Dredging Over Decades Turned Winding River Into Slow-Flowing Ditch; Project Would Never Be Considered Today

Stand along much of the Sammamish River, perhaps at Northeast 116th Street, and the scene appears almost blissfully placid.

The 60 Acres soccer fields are there. Bike riders speed past on a riverfront trail. Rockets and model airplanes soar at a park.

Forty years ago, those things were impossible. The area was routinely submerged, flooded by the river.

Many of Redmond's newest buildings, including City Hall, the Rivertrail Townhomes and new shopping centers, all stand where brush and cattails grew.

The development was possible because of public-works projects that once were virtually unquestioned yet probably would be unthinkable today.

The work that changed the valley stretched over more than 50 years and wasn't finished until the 1960s. It turned a meandering 30-mile river into essentially a slow-flowing ditch, its surface often 20 feet below the level of the surrounding terrain. The dredging and straightening of the Sammamish River also had a dramatic effect on what was one of the richest wetlands in the Puget Sound region. It also had major, if unintended, effects on the salmon that once filled the river.

The Sammamish River contained about half the salmon and trout populations spawning in the Lake Washington watershed, according to a 1950 state report. Redmond's original name, in fact, was Salmonberg because it had so many fish.

Today extensive efforts are being made to restore the salmon runs, but changing the once-meandering river into a straight channel with little shade and bordered by acres of parking have made that a substantial challenge.

In 1895, river was a swamp

A century ago, the present appearance of the Sammamish River would have been inconceivable.

An 1895 survey map shows the river winding through swamp land. Several now-forgotten towns with names such as Derby and York dotted the valley.

For about 20 years in the late 1800s, the river was the main route to much of the Eastside.

Although the distance from the river's source in Lake Sammamish to Kenmore where it empties into Lake Washington is now about 10 miles, traveling the river then was a 30-mile trip, usually made by barges pushed by crews using poles.

A major navigational advance occurred in 1884, when a 42-foot scow named the Squak, built at shipyards in Houghton and powered by a 12-horsepower steam engine, began running the river.

Such river trips soon would disappear.

Tracks for the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad were laid to Bothell in 1887 and by 1888 had been brought down the west side of the valley, then to the eastern edge of Lake Sammamish and on to Issaquah.

Boats did remain as the chief way to cross Lake Washington, however, until the Mercer Island Floating Bridge was opened in 1940. Shipping ran as late as 1916 to Bothell, considered the head of navigation, with such steamers as the Evril, Duck Hunter and May Blossom following the river's curves.

Commercial navigation on the river finally was ended by still another now-unthinkable project, the construction of the Ballard Locks, providing a route to Puget Sound.

Opening the Locks in 1916 lowered Lake Washington 9 feet and drained much of the Sammamish River. Steamers could no longer make it to Bothell. The river continued to be used for moving logs to sawmills, leading to countless logjams.

By 1917, James Clise wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers about jams blocking the river, expressing his concern about the detrimental effects on his country estate, Willowmoor. (Today, the 1904 Clise Mansion is the site of the county's Marymoor Museum.)

That same year, the Sammamish River Drainage District was started and dredging began to improve river flows.

Annual flooding remained a part of life in the valley for decades, however. A 1964 newspaper article told how farmers found it impossible to use their land for about half of each year, with as much as 7 feet of water covering much of the valley.

King County dredging efforts to curtail the flooding were only partly successful, and decades of discussion about the river ensued. Corps records about the river fill more than 160 volumes of correspondence, studies and other materials dating to 1912. Federal flood-control aid was approved in 1948, but it wasn't until 1961 that the money was appropriated.

Dreamy days spent swimming

The river provided for some idyllic times during those years, however, with settlers reminiscing about dreamy days spent at swimming holes before the channel was straightened.

Its original twisty path was the site of "The Sammamish Slough Race" started in 1928. The race drew as many as 50,000 spectators to watch outboard speedboats race the length of the slough, with hydroplanes hitting speeds above 80 mph, crashing into logs, sand bars and the riverbank while observers lined bridges and the shoreline.

The race lost much of its excitement after the final channel straightening in the 1960s, and eventually came to an end after a 1976 accident in which a boat hit a spectator, Ron Clausen. A University of Washington pole vaulter, Clausen suffered a broken leg and never competed again.

In 1963, Dorothy Brant Brazier, a Seattle Times editor, wrote of a nostalgic trip along the waterway just before the straightening project was to begin.

She told of seeing "boys fishing . . . men ploughing, a girl on horseback, dogs racing our boat, cows and horses drinking at the water's edge.

"We slipped past pretty homes, deserted cabins, mills . . . the river winds through rich farmlands and meadows thick with buttercups. There are clumps of cattails and clumps of rushes and floating lily pads."

By July 1963 work on final straightening and dredging had begun under a $3.75 million joint project by the Army Corps of Engineers and King County. When it was completed in 1965, the riverbed had been lowered as much as 7 feet, the tailings placed along the banks and the old channels filled.

The river, "new from source to outlet, will be designed to carry off far greater quantities of floodwater than ever has been recorded during decades of sometimes torrential downpours," project engineer Phillip Bishop said.

Bishop was largely right, although flooding has continued to periodically occur in the area.

But other than the reminder of occasional floods, it's hard to visualize what the river and valley must have looked like in 1899, because nothing of it remains today.

Peyton Whitely's phone message number is 206-464-2259. His e-mail address is pwhitely@seattletimes.com ------------------------------- Materials consulted for this article included files of The Seattle Times; displays at Marymoor Museum and the Bothell Historical Museum; "Our Town Redmond" by Nancy Way; "The Bothell Interviews, 1975," published by the Northshore School District; "Slough of Memories," compiled by Fred Klein; and "Squak Slough" by Amy Eunice Stickney and Lucile McDonald.