks were formed and how the distance between them was so consistent. I began to realize that this was not a natural waterway. Bothell Landing is an historical site with a number of houses and buildings preserved as they were a hundred years ago. One of those building houses the Bothell Historical Museum. It was actually one of early settlers, William A. Hannan’s house. It is very interesting to see what a state of the art house looked like from that period. The house is full of photos of what Bothell looked like when it was first settled and how it changed as time went on. It is amazing to see how different the area looked. Main Street of downtown Bothell was all dirt, and horse and carriage were the main mode of transportation. It was particularly interesting to see the Slough. In those days it was called the Squak Slough. In fact it was actually the Sammamish River. Bothell Landing was called Blythe Landing and it was just one of several landings throughout the valley. The earliest photos showed that the area was swamp land. So, what was so interesting about the area that people decided to settle there? What was the attraction? To understand the total evolution of the area, one must first explore the geological history of the area. How were Lake Sammamish, Lake Washington and the Puget Sound formed? As with most things in the Pacific Northwest, glacial activity carved out the valley and formed the lakes and rivers. Some 14,000 years ago the Vashon glacier began to melt forming a massive glacier lake. As the waters ran off, Lake Sammamish, Lake Washington, Lake Union and the Puget Sound remained. Rich soil and mineral deposits were left in the Sammamish Valley and the Sammamish River was formed connecting the two lakes. Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish had abundant salmon and steelhead trout runs. Nature’s abundance was overflowing.[1] There are records as early as 1800 that show that the Native American Simump Tribe first inhabited the area. They followed a typical pattern of peacefully coexisting with nature. They were part of a self sustaining ecology. They lived off the land. Salmon fishing was a major food source for them. The first European settlers arrived in the Bothell area in 1870. Twenty-nine year old George Rutter Wilson, a native of England and his son were the first. As with many Americans, they were lured to the west with the Homestead Act. They established the first farm in the area to steak their claim to 160 acres of free land. The Sammamish River quickly became known as the Squak Slough and was often referred to as The Squak. Logging quickly became an integral part of life on the Squak. The 1870’s were a period when speculation in timber lands became common around Lake Washington and its tributary river.[2] Logging provided employment for the settlers – typically a 15 man crew. The Squak Slough provided a means of transportation for getting logs from the forest to Lake Washington where they would be tied together to make a raft that would be floated across the lake. Farming was the other main occupation of the time. Clearing the land of trees and logging became a way of life and a major influence on the developing commerce of the area. As commerce flourished, the slough became the major mode of transportation for getting goods to Bothell and further up into the valley. People would row boats to Seattle or walk the trails beside the slough and the lakes, more efficient transportation was needed, and it was soon provided by steam boats. The first was a small 44 foot steam boat called the Minnie Mae. It was soon followed by the riverboat Squak, a shallow draft steam powered house boat capable of navigating the sandbars and sunken logs in the river. Several other boats saw service on the slough until 1916 when a paved road connected Bothell and Seattle. The more business grew, the bigger the need for transportation became. This eventually led the railroads to the area. In 1885 Judge Thomas Burke and Daniel Gilman established a Seattle-based railroad so that city could become a transportation center and grow the area. reap the economic benefits of trade. They planned to connect Seattle with Sumas and the Canadian Transcontinental line. The line never got past Arlington, Washington, but it did eventually connect to the Sammamish river trail where it was heavily used by the logging industry. We know it today as the Burke-Gilman Trail that still serves as a major commuting highway for cyclists.[3] Seattle was growing and becoming a major transportation hub; so was Bothell. The city was incorporated in 1909. Business flourished. With the logging growing at an amazing rate, Saw Mills began to pop up. Soon the Slough was exploited by the logging industry. Logging flumes were built to allow trees to be transported from the forests where they were cut down to waters of the slough. The logs would find their way to the saw mills of Bothell where they would be turned into cut lumber to then finish the trip to Lake Washington and Seattle. The railroads eventually took over the job of transporting goods to and from Seattle, and the slough was left alone. The Sammamish valley and the Sammamish River changed forever in 1916 with the opening of the Ballard Locks that caused the water level in Lake Washington to be lowered by 9 feet. The result was to drain much of the water from the Sammamish River. It was still used for logging which led to many log jams and eventual deterioration of the salmon runs. On October 21, 1999 an article appeared in the Seattle Times written by Peyton Whitely and titled “Dredging Over Decades Turned Winding River Into Slow-Flowing Ditch; Project Would Never Be Considered Today”. It is a very interesting chronological history of the Sammamish River that follows how it was transformed from the area that the Native Americans and early settlers knew, into what it is today. Does this history support the thesis that the logging industry and transportation requirements of the area contributed to how the Slough and Bothell Landing evolved? From an historical perspective, it took just 46 years from the arrival of the first settlers in 1870 to the opening of the Ballard Locks in 1916 to transform the area. The use of natural resources by the logging industry and turning Seattle into a major transportation center that required direct shipping access from Puget Sound to inland waterways led to permanent physical changes to the Sammamish River, the Bothell area and eventually the entire Sammamish Valley. As the logging industry died, the saw mills and flumes disappeared. New businesses sprang up to replace them. New paved roads connected cities like Bothell, Kirkland, Woodinville and Seattle, and the I90 Bridge provided an easy route across Lake Washington. The railroads stopped running and the tracks were abandoned. The slough became a place that people enjoyed for recreation. People swam in the water and they even held hydroplane races there. The Burke-Gilman trail was turned into a bike path. Physical changes to the Slough brought floods to the valley often covering farmlands with as much as 7 feet of water for 6 months. King County made efforts to dredge the slough, but they were often ineffective. In 1961, the federal government provided flood control aid. In 1963, the final work of dredging and straightening the slough began. As we see it today, it is peaceful and a magnet for recreational activity including Marymoor Park, 60 Acres Soccer fields, the wineries, the Burke-Gilman Bike Trail and historic downtown Bothell. I guess in this case, we managed to fix what business destroyed. I believe there are many other places in this world that haven’t been as lucky and that the interaction of commerce with the environment has had more devastating and lasting affects.
Bibliography
1. Bothell, Washington, then & now, 1909-2009. Bothell, WA: Bothell Landmark Preservation Board, 2008. 1st Ed. x, 164 p. : ill. (some col.), col.

2. Bretz, J. Harlen. Glaciation of the Puget Sound Region: Washington Geological Survey Bulletin no. 8, 1913. 246 p

3. Stickney, Amy Eunice and McDonald, Lucile. Squak Slough 1870 – 1920, early days on the Sammamish River, Woodinville-Bothell-Kenmore. Bothell, WA: Friends of the Bothell Library, 1977.

4. Whitey, Payton “A Hidden Past” Seattle Times (Eastside Bureau), October 21, 1999.

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[1] J. Harlen Bretz. Glaciation of the Puget Sound Region: Washington Geological Survey Bulletin no. 8, 1913.
[2]Amy Eunice Stickney and Lucile McDonald. Squak Slough 1870 – 1920, early days on the Sammamish River, Woodinville-Bothell-Kenmore. Bothell, WA: Friends of the Bothell Library, 1977. Page 21
[3] http://www.burkegilmanvolunteers.org/history.html