Former resort area is a quiet wilderness under pressure

By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Like so many other commuters, Ben Zarlingo drives home past a welter of apartment buildings and look-alike cul-de-sacs and traffic.

The difference comes when he pulls up to his home in the Silver Lake neighborhood of south Everett and walks onto the wooden dock he built in his back yard. He unbolts the squared end of the dock, which he's equipped with floats and an engine, and drifts off into the glittering waters that make up his 110-acre backyard oasis.

One sunny evening after work, a breeze neutralizing the heat, Zarlingo points out the spot where an eagle once pounced to grab a baby duck for dinner, the tangled brush where a rogue beaver is building a lodge, the plate-sized lily pads that blanket a marshy wetland.

A sprinkling of tall trees blunts the view of taller buildings. A flash of green and brown marks a new park. The laughter of children swimming softens the sound of traffic.

"This is as much as I think anyone can expect in an urban area today," Zarlingo says, "and more than they usually get."

Many residents here share that pragmatic appreciation of their neighborhood, trying to save and savor their existing quality of life while recognizing they can't turn the clock back to the neighborhood's earlier days.

Split geographically between the city of Everett and unincorporated Snohomish County, Silver Lake once had the hallmark that almost defined it as a rural area: It was home to the county fair.

"We were known as kids from the hicks and the sticks when we came into town," says Harold Christensen, who remembers when Seventh Avenue was called Farmers Road and 112th Avenue Southeast was really Stock Show Road.

The neighborhood was an inexpensive leisure stop for travelers on the Interurban Railroad that ran between Everett and Seattle until 1939. Bootleggers even rowed their goods across Silver Lake in Prohibition days, says Gordon Stubb, whose grandfather homesteaded 160 acres on the lake in the 1890s.

Stubb's family ran the Silver Lake Resort, which attracted Sunday picnickers from Ballard and carloads of Seattle visitors who swooshed down the toboggan slide and waltzed at the dance hall. Lakeshore neighbors included a Bible camp, an informal nude beach and undeveloped tracts where kids swam in the summer and skated in the winter.

"When I was a kid, I remember there were no lights around the lake then, just house lights. I remember seeing the aurora borealis, the northern lights. I haven't seen them for years here now," says Stubb.

Many residents kept cows and horses and goats on their land, making hobby farms out of their five- or 10-acre parcels while they worked at the Everett mills, says Christensen.

Silver Lake's popularity as a resort area died off in the 1930s after Highway 99 was built, Prohibition ended and the Monroe county fairgrounds were established, according to "A History of the Everett Parks" by Allan May and Dale Preboski.

But a most basic service brought the most change to the area: A group of landowners annexed to Everett and successfully sought sewer lines for their property in the 1980s. Suddenly, denser developments were practical -- and, under the mandates of the state Growth Management Act, encouraged.

Silver Lake today is a place of convenience, with a Safeway and QFC, doctor's and dentist's offices, a neighborhood elementary school, freeway access a short distance away and the attractions of the freshwater lake.

"I think the quality of life there is what people think about when they think of the Northwest," says Everett city planner Bob Larsen. "It's close to good shopping, it's close to transportation.... It's close to a wonderful parks system.... It's a great place to raise a family, with super schools."