Seattle Iconic and quirky, but it’s the great outdoors that captured this city’s soul Story and photos by Richard Varr
I’m walking amid debris—broken pipes, shattered wooden planks and a twisted and rusted radiator— while on a tour of downtown Seattle’s so-called underground. “The pioneers got here from the Midwest, and they set up shop on a beach, on a mud flat,” explains Clay Ballard with Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour. “Twice a day the tide would come in and it would be a mess. They put sawdust from the mill and packed it into the streets. They had oatmeal streets, people would say.” “They had their original sewer pipes on the beach— not below because the water table was there. And every time it would back up during high tide,” Ballard asserts, “they would have exploding toilets.” I soon consider the debris inside these tunnels below downtown sidewalks more as history than clutter. That’s because when a fire leveled the city in 1889, residents had a chance to rebuild above the water line. Thus, the new downtown area was built a story higher. “They raised the streets up around all the buildings and they buried the first story of the buildings, creating tunnels,” continues Ballard. “Inside these streets of dirt, they put new sewer pipes. So, they were high enough to fix the problem
Tunnel in underground Seattle with debris
and wouldn’t back up during high tide.”
Along with Bill Speidel’s, a second company, Beneath the Streets, also hosts underground tours around Pioneer Square, Seattle’s birthplace, where a bust of the city’s Native American namesake Chief Sealth stands near a totem pole representing the indigenous Tlinget tribe. On adjacent sidewalks, faded and darkened skylights offer a glimpse into the historic tunnels. Surrounded by green forests and sloping hillsides, Seattle nestles within many waterfronts between Puget Sound and inland waterways, separated by
Outside Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle
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