LAND-USE HISTORY (STATION #5)

RAVENNA NATURAL PARK!

The Park went under several names before finally settling on Ravenna Park. Some of them included: Tree Park, Twin Maples Lane and Ravenna Natural Park!

The land-use of Ravenna Park has a rich history similar in that of Green Lake Park. In the early 1800's this park was among one of the only parks that was said to "escape the loggers axe". Escaping deforestation allowed preservation of the old growth trees. The park opened in 1887 as a privately operated escape called "Ravenna Springs Park". In 1911 Seattle bought the park and lowered the lake that was the main source for the streams and cut down trees.

Here is an accurate description put forth by the Seattle Parks Department below about the logistics of how the park was formed etc.

HISTORY

The Ravenna Park ravine was formed when melt-off from the Vashon Glacial Ice Sheet formed Lake Russell and cut drainage ravines through new glacial fill. Lake Russell disappeared when the Ice Sheet retreated north of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, but various features remained, including the Green Lake drainage basin, which continued to empty through the Ravenna ravine into Lake Washington. The deeper pockets of the basin became Bitter, Haller and Green Lakes. Many creeks and brooks and springs fed into Green Lake, whose outlet was on the east side of the route of Ravenna Boulevard, in a deepening ravine which became Cowen and Ravenna parks. If Ravenna seems a leafy paradise now, it is only a weed patch compared with the magnificent forest it once was. Even after the original logging craze had leveled most of the virgin timber in the Seattle area, Ravenna had been saved as a haven for fir and cedar giants.

Here is another photo that shows old-growth that was once in Ravenna!

The size of this tree trunk is massive compared to the tree growth that currently exists in Ravenna Park. Unfortunately when the city bought it, they cut down a lot of the old-growth that once existed. The same happened with UBNA!

HistoryLink.org

www.seattle.gov/parks