Two entrepreneurs from Nebraska, L.H. Griffith and E. Blewett, liked Seattle. It was 1888 – the Ladies Library Association was busy reviving the Seattle Public Library; Madame Lou Graham was busy herself, setting up an exclusive house of prostitution in downtown Seattle; Bothell’s first post office opened; the Queen City Cycling Club held Seattle’s first bicycle tournament; Robert Moran runs for mayor; and Griffith and Blewett, with a dentist named Dr. Kilbourne, platte a town on the northwest corner of Lake Union. They name the town Fremont for their old hometown in Nebraska.
At the outlet of a lake, it was a prime spot to bridge to Seattle proper. It would not be until June 15, 1917 when the current iteration, the Fremont Bridge, opened, but when it did it soon became one of the busiest bascule bridges in the entire world. It still is.
Some technical aspects – a bascule bridge operates like a seesaw by way of a balance. The bridge opens about 35 times a day. It had opened 500,000 times in September 1991. By 2006 it had opened 66,000 times more. It’s opening again as I write this. It’s 502 feet long. The two leaves that go up and down and up and down every day, is 3 million pounds and is tipped with 100 horsepower motors. The bridge clears the water by 30 feet. It has opened and closed more than any other Seattle drawbridge (there are four bascule bridges that span the Lake Washington Ship Canal – Ballard Bridge, Fremont Bridge, University Bridge, Montlake Bridge).
It was rails that first spanned the waters around Fremont. It’s what made Fremont flourish – a hive of lumber mills, shingle mills, an iron foundry – originally. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad cross the future Lake Washington Ship Canal (not completed in full until 1934) to Fremont in 1888 before following the north shore of Lake Union to Lake Washington (now the Burke-Gilman Trail). Real estate maven Guy Phinney’s street rail trolleys came to Fremont, too, taking passengers from Fremont up the hill to his privately owned Woodland Park. Griffin and Kilbourne’s trolleys ran to Green Lake. 1910 brought Stone & Webster’s Seattle-Everett Traction Company conecting Everett to Seattle proper via Fremont, crossing the channel. In 1914, Northern Pacific built a trestle to Fremont as well. These bridge ties made Fremont flourish but with the advent of automobile travel a full-use traffic bridge needed to be built as demand continued to grow; a bridge better than the rickety wooden bridge built in 1892, better than the Stone Way Bridge was the was built in 1911. The Fremont Bridge needed to be built.
It wasn’t that long ago when there were no cars in Seattle at all. It was on July 23, 1900, just 17 years previous, when Seattle saw it’s first car, a three-horsepower Wood Electric, owned by Ralph Hopkins. It had been only a decade since the world’s first gas service station opened on Holgate and Western in Seattle. Yes, a bridge needed to be built and so the building began. The bridge engineer was F.A. Rapp. The pier designer was D.R. Huntington. The counterweight pits and workings were (and are) housed in two concrete towered piers. It cost $410,000 to build. In 1982 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 1985 it was painted blue and orange, chosen by vote at a street fair and it’s opening again as I finish this essay.
Jonathan Shipley
12/20/2009
At the outlet of a lake, it was a prime spot to bridge to Seattle proper. It would not be until June 15, 1917 when the current iteration, the Fremont Bridge, opened, but when it did it soon became one of the busiest bascule bridges in the entire world. It still is.
Some technical aspects – a bascule bridge operates like a seesaw by way of a balance. The bridge opens about 35 times a day. It had opened 500,000 times in September 1991. By 2006 it had opened 66,000 times more. It’s opening again as I write this. It’s 502 feet long. The two leaves that go up and down and up and down every day, is 3 million pounds and is tipped with 100 horsepower motors. The bridge clears the water by 30 feet. It has opened and closed more than any other Seattle drawbridge (there are four bascule bridges that span the Lake Washington Ship Canal – Ballard Bridge, Fremont Bridge, University Bridge, Montlake Bridge).
It was rails that first spanned the waters around Fremont. It’s what made Fremont flourish – a hive of lumber mills, shingle mills, an iron foundry – originally. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad cross the future Lake Washington Ship Canal (not completed in full until 1934) to Fremont in 1888 before following the north shore of Lake Union to Lake Washington (now the Burke-Gilman Trail). Real estate maven Guy Phinney’s street rail trolleys came to Fremont, too, taking passengers from Fremont up the hill to his privately owned Woodland Park. Griffin and Kilbourne’s trolleys ran to Green Lake. 1910 brought Stone & Webster’s Seattle-Everett Traction Company conecting Everett to Seattle proper via Fremont, crossing the channel. In 1914, Northern Pacific built a trestle to Fremont as well. These bridge ties made Fremont flourish but with the advent of automobile travel a full-use traffic bridge needed to be built as demand continued to grow; a bridge better than the rickety wooden bridge built in 1892, better than the Stone Way Bridge was the was built in 1911. The Fremont Bridge needed to be built.
It wasn’t that long ago when there were no cars in Seattle at all. It was on July 23, 1900, just 17 years previous, when Seattle saw it’s first car, a three-horsepower Wood Electric, owned by Ralph Hopkins. It had been only a decade since the world’s first gas service station opened on Holgate and Western in Seattle. Yes, a bridge needed to be built and so the building began. The bridge engineer was F.A. Rapp. The pier designer was D.R. Huntington. The counterweight pits and workings were (and are) housed in two concrete towered piers. It cost $410,000 to build. In 1982 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 1985 it was painted blue and orange, chosen by vote at a street fair and it’s opening again as I finish this essay.
Jonathan Shipley
12/20/2009
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| Fremont Bridge being re-decked, June 19, 1936. Photograph courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives. |
Nice article, it would be interesting to see pictures of the other bridges. When was the bridge at Stone Way razed?
Johnathan, any word on the rooms under the pergola?
I found a photo of most of the Stone Way bridge. That end of the lake sure looks a lot different today.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/lee&CISOPTR=157&CISOBOX=1&REC=8
Vintage Seattleites figured out last fall that the gas station was at Holgate and “Whatcom”!
http://www.vintageseattle.org/2009/09/04/first-second-gas-station-in-the-world/#comments
wow, fremont sure has changed!
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