- 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.”
- River (Wikipedia)
A river is a natural freshwater stream that flows on land or inside caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of its course if it runs out of water, or only flow during certain seasons. Rivers are regulated by the water cycle, the processes by which water moves around the Earth. Water first enters rivers through precipitation, whether from the runoff of water down a slope, the melting of glaciers or snow, or seepage from aquifers beneath the surface of the Earth.