- Louis Fiset, Green Lake Park Alliance
- In September 1855, surveyor David Phillips hacked his way through bushes to the muddy banks of a small lake north of Seattle’s Lake Union, and found a tired, postglacial lake. His team entered the name Green Lake into their field logs, which eventually reached their employer, the Surveyor General of the United States. Their late summer visit coincided with the appearance of seasonal algae blooms and may explain the name they entered on the survey map. Area visitors have been talking about the foul smelling green stuff for the past 80 years.
- Seattle — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
Seattle is the largest city in Washington state and its economic capital. Settled in 1851, its deep harbor and acquisition of Puget Sound’s first steam-powered sawmill quickly established it as a center of trade and industry. It gained the Territorial University (now University of Washington) in 1861, but was snubbed by the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1874 when it picked Tacoma as its western terminus. Despite this, the town prospered thanks to independent railroad development fueled by local coal deposits…
- Green Lake Park (Seattle) (historylink.org)
Green Lake Park is a 323-acre park located in north Seattle, adjacent to Woodland Park. Famed landscape architect John Charles Olmsted included a boulevard around Green Lake in his 1903 plan for Seattle’s park and boulevard system. The Board of Park Commissioners acquired the lake and surrounding land by 1908 and hired Olmsted to create plans for the park in 1908 and 1910. Over the years, the park evolved from a boulevard, to a rustic lakeshore park, to a more formalized park with numerous annual events held on the lake, to a park with fewer water-based events, but a highly used pathway circumnavigating the lake. It is one of the most popular parks in the state.