For those of you who love to get out and participate in urban hiking, Jake and Cathy Jaramillo’s Seattle Stairway Walks blog shares some great routes for exploring Seattle’s pedestrian stairways. The blog shares walking routes on stairways in various parts of the city and includes history, photos, and more. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post about a walk through Laurelhurst:
On this stairway walk you might try to imagine the childish voices of the Duwamish kids who played here 150 years ago, when this little peninsula jutting into Union Bay was a seasonal Indian camp. You might think of the sound of heavy machinery gnawing on the last of the old growth forest, when Yesler Town with its gritty little mill stood here in the 1890s. Or you could consider the ‘thwack’ of a golf ball being struck on Seattle’s first course, laid out here around the same time as Yesler Town was built.
All of this is almost unimaginable nowadays. By 1910, when Seattle annexed “Laurelhurst,” it was a small community of less than 20 homes, isolated by water and rough terrain. Now it’s known as the neighborhood where Bill Gates Jr. grew up, and where Senators Magnuson and Evans retired. It’s very family-oriented, too: the percentage of households with kids is twice that of Seattle as a whole, and many residents who grew up here returned eventually to raise families of their own.
Laurelhurst is sited spectacularly on winding, hilly streets overlooking Union Bay and Lake Washington. You’ll explore a lengthy stairway ending at the Lake Washington shore, right next to the Laurelhurst Beach Club (you can join if you live south of NE 50th Street). You’ll discover a hidden stairway disappearing down a shadowy arbor just off someone’s driveway, and pay a visit to an unexpected pocket park tucked between shorefront homes. If you do a stairway walk here in April, you might be lucky enough to witness the carefully tended landscaping exploding into flower, saturating the neighborhood with sweet perfume.
The blog has appeared in Sunset magazine and the West Seattle Herald, and is a great part of Seattle’s growing walking movement.
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