Mountlake Terrace prepares for its 50th-birthday party

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — The year was 1954. The vote, on whether to become a city, was a close one, with 517 people in support and 483 against.

Those opposed to the new city included developers who didn't want tougher building codes. It also included the young families of World War II veterans worried about taxes.

"We voted against incorporation," said JoAnne Gossett, who, with her husband, Bill, raised five sons in Mountlake Terrace, one of whom, Dave, went on to be mayor and then a Snohomish County councilman.

"We were just afraid it would cost us more money, but it's been a good move. It's been a good place to live and raise children."

On Friday, as part of the annual tree-lighting ceremony, the city will officially kick off its 50th-birthday celebration. The yearlong festivities will culminate next November in a festival and banquet, almost 50 years to the day of the vote that set Mountlake Terrace on the route to civic identity.

The occasion has given the city an opportunity to reflect on its origins and to plan events that will honor the city's first residents.

"Everyone is pretty excited," said Mike Pivec, the city's personnel director, who has worked with a birthday committee of other municipal employees and residents to gather oral and written histories, as well as photos of the city's early years.

From the beginning, the city was a bedroom community that offered affordable housing to a generation of workers eager to settle down and raise families after the ravages of war.

"We'd all been shot at and missed," Bill Gossett said of his early Mountlake Terrace neighbors. "We were all the same age, the same background. There was a lot of comradeship."

In 1949, the Gossetts bought the third house in a concrete-block subdivision that would become Mountlake Terrace's first neighborhood. JoAnne Gossett, who said she and her husband were living in a "dingy Seattle apartment" at the time, fell in love with the home and its new appliances. It cost $4,999.

"I took one look at my wife's face and knew this was it," Bill Gossett said of the two-bedroom, 640-square-foot home that has been added on to several times over the years.

By 1954, the area had grown to an estimated 7,000 residents, about 5,000 of them kids. Patrick McMahan, who moved to the area in 1952, said the young families wanted better police and fire service, and amenities such as sidewalks and sewers.

Under county government, building rules were lax, "and the developers liked it that way," McMahan said.

McMahan, who helped organize a volunteer fire department in 1952, was part of a group that pushed for cityhood. In 1953, the group approached Edmonds about the possibility of annexing. McMahan, who was 22 at the time, said he was told by then-Mayor Paul McGibbon: "Son, you live five miles in the country. We're not going beyond Ninth Avenue."

Today, 72nd Avenue West is a primary boundary between the two cities, and Mountlake Terrace has about 20,470 residents.

The city has grown from 1 square mile to about 4, from being almost exclusively a white suburb to one in which almost one-quarter of its residents are of other races and/or varied ethnic backgrounds. And there are now office buildings, hotels and freeways surrounding those first mid-20th-century ramblers.

The average age is still relatively young — 34, according to the 2000 census. And 21 percent of residents are under 15.

McMahan recalled that the first municipal buildings were two houses. The first mayor, Gilbert Geiser, had to lend the new city $5 so incorporation papers could be filed.

Geiser told The Seattle Times a week after the incorporation vote that his priority was to create a good environment for the city's children.

"One of my main interests is juvenile delinquency," Geiser said.

"So far, because the majority of our children are preschool age, we don't have much of a problem. But it's one of the first things we're going to look out for. We'll try to plan recreation and school programs so it never will be a problem here."

City Councilwoman Laura Sonmore, who moved to Mountlake Terrace as a child in 1967, said she remembers new subdivisions and neighborhoods full of kids.

"We walked to the (Recreation) Pavilion. We walked through the woods to junior high. There weren't any rich kids driving fancy cars. We all came from the same backgrounds," Sonmore said, "and we're still close today."

Lynn Thompson: 425-745-7807 or lthompson@seattletimes.com