- Mountlake Terrace – not to be confused with “Montlake” and no longer to be simply called “Terrace” – began life as a speculator’s dream. In 1949, developer Albert LaPierre and his partner, Jack Peterson, bought an abandoned airstrip on logged-over land about 12 miles north of Seattle, just over the Snohomish County line, and began filling it with 640-square-foot cinder-block houses, priced at $4,999 and aimed at World War II veterans with young families. They named their development Mountlake Terrace because from some parts of the property they could see both Mount Rainier and Lake Washington, and the old runway looked a little like a terrace. Buyers snapped up the modest houses as fast as they could be built. By 1954, when Mountlake Terrace was incorporated, it was one of the fastest-growing communities in Washington state. The growth stalled in the late 1970s, however. A quintessential suburb, designed for the automobile, Mountlake Terrace has struggled to redefine itself in recent years, with controversial efforts to create a more centralized, pedestrian-friendly “downtown.”
