Ravenna Park (Seattle) By Peter Blecha Posted 1/23/2011 HistoryLink.org Essay 9559 avenna Park, one of Seattle's oldest, was among the few areas that escaped the logger's axe in the late 1800s and thus preserved stunning examples of giant old-growth Douglas Firs. Centered around a steep moss- and fern-covered ravine just north of the R University District, the park opened in 1887 as a privately operated destination called Ravenna Springs Park. It featured nature trails and mineral springs touted for their supposed healthful qualities. Over the following decades, owners William and Louise Beck (1860-1928) promoted the park under various names including Big Tree Park, Twin Maples Lane, Ravenna Natural Park, and finally Ravenna Park. Seattle bought the park in 1911, and subsequently lowered the lake that fed its stream and cut down many magnificent trees. Today Ravenna Park and the adjacent Cowen Park are city parks. A community group, Ravenna Creek Alliance, works to protect and restore it. The Ravine The deep history of Ravenna Park is directly tied to that of the nearby Green Lake Park -- with the lake being a physical vestige of the Vashon Ice Glacial Sheet of 50,000 year ago. Green Lake had an outflow creek that meandered southeastward (along the path of today's Ravenna Boulevard) through an increasingly steep and heavily wooded one-half-mile-long ravine and down into what is today called Union Bay (on Lake Washington). The western shore of that bay was the site of one Native American village and just northeast of the ravine (at the mouth of Thornton Creek) was another, so it may be presumed that the cutthroat trout and Coho salmon runs in the Green Lake (Ravenna) Creek were well known to those Indians. They also likely took note of the sulfuric mineral springs -- natural features that would later be touted for having healing properties. When Seattle's first pioneer settlers -- chief among them the Denny party -- began making the land claims that would soon comprise the new village of Seattle, they mainly grabbed real estate along the central waterfront on Elliott Bay. It would take some time and the arrival of additional settlers before anyone made claims near the ravine. As logging operations progressed farther into the town's surrounding forests, fields and hills all around were denuded of their bountiful stands of old-growth Douglas Fir, and giant alders, cedars, and willow trees. But not so, the ravine: Its steep canyon topography made the task far too difficult and its huge trees and massive ferns were spared that fate. Ravenna Springs Park William N. Bell (1817-1887) and his wife Sarah Ann Bell (1815-1856) selected some acreage north of Union Bay that included the lower end of the creek that emerged from the ravine. In the years prior to Bell's death the couple sold their land and it reportedly passed through several hands until George and Oltilde Dorffel acquired ownership in 1887, the same year they filed paperwork platting it as Ravenna Springs Park -- a name inspired by the famously beautiful pine-tree-forested ravine town of Ravenna, Italy. Soon those 40-some springs bubbling from the ground were being touted for their medicinal properties. The year 1889 saw another couple -- William Wirt Beck and his wife Louise Coman Beck -- investing in a huge parcel of 400 acres on the north side of Union Bay including the Dorffels' park. The Becks were an interesting duo: He was a Presbyterian minister from Kentucky (who would later claim a background as a miner). She was an Athens, Georgia, native who had graduated from the Athens Female College and then studied music in the Northeast. She was well equipped to teach music in Seattle. The Becks were ambitious: They envisioned a whole new town, Ravenna, arising on their land and toward that end they quickly platted out town lots southward from the edge of the park and entered the world of real estate sales. The Becks built a large house (at the northeast corner of NE 57th Street and 26th Avenue NE) on 10 acres that also contained their Seattle Female College. The college enrolled 40 students for the 1890 school year, and soon included the Seattle Conservatory of Music and Ravenna Seminary. In addition they arranged to have a post office (headed by a Lafayette S. Beck) established and founded the Ravenna Flouring Co. Roper's Grocery soon joined the hamlet. Best of all, the little town would be serviced at a Ravenna Station (at Blakely Street and 25th Avenue NE) by the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern railroad, which passed through the area on its route from downtown Seattle (along today's Burke- Gilman Trail). Rainier Power and Railway Company The townsite of Ravenna became even more attractive to would-be home buyers a couple years later with the arrival of streetcar service via a route that would skirt the entire length of the park (along its southern border). Seattle pioneer David Denny (1832-1903) was behind the project. Denny had gotten into real estate. After platting the neighborhoods bordering the park -- an area still so distant from downtown that the Denny family soon built and then maintained a country "summer home" (6315? NE 63rd Street) there -- he helped found the Rainier Power and Railway Company in order to facilitate easy transportation to the nearby Brooklyn neighborhood (today's University District). That line was extended to Ravenna Park around 1892 and three years later was reorganized as the Third Street and Suburban Railway, which included a Ravenna Station (near today's NE 58th Street and 20th Avenue NE). After departing its terminus downtown, the line passed through logged and largely uninhabited terrain until it turned back southward at Ravenna. One writer noted that "Most of the area through the northern part of this system's route was inhabited only by squirrels and gophers" (Leslie Blanchard quoted in "No Finer Site"). But it was the sight of critters and the unspoiled nature of the ravine that made it such an attraction. The granddaughter of Denny's brother Arthur (1822-1899), Sophie Frye Bass (1866-1947), wrote that: "My first recollection of Ravenna Park was a moonlight excursion in midsummer, when the moon failed to appear, a cool breeze came up, and a chill was in the air. Even so, the large coal-oil lamps shining through the trees lighting the path that ran through the park, and the bobbing and swaying Chinese lanterns made it seem like a land fit for fairies. It was quite a trip to Ravenna in those days, for we took the train at the funny little station at the foot of Columbia Street on the waterfront and rode nine and a half miles to the park ... it became a favorite spot for picnickers and a show place for out-of-town visitors (Bass). Original Beauty and Natural Wonders In the wake of the great economic crash of 1893, the Becks' Seattle Female College was shuttered, but they remained committed to their 60-acre park. Beck fenced it in between 15th Avenue NE eastward to 20th Avenue NE, and over the ensuing years he improved the property by carving out better trails. One was a path to the largest sulfur spring (sometimes known as the "Petroleum Spring," located at the center of the park, below and just east of today's 20th Avenue NE bridge), which he had wisely recast as the "Wood Nymphs' Well." He also built a teahouse, a 40- by 90-foot pavilion ("Ye Merrie Makers' Inn"), picnic shelters, wading ponds, and an area called Rhododendron Way where rows of shrubs featuring the state flower were planted. The park was touted as "a safe, clean, and beautiful place for women and children -- a deputy sheriff in charge" (Beck, booklet, 1903). By 1902 it had become so popular that 10,000 visitors reportedly paid the 25-cent admission fee. Beck soon published a booklet that grandly sang the charms of his little piece of paradise: "Ravenna Park, with its standing or fallen giant trees; moss and fern covered canyons; dashing trout streams, preserves in quaint uniqueness every beauty of the wonderful Puget Sound forest, and is Seattle's only forest unshorn by axe and fire of original beauty and noblest and grandest characteristics" (Beck, booklet, 1903). For her part, Louise maintained a keen interest in music. Indeed, it would seem that during her earlier musical activities back east she made the acquaintance of more than a few major talents of the day, because when touring stars -- including the famed Polish composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler, and British pianist Harold Bauer -- came through town they invariably visited the park and were treated to the "hospitality of her Ravenna Park home" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1928). Although prominent Seattle historian Clarence Bagley (1843-1932) snarked in 1929 that the park was merely a "dark, dank, dismal hole in the ground" (Manning), many other visitors were awestruck by the outsized flora and the fish-rich Ravenna Creek that flowed through the park (and the adjacent Cowen Park). Some considered it one of Seattle's prime attractions, on a par with others of America's treasures: "Like natural wonders such as Niagara Falls, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon, Ravenna Park offered a pilgrimage to the sublime, the contemplative, the spiritual, the terrifying" (Duncan). Big Tree Park and Cowan Park At the turn of the century the park was also, at times, marketed as Big Tree Park, a name that highlighted its towering treasures.