80. Gas Works Park

Some of the best views of Seattle are from Gas Works Park, on a promontory of the north shore of Lake Union. Looking across the lake and ship canal, you can see the skyline and some of the city's hills and bridges, and a thousand boats. It’s also a popular concert venue, a great spot for kite flying, and where you want to be for 4^th of July fireworks.

The park is so named because it is located on the site of what was once a gasification plant, where coal was converted into gas for lighting city streets and homes. It operated from just after the turn of the century into the 50’s, then lay abandoned for decades, an unsafe eyesore. 

When the city wanted to turn it into a waterfront park, it took a huge effort to clean up the yard. It is still a controversy if they succeeded in making the grounds safe. The project included dismantling much of the industrial ruins, and removing or burying thousands of tons of contaminated soil. The cute little hill from which the photo above was taken is actually a covered-over pile of toxic waste! By the late 70’s, it was opened to the public and became an asset of the city’s parks system. The bits of the old facility that still remain on the park grounds are scrubbed clean and brightly painted, fun for family to play around. But ten years before all that, when it was still a fenced-off, rusty and smelly mangle, it was my very cool place to discover.

Around 1969, my apartment in Seattle’s Fremont District was near the old Gas Works, just a short hike down the rail tracks along the Ship Canal. My friend Dave and I walked past it every day on our way to our jobs at UW School of Medicine. I tell you, the Gas Works was such an intriguing jumble of structures, tanks, furnaces, catwalks, pipelines, rail tracks and tin buildings; it beckoned to us and we decided to get up closer. A rail yard spread to one side, and the waterfront was cluttered with crumbling remains of an array of docks and pipelines. A giant DANGER — KEEP OUT sign below a lamp post seemed like it meant business, but we spotted a gap in the fence and saw that the place was unguarded. It was decided that we would go in later—at night, of course!

I’d never been up close to any kind of refinery or factory with huge machinery, so just the scale of things was staggering. It was like a gigantic steampunk setting. The red safety lights on top of the big storage tank and smoke stacks flashed for low-flying aircraft, giving everything around us a surreal, pulsing glow. Eerie quiet was punctuated with random clanking and thumping from any direction. The tin roof creaked in the cooling night air. Some loose section of ductwork groaned as it swung in the breeze. When a door swayed open then banged shut, we grabbed each other for safety, then nervously laughed it off. I tripped on a loose hose or something and caught myself before falling into a pile of rubble; that stirred up some bats or pigeons that flapped close past my head. Dave came running from a dark room with a look of terror. "Something moved in there!" he whisper-yelled. Wow, that was hair-raising! Never mind any rational explanations, surely the place was haunted! 

Many of the smaller buildings were padlocked, but the large plant was wide open, as was access to the rickety iron steps that spiraled dangerously to the tower tops. The views we found from up there were incredible and so memorable, but at risk of life and limb! We poked around for treasure, but there was really nothing of interest. We did take lots of photos, some of which are shown here. Once we got over the freak-out of our first spooky visit, Dave and I would return several times, day or night, to try to figure out what the Gas Works was.