Hiking the Cheshiahud Trail

Note: This is written mainly for my out-of-town family, friends and acquaintances.  But you Seattleites might find it of interest nonetheless, for the Cheshiahud presents a microcosm of what makes Seattle tick.  I have lived here 31 years, longer than anywhere else; what Ann and I saw on this "hike" is what endears Seattle to me, warts and all.  I have adopted her as my hometown, and I like to think Seattle has adopted me.  

Cheshiahud and wife, 1904

The Cheshiahud Trail: sounds exotic, doesn't it -- rugged, Indian, backcountry?  Well, at least the Indian part, for Cheshiahud was a Duwamish elder, but he and his wife lived on a neck of Ahb-choo, "big lake" what the settlers re-named Lake Washington.  The neck made it a short portage to what we now call Lake Union.  Early Seattleites called him "Lake John" and Seattle proceeded to grow up around it, him, his people and Portage Bay.



The Cheshiahud Trail is right in the middle of town, a 6.2 mile loop around Lake Union.  Ann and I walked it (hike is a misnomer) Sunday last. We diverged here and there, so did about 6 1/2 miles in two hours and twenty minutes, including potty stop and photo ops.  (Some of these photos were taken a few days later since my camera battery died on the walk.)  The sights along the way capture so many of the elements of Seattle; I thought to share them with you for if you really look as you go, you see Seattle -- the ribs and sinews and muscle that make it work.

We started off in Freemont, upper left, and went clockwise.

Freemont is a quirky neighborhood fully living up to its name, with an annual nude cyclists parade, a cold war-era rocket mounted above a bar, a statue of patient commuters waiting for interurban rail -- which still hasn't come to the neighborhood -- a VW-eating troll under a bridge -- and, yes -- that's Lenin.    He was saved from melt down in Slovakia and beamed here by a communally spirited Freemonter.  No surprise: keep in mind that Seattle elected a member of the Socialist Alternative Party to city council after she proposed that Washington nationalize Boeing (statize?) to produce environmentally friendly aircraft and replace military products with electric light rail cars. And two years later, we re-elected Sawant by even bigger margins.  Do you wonder that Bernie only beat Hilary 76 to 24?  Sawant is not a complete flake, however; it was she who really pushed the $15 minimum wage issue.

Anyway, the Lake Union circuit is a mix of water sports, shipbuilding and repair, transportation, floating homes, house boats (there's a difference,) museums, history and new condos, apartments, offices, high tech and low.  All the character of Seattle is to be found around it. (Be patient with the formatting; photos with captions throw the placement gremlin for a loop.)

Home is a retired tug

On a lovely spring day, all is aglow

Freemont's crown jewel: industrial bones of City Light's
early century coal gasification plant.  Now Gasworks Park.

5 highways and roads span the waterway
 (the map shows 4 of them)
Note fishing trawlers in from Alaska

Folk singer Ivar Haglund, waterfront character
and entrepreneur, created a local chain of clam
 and seafood bars.  A buddy of mine, Chris T, was
 his marketing and development guru.   

Kayaks -- Seattle is mad about kayaks

These are house boats -- powered, safety equipment, etc.
and can be moved from moorage to moorage

I-5 from Canada to San Diego

To University Bridge and turning south.  Boats, boats, boats.

And these are floating homes, permanently moored
and built on wood or Styrofoam logs. Styrofoam!?
 Is nothing sacred in the home of Weyerhaeuser?
A mini-neighborhood of them with waterway avenues.

Above the lake, condos -- everybody wants a water view.  

Note the pea patches, hangovers from the hardscrabble 

'30s and the Victory Gardens of WWII 

Jan and Tom, sister-in-law and brother-in-la-la,
have a floating home on the dock beyond this gate.

Their dock is typical -- 11 homes cheek by jowl with boats moored
waterside.  Homes on the end of docks, with unobstructed views of
the lake, are most sought after.

On down the way, we're back into deep water, maritime industry
-- boat repair and shipwrights and hard hats

South end of the Lake, moving from old tech to new, pushing out into new frontiers.

Fred Hutch Cancer Center -- one of the top research and experimental
treatment centers in the nation.

After coal gasification, came electricity.  An early City Light
coal-fired generating plant became the home of ZymoGenetics,
a hot bio-tech start-up snapped up by Bristol Meyers

Old tech and new-old tech: that's ford's 1918 Model T
assembly plant in the background with newly laid electric trolley lines in the
foreground, a puny answer to traffic clogging our arteries.  Seattle pulled out its 
electric trolleys back in the 1920s.

Across the street from the lake is Amazonia.  Five years ago, this was a
neighborhood of low industrial warehouses and plants.  Now Gen-Xers lead armies of Millenials intent on making Amazon the world's largest retailer -- and on enjoying the world's most overpriced stock: PE? 480+ ! 

But those fortunes are not always blown on high-priced condos, Ferraris or fancy yachts , , ,

On the left: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the world's largest.)
On the right: The Paul Allen Brain Science Institute.  In the background, the
1962 Space Needle, symbol of Seattle's thrust into the late 20th and 21st centuries. 

Despite our worship of new tech, traditions and history are not forgotten.  The former Coast Guard Station, important when Lake Union played a critical support role in our war in the Pacific, has been converted into MOHAI, the Museum of History and Industry.  Adjacent to it is the Wooden Boat Center, for restoration of and and education on what wood, the Salish Sea, and boats have meant to Seattle.  

Rounding the south end and heading north

Ubiquitous cranes.  Seattle's construction boom -- apartments and condos for those techies coming into
town; office spaces; high rises; all pushing out the working stiffs and lower middle income households.
Connection to one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country?  You think?

A signature feature of Lake Union: scheduled passenger flights heading
to and from Victoria, Friday Harbor and points north.  When visiting
 the Westin Bayshore in Vancouver, I'd fly from the lake, 5 minutes from the office,
and they'd drop me off on the Bayshore's dock.  In these times
of drugs, illegals, TSA, those courtesies are gone forever.

Building and boating, boating and building . . . .  We walked on north to the Freemont Bridge.  It was open to let sailboats through (and I with no camera.)

The circuit complete: two and a half hours of seeing Seattle -- while Freemont still awaits their Interurban light rail . . . .

A microcosm of Seattle in six and a half miles -- the new, the old; at play, at work; the troubling, the promise.  It's all here.  Come. Take a hike and take a look.