No surprise here: Fremont has a colorful history

By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Fremont's own history is as colorful as any neighborhood in Seattle. It took a little longer for Seattle's early pioneers to plat the community, but by the 1880s Fremont had its own mill and a few small buildings. By 1891, 5,000 people lived there.

Transportation was mostly by horse-drawn buggies and the railroad. One rail line, the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad, hauled passengers and goods from Ballard to Lake Union. Another line, built by Seattle Electric Railway & Power Co., extended north from downtown around the base of Queen Anne Hill to Fremont.

Seattle's early white settlers were visionaries. Almost from the moment the Denny party landed at Alki in 1851, there was talk of a waterway to connect Puget Sound, Lake Union and Lake Washington.

Thomas Mercer mentioned it at a picnic on July 4, 1854, and by the late 1880s a shallow ditch was dug by Wa Chong and Co., but it was only big enough to float logs from the lake to Ballard's sawmills.

About that time, Congress and the Army Corps of Engineers got involved. With federal backing, the Corps surveyed a route for a ship canal. By 1917 the canal had been built and the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks dedicated.

The ship canal left a 30-foot deep gash on Fremont's doorstep, requiring a bridge over it to be built in 1916. The Fremont Bridge is still in operation today.

In fact, the city will repaint it this month using the same orange-on-blue color scheme. The colors are a little odd, but that's what the community voted for 12 years ago.

"It's kind of grown on us," says Dave Chew, Seattle's bridge maintenance and operation manager. Next year the city may do more significant repairs to the approaches leading up to the drawbridge. About 35,000 cars and trucks use the bridge every day. And because Fremont is the lowest of the city's drawbridges, it must open more than any other span, a convenience for boaters but a hassle for drivers.

The city does restrict bridge openings during peak morning and evening commute times, but big traffic jams occur with regularity in Fremont. And traffic will only get worse as more people and businesses move to Fremont. At the same time, home prices and apartment rents are on the way up -- just as they are across the city.

(See the Album section for more historical photos of Fremont.)

Continued:

• In Seattle's hippest district, the art is public and life is fun
• Working-class roots still present in artsy neighborhood
• Fremont's quirkiness reflected in its art
• Landowner Suzie Burke is a local institution