By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Few people have witnessed more of the changes to Rainier Beach than Douglas Egan, who at 97 is probably the oldest living person born and raised in the neighborhood.

Egan grew up in a little house by the lake that his parents bought from one of the first white families, the Simpsons, who arrived in 1890 from Maine.

Egan's father, a surveyor with Northern Pacific Railroad, tended an orchard that provided the family with apples, pears, plums and cherries.

During the warm summer months, city folks would ride out on the Seattle-Renton Southern Railroad to Rainier Beach for a day at the lake, sometimes stopping at the Egans to buy fruit.

It was not until about World War I that folks started moving out to Rainier Beach, Egan says. The big population boom came after World War II.

Rainier Beach was a wonderful place to grow up, Egan recalls. There was fishing, swimming and sailing trips across the lake to a densely wooded place called Mercer Island.

"Looking back I often think of them as halcyon days, the beautiful unspoiled lake, the orchard, the meadow, the old house with its dignity and the lovely plantings of holly trees, boxwood and my mother's great lilac hedge," Egan wrote in a recent letter.

One neighbor family was the Pritchards, who came to Seattle from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the 1890s to take part in the Alaska gold rush. They found a little gold and bought an island in Lake Washington, which they named after the family.

When the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks opened in early 1916, Lake Washington's water level dropped nine feet, and within a couple of years Pritchard Island was no longer an island. A spit connected it to the mainland, just as nearby Seward Island became a peninsula.

Joel Pritchard, a former lieutenant governor, congressman and state senator, says his family sold lots on the island during the Great Depression to help pay the taxes. After his parents married, they moved to the Queen Anne neighborhood, Pritchard says. The family would often ride a trolley from the city to Rainier Beach for visits.

The area between the island and the mainland is now a broad swatch of grass, under the control of the Parks Department. Pritchard Island residents Bob and Lisa Merki are working with their neighbors on a plan to restore the area as a wetland that could become salmon spawning grounds.

In the past, some Pritchard Island residents suggested turning the area into a moat, an idea that went nowhere.

The idea of a wetland is more attractive, the Merkis say. It could become a place for schoolchildren to study a natural environment.

As for rejuvenating Rainier Beach, Lisa Merki says, the community is just beginning to understand that if it pulls together, it can accomplish great things.

"We have a big voice. We just haven't used it."