The Bridge from East to West:
A Brief History of West Seattle
Antonio Hopson

      "When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size."
                 -John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath"

      "I've never met any one person from West Seattle that didn't have some type of major hang-up or another-- or,  at the very least, a hang up on the fact that they didn't  think they had one."

                  --a Seattle nighttime radio talk show host

In the natural world there are animal species known to incubate the eggs of their prey only to later devour the hatchlings. Nurturing life for the sake of murder, our fair city of Seattle has been incubating the small-town, rural culture that is West-Seattle only to someday ingest it completely into metropolis.  Big fish eats little fish: Megalopolis eats bucolic microlopolis.

The relationship between Seattle and West-Seattle can be likened to this --only, instead of sucking in life, Seattle sucks away lives. Every weekday, the glass towers of its financial district beckon the sleepy Westsiders over a six lane, entirely made of concrete, unsuspended bridge. The hoards move slowly over the stony horizon; their florescent smoke blown north onto Elliot Bay. And when the cars and busses have finished scurrying away --what is left behind is the marooned heart of a lonely community.
This community can best be described by recitation of its most defining edifice.

The West Seattle Bridge, completed July 14, 1984 is the main artery into the large organism of Seattle.   Virtually, all things needed to run a city the size of West Seattle, a town of 40, 000, must be transported over this bridge.  Yes, there are other routes, but they are tedious, mired with stoplights and back streets, junkyards and damp hills covered by weeds and lime-green foliage. If you visit West Seattle, the bridge route is best: a throughway so abrupt that it bleeds traffic into town like a slash to a vain.

It was not always so easy to get to the Westside. In the days before a bridge, residents wishing to visit did so by way of a small mosquito fleet of ships and ferries.  Elliot Bay, a sometimes-audacious body of water, opens into the city's busy port district and then narrows into a gullet. This is where the Duwamish River meanders south for many miles, digesting ships into the fertile low lands -a mazy river valley, splitting the landscape like a well-placed chop on a log.

In the early part of the 1900s, the ferry fleets competed with new streetcars, transporting denizens over the Duwamish, and east to where a number of department stores, lumber mills and factories patiently waited.  One sign read:

 TRAVEL BY FERRY.
 NO DUST
 NO DIRT
 NO CROWDING.

The "Ferry and Navigation Company", a monopoly until it was acquired by the city, used the infuriatingly long and laborious travel time it took from Seattle to West Seattle as its only marketing tool.  Indeed, to cross Elliot bay back then took less than half an hour; to travel by street car; hours. This time-consuming journey even inspired a sort of folk song, first said to have been circulated by the ferry people: one verse goes:

Took a ride to Fauntleroy:
hardly call the trip a joy
Single track most the way: journey took me half the day. . .
Then we'd go four blocks at best.
Motorman then wants a rest.
Goes back aft to talk to Joe
 Who is sorting out the dough.
Cars go by, but we stand still. view the
scene from Youngstown hill.
When at length the track is clear, off
we start in speedless gear.

Traveling to and fro, West Seattle has long been a major part of its character, and to answer this conundrum a number of bridges were constructed --all, as one city engineer put it, built "to bring West Seattle closer to town". Perhaps this is exactly why West Seattle eventually gave up on the city; waiting and waiting for utilities, ferries and streetcars. Languishing Westsiders were forced to dream-up their own existence and it wasn't long before civic minded projects began to spring up: an amusement park, long stretches of boardwalks and roads along the beach, a decadent movie theater, department stores and water towers.  Soon, people from Seattle were coming to the Westside for recreation and exploitation. Open, sandy-smooth, salt water beaches, fat, lazy, rolling hills, vistas, undeveloped land enough for entire new neighborhoods beckoned the Seattleites. No longer did people leave West Seattle for supplies and entertainment. Now, the elite and middle class flooded the West-side for frolic and dally.  Summer homes were built—mansions that today are antecedents of capricious times, gas stations and public restrooms. It was not until the aristocratic multitudes had dug in like a weevil that Seattle planners attempted to answer West Seattle's nagging bridge problem once and for all.

Sticks and Stones

Named and completed September 1956, the new First Ave South Bridge, unique at the time, was designed to allow 85 percent of its total weight to be supported by the buoyancy of the water --a virtual "floating bridge." This design was well liked by Seattle because, as a cost saving devise, the Duwamish River itself could hold up the goddamned bridge deck.  This new bridge ran along side the old Oxbow Bridge --a truss bridge, decaying from hurt feelings and wood burrowing worms.  It used to be the toast of the town, functionally speaking of course, but when it became too old to support its own weight it was pulled apart by tugboats without so much as a whimper from it.

The new bridge would not be so brave.

Created to absorb West Seattle's growing traffic --four lanes of grated steel were mounted upon giant green-painted iron trusses. Muck was dredged from the Duwamish and rebar driven deep into the riverbed. Worker poured in enough concrete to fill a thousand cement trucks.  This bridge would be stronger than the antiquated Ox Bow Bridge or the improvised wooden swing bridges, or the Bascule bridge no. 1 and no. 2 or, additionally, the Spokane Street Streetcar Trestle Bridge.

Meanwhile, a spike in West Seattle's smallish post-war population surged to 24,000 residents. Naturally these new, mostly middle class residents brought cars --about 11, 000 of them. It was only sixteen years later that the new bridge had become the state's busiest road. At times, it would take hours for commuters to drive through the bottleneck. Daily, more than 75, 000 cars traveled the short three-mile stretch.

An early form of road rage began to occur; shouting, accidents, pollution. The mayhem again brought pressure on city planners to begin designing --you guessed it, another bridge.

Yet each attempt to do so was thwarted by the state legislature.
Indeed, it would be hard for a representative in Spokane's farming communities to understand why 36 million dollars was needed to build a better bridge connecting one part of a busy city to another.  The Duwamish separated west from east the length a sissy could throw a stone. On a map, the thin blue line is barley anything at all.

West Seattle activist became incensed. The city council's circuitous, humdrum approach to raise funds for the bridge had put them to desperate measures. Again, prominent Westsiders began circulating a petition to succeed. "Build it of sticks and stones" cried the West Seattle Herald ". . .Build it!"

The mayor of Seattle called the activist "instigators" and "irresponsible". But after many rowdy town meetings, he had no interest in calling their bluff and no intention in cutting off access to West Seattle's tax base. Something had to be done.

Bed and Breakfast

On Sunday, June 11th, 1978, at or around 2:50 a.m. Rolf Neslund, an 80 year old harbor pilot steered a rusting, dirty, cantankerous 500 foot Yugoslavian freighter named the Antonio Chavez into the murky-brown, foggy inlet known as the Duwamish West Waterway.

At the time, the false riverbanks were lined with tired, old, tarred, muddy stakes holding up ghost factories, canneries and bayside docks. On the banks, ship skeletons sat sunk in the muck --like whalebones. It was while trying to "avoid" one of these vessel corpses that the Antonio Chavez was put on a mysterious three-minute course toward the sleeping bridge. The freighter's captain, Gojko Gospodnetic, awoke.  He must have felt a sudden surge in his ships velocity -reckless speed, the kind that frightens in-laws on a Sunday drive. Gospodnetic would make it to his bridge in time to put his ship's engines in reverse, but not in time to stops the inertia.  At 2:58 am, the northbound draw span was crumpled by the freighter, collapsing it into a twisted, wiry mess.

And, to no one's amazement, a new bridge was built. West Seattle's efforts to succeed were finally retired.

Additionally, the new bridge would be approved under equally suspicious circumstances.

Ways and Means

Welding his political clout, the Honorable and legendary Senator Warren G. `Maggie' Magnuson single-handedly acquired the means of funding the new bridge. This is the same man whom President Kennedy once remarked,

"When he sends messages from the rostrum and is asked `What is it?' he replies `It's nothing' and Grand Coulee Dam is built." In a matter of weeks, Magnuson had declared the collapsed bridge a catastrophe and persuaded the nation's congress that the link between Seattle and West Seattle was a situation of national interest.

Senator Magnuson: "Ahem! Mr. Speaker of the House, before we move on to [important situation in the late seventies] I'd like to bring up the national crisis of replacing the vital link between Seattle and West Seattle"

 Chairman of Ways and Means Committee: "Yes, yes indeed, we'll come back to the [important situation in the late seventies] later and involve ourselves presently in the matter of bridges in Seattle . . . um, ah, Seattle. . ."

Senator Magnuson: "Washington."

Chairman of Ways and Means Committee: "Washington?"

Senator Magnuson: "Yes, the State of Washington, Senator."

Chairman of Ways and Means Committee: "Yes, Yes! The state indeed! So Moved! The distinguished gentleman from Washington State may have 110 million dollars in federal emergency funds for the building of a new bridge at the nation's expense."

Consequentially, the story of the new bridge ends on a sad note. The harbor pilot, without explanation, disappeared from his home soon after the accident.  Later, during an investigation, it was discovered that his wife had ground him up in a meat grinder and donated 50 pounds of "meat" to a local food bank.  This is true. Look it up. And so is the fact that while widower's case was under appeal, she was allowed to continue operating her Bed and Breakfast.

The Highway to Heaven?

Presently, when traveling west bound over the new West Seattle Bridge, traffic moves swiftly and at ease. The bridge deck is now arched 140 feet high over the Duwamish, safe from boat traffic and conspiracies.

There are no streetcars to rattle it to pieces. Cars may come and go as they please; no railroad tracks, no waffled-steel grates to rattle transmissions into scrap. The new bridge is kind to cars and to passengers alike. Because it is arched in a tender slope, one feels as if they are driving off into the drifting clouds. The Olympic Mountains can be seen at the apex. At dusk, they are purple and pink.

In the old days, heading into Seattle was like driving into hell.
But now, when driving out of West Seattle, you drive your car over the industrial area --over the steel mill, a cold storage warehouse, and the dirty-dredged-to-death Duwamish.  A commuter might easily imagine that instead driving over the industrial district, they were flying safely over the ancient city of Pandemonium, where steel is melting and street lights glow fiery yellow and float mysteriously beneath the bridge, shinning like the conflagrations of secret demons. From their home, beneath the bridge, steam is rising from the old concrete factory.

. . . A Fiord, Really

Geographically, the West side is located on a lumpy rise west of the city's harbor. The hill, which is actually a peninsula, is covered with towering evergreens, maples and ragged old birch trees. Once, while being courted by the Mayor and his entourage, a Japanese dignitary was heard to say of the hill: "It looks likes Buddha himself!"

Perhaps this never happened.

Dispersed on the highest peaks are indigo water towers; People from all around the world have raved about the water pressure here.

It is convenient to find your way around West Seattle, for the streets are laid into the lumpy hill in easy, crisscross patterns; north to south are the main arterial streets, east to west are the residential streets; and since the Westside is situated on a peninsula—all roads lead to the water. The exception: lonely Delridge, which runs into White Center. However, White Center is not considered part of West Seattle proper. In fact, it is looked down on by many Westsiders. "There are too many restaurants there that look like they used to be a Denny's," explains one long time resident.

Sparkling sound separates the city main from the Westside, and the Westside from Vashon Island --a fiord really; which is defined as a waterway carved out of the land by mammoth glaciers. The three thousand foot wall of ice receded several times, leaving behind a protected, octopus shaped Puget Sound.

The sound was named after Peter Puget, a navigator to Captain Vancouver who first surveyed the Pacific Northwest, but only after the Lummi, Duwamish, Snoqualmie, Quinnault, Chehalis, Kalallam, Quileute, Chinook and Makah.

The banks of Puget Sound run all along West Seattle like the nape of a neck running into a shoulder; along its spidery inlets are currents said to swallow boats like guppies and vagrant winds ebbing the muddy, rocky beaches relentlessly into submissive cobble stone beaches. Diurnal tides pull and stretch the waterfront into beaten, broken, withered, sandy sunbathing spots; wind, sun and unsalted rain make the animals, which choose to live here, schizophrenic.

When the tide has gone out, tons of seaweed lay tiredly on the beach to be baked. By evening, there is a crusty green blanket of algae that goes "crunch-crunch-crunch" to your footfalls. The tourist who come here are disgusted by the smell of baking algae, but the natives wish for scratch and smell ads perfumed with this poignant odor. "WEST SEATTLE!  COME SMELL OUR HOME" it would read.

It is a mystery to Westsiders why people from all over the world would travel to their sleepy paradise. But to solve this mystery, one needs to first walk the windy sidewalks along Harbor Avenue. There is a view from the water's edge of Downtown Seattle where post-modern buildings are placed along Elliot Bay's semi circular waterfront. The sharp edged buildings seem to rise from, or seem to float on, Elliot Bay's emerald green water. This is why the tourist comes. And when a Westsider sees the smiling-wise and distant eyes of a worldly soul, they are left to wonder: what else lies beyond these watery walls?

Perhaps . . .

On a starry night, in the back of a dusty Westside tavern -sits a writer drinking beer. "What is it about West Seattle?" he asks no one in particular, "Why does the sum of its people fit socially into such a reclusive, even, exclusive functioning social system?"

There is a stranger next to him, dressed oxford style. He is not perplexed in the least at the question --he even seems to understand.  The stranger turns away from the bartender and examines the writer.

"Yet!" the writer continues, "It's this same function --which I think is to differentiate from its neighbors--that forms the base of the social structure they are trying so desperately to avoid. How can an inclusive behavioral mechanism such as this, broadly incorporate, even encourage its individuals to seek out miss-fitting traits in order to be accepted?"

"My, my!  What a big question you ask, young man," patronizes the stranger and then turns back to his beer.

"What's wrong with big questions," challenges the writer.

"Nothing," says the oxford man to his beer. "Not a thing! It only means that you're not from around here, doesn't it?"

"And you're from around here?"

"Hell no! That's how I can tell you're not!"

The oxford man sips at his beer, relaxes and decides that there is nothing better to do. "Yes, yes. I happen to agree with you." he then lets his clear, resonate voice slip softly into the tone of adornment,

"This community," he says magically, ". . .is like none other I have seen before --the way it feeds the city."

"Feeds?"

"Yes. Like the bear who steals up wild honey."

"Do you mind if I write that down?"

"Ah! Very good! A writer!"

"Yes."

"'Ever been published?"

"Never."

"Then I don't mind."

"You said it feed's the city." The writer begins to scribble on his note pad

"Yes—indeed it does." The oxford man takes in a deep breath, leans a little closer, "Every since the Denny family founded their settlement on Alki Point, West Seattle has remained the model of self sufficiency."

"Alki?"

"Yes. It is a Chinook term meaning `by and by'."

"Like, 'I'll see you later?'"

"More like, there never was a departure and there never will be again."

"Oh," says the writer, scribbling as if he understands.  "In any event, this Alki Point - you said it's the birth place of West Seattle?"

"No, indeed it's not! It's the birthplace of Seattle! The residents here would not like to see that in print."

"So how did West Seattle give birth to a city five times its size but remain separated?"

"Well," lectures the stranger, "The answer to that question might lead to a pet theory of mine. Are you courageous enough to hear it?"

"I don't think I could've avoided it."

"Very good!" and the stranger licks his lips and begins.

"There is a dreadful story of how David T. Denny had an accident involving his foot and an ax and came down with a miserable case of gangrene --but I will spare you that. Really, besides the awful drought, there was plenty to survive by on this side of the bay: lumber, salmon, navigable terrain. The only reason Seattle proper exists is because the west side of the peninsula is too damned rough for shipping. So you see, some of the Denny party moved east, to the other side of Elliot bay, to sell and load onto schooners more easily."

"So Seattle grew because of its lumber industry," says the writer "and West Seattle did not."

"Oh, it grew. Indeed it did. Though, it grew differently."

"How so?"

"It grew to be self-sufficient of Seattle proper; while Seattle had the eastern frontier of the state to exploit, the west side was pitted up against Puget Sound and the Duwamish River."

"And these geographical barriers made it hard to ship exports?"

"Virtually impossible. And as a result, West Seattle had to grow differently. On its own. It became a little city --one not so predisposed with capitalistic concerns --but one that relied heavily on its community to exist."

"Ummm." said the writer.

"By the time railways, ferries and bridges were built, it was too late. Seattle had already become what it was to become. And West Seattle stayed the same; a community --not a regional power. In fact, one could live here their entire life without ever going east over the bridge."

"Ummm." said the writer, again.

"Now young writer. Here is my pet theory." The stranger takes two great gulps of beer. "You see, West Seattle is like the primordial jungles of the past --a fixed, steady environment." The writer raises an eyebrow, but the Oxford stranger continues. "When nature was experimenting with different combinations of, shall we say, candidate life forms, it first needed an environment that didn't change so very often. All the other environs of the age had been engaged in dramatic climactic changes –ice ages, ever and ever, shifting continents, volcanism, and major seasonal changes."

"Yes," agreed the writer, now reeling it in. "Yes, I see."

"Nature needed a fixed environment to breed a hardy combination of possibilities. Without it, she had no incubator, no mothering womb of temperamentality --not until the steaming, unchanged jungle became fixed and so you see, anything that was produced in the fluctuating environments outside of this jungle will parish with the changing circumstances."

"And this can be likened to West Seattle because?"

"Because --my curious new friend --nothing ever changes around here." The oxford man waves his hand around the tavern like a magic wand, daring anyone to disagree. "Look around you now! In this safe place, you can grow into whatever you believe is true --if you do it well enough, then, and only then, can you leave the safe, nurturing community and feed the more challenging, dynamic environment that lives on the other side of that Goddamned bridge!"

"Ummmm," the writer says after a long time, "Is this why the old men here all look like Quint?"

"Quint?"

"The character Robert Shaw played in Jaws."

"Yes!"

Perhaps this never happened.
Perhaps it did.

But there is a story about a hermit who lives on the beaches of
Alki . . .

He is a skinny, middle aged, redheaded man, who was born and raised in one of West Seattle's fine Victorian homes.  Though, today he now lives in shelters he constructed entirely out of driftwood.  Everyday, when the tide comes in and destroys his home, he passes the day searching for suitable pieces of wood to build another home.  It is said that his perception of reality comes and goes like the tide and that this condition was not a curse of physiologies, nor was it induced by drugs--it is said that he suffers from a condition of dreaming.  Every night while sleeping, he dreams of being in his Victorian home; there are possessions he can recognize --tables and chairs, books, ashtrays, old news papers. The dream is wrapped in a feeling of comfort and contentment --a fuzzy, homey familiarity. And in the dream he is always aware that he is safe in the confines of his home and then, somewhere, an alarm clock goes off. "I looked all around for it" he tells the author, "but it was nowhere to be found!"  Disorganized, he awakes and finds himself in another place that he recognizes as his own, though, the possessions are all different.  This new dream unfolds as before, always the same but different, place after deferent place, until he wakes to find himself back in his little shelter made of driftwood and sticks.

Perhaps this never happened.
Perhaps it really did.

***

"To learn more about West Seattle, please take a look at Clay Eals' historical book "Westside Story," a history of West Seattle".

***
Antonio Hopson nearly ruled the world but was thwarted by a frisky British 00 agent. Since then, he has moved to writing speculative fiction, flash fiction and essays. His stories have been widely published in both print (Quiet Shorts Magazine, Stellar Showcase Journal, Letter X, Creation, The Wonder Boy Review, Ascent, 20 Dissidents and Old Growth Journal) and electronic journals (The Harrow Magazine, Monongahela Review, The Subterranean Quarterly, OutCry Magazine, Lost Magazine, The Angler, The Piker Press and also NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu's Exquisite Corpse). He has received Farmhouse Magazine's Reader's Choice award and was invited to perform at Seattle's Richard Hugo House where he was a featured writer. As a performer and panelist, he is an author at Rainbow Bookfest. You can contact him at Antoniofiction(at)gmail.com or, to see what else he is up to visit AntonioHopson.com.