I suppose that it was around 1958 when Pip and Terry introduced me to “The Shortcut”. None of us knew that the shortcut to the Yacht Club was part of a historic Native canoe portage or the remains of a log canal being reclaimed by the urban jungle. Speaking of urban jungles, I was fresh out of Wichita and amazed at the neighborhood wilderness that surrounded my new home. We were just kids interested in shortcuts, swamps and being where, maybe, we shouldn’t have been.
The shortcut started up at Montlake Blvd. and followed a rugged dirt road down to Portage Bay where a half dozen or so houseboats were moored. The road was rough as there weren’t many cars associated with the houseboats, hence, it wasn’t maintained. These houseboat dwellers were typical of the time as many lived a hand-to-mouth existence so cars were a luxury that few could afford. The road was mostly used as a foot path for the houseboat tenants.
The dock providing access to the houseboats was adjacent to a small cove that had some wooden refuse poking up out of the water. We skirted the cove and crossed the water where it was shallow, using wood and steel debris or scrub willows where they allowed us to clamber over. Once past the cove we came upon a “pond” close to the Fisheries Building and crossed a “dam” that separated the pond from Portage Bay. The pond was surrounded by Willows that flourished and provided luxurious shade. I recall the walkway over the “dam” as being no wider than about two feet.
When SR-520 was built through the Canal Reserve things changed dramatically. The dirt road, houseboats, pilings, the cove and pond were removed. Fill was added for the freeway and for additional parking at the Fisheries Building pushing the shoreline about 200 feet out into Portage Bay .
As decades passed, I often thought about that shortcut, the houseboats, the mysterious debris and the urban Eden surrounding the pond adjacent to the Fisheries Building. I pondered the origin of the rubble and what it had once been? I assumed that it had been garbage fill but didn’t really know.
Then, one day I was reading Don Sherwood’s history of West
Montlake Park and it all fell into place.
I could look at old maps and photos with new eyes and parse old memories
after I read:
“In 1929 the US Bureau of Commercial Fisheries was
permitted to build a laboratory on the Old Canal property adjacent to the Yacht
Club. The Old Canal had never been
filled in, except for Montlake Boulevard when the old bridge was removed. So in 1932 Noble Hoggson, a landscape
architect, proposed creation of an aquarium built in the “canyon” of the Old
Canal adjacent to the new Fisheries laboratory.
It would have occupied the site of the old locks – by then lost in the
jungle of trees and undergrowth. Though
highly endorsed, this plan never materialized”:
