City of Seattle, WA
01/31/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 01/31/2025 13:32
Stories in Place: Union Bay Natural Area
Refuge in the City: Union Bay Natural Area
by Eleanor Boba
This special place in Northeast Seattle goes by several names: the fill, the old dump, the Union Bay Natural Area or UBNA. In my family, we call it the marsh.
A wetland that used to be a parking lot for the University of Washington.
That said, this place is much more than a marsh. It is a place of many elements, both horizontal and vertical. Horizontally, the "marsh" includes prairie, ponds, riparian habitat, several stands of trees, a forested wetland called a swamp, and human development in the form of the University of Washington's Urban Horticulture Center, all in addition to actual marshland along the shores of Lake Washington.
Vertically, the marsh sits on layers of history, from a late 19th century sawmill and ice house to a city dump to a long-gone housing complex for faculty and married students. Under the history lies a thick layer of peat, decayed vegetation. Between the peat and the history is sandwiched a heavy load of garbage, euphemistically called "fill."
We first learned about the marsh more than 20 years ago when our seven-year-old son went on a nature field trip offered by the Ravenna Eckstein Community Center. As it turned out, he was the only one to sign up for the trip. He came back transformed forever into a nature lover, particularly a lover of birds. The find of that day: a green heron. A year later we moved to a home within walking distance of the marsh and it became part of our family routine to explore there. Today, when my son visits from grad school (environmental science) he immediately heads down to the lake.
So, what exactly is the "marsh?"
The Union Bay Natural Area, on 74 acres owned by the University of Washington, offers a loop walking trail with side trails leading to the Urban Horticulture Center, Husky Stadium, and the IMA sports fields - all of this in full view of the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, Husky Stadium, and the concrete dorms brooding over Montlake Boulevard.
University Slough, the slow-moving outlet of Ravenna Creek, from "Pooh Sticks Bridge."
The marsh is a refuge for both man and beast. It is also an outdoor laboratory for students and scientists at the University of Washington. Some of the land is managed; the rest is allowed to run wild. Portions of the land are sectioned off and planted with native species. Others are used for student capstone projects, such as an amphibian corridor. Nothing is static. Birds come and go according to their migration patterns. The rabbit population explodes and then disappears. Trees fall, victim to beaver teeth. The ponds rise and fall with the rains and sometimes flood over the trails. Even the trails themselves appear to change their slope, possibly due to continuing settlement of fill and peat.
Decades of human visitation have assigned nicknames to features, including the turtle logs, Shoveler's Pond, the dime parking lot (imagine the age of that facility), Yesler Swamp, and Pooh Sticks Bridge over University Slough. OK, maybe I'm the only one who calls it that, but you can definitely play the game.
The true beauty of the marsh lies in its biodiversity - that means lots of plants and animals! Birds, including songbirds, waterfowl, and raptors are regulars. Trumpeter swans may appear on the bay in the winter. The great blue heron is a reliable year-round sighting on the ponds or in the reeds on the lake edge. I once watched a heron catch a frog in the flooded dime parking lot.
A greater white-fronted goose on Carp Pond in the Union Bay Natural Area.
Mammals of the watery type (rivers otters, beavers) may be seen. Some years back I first learned about nutria, rodents of unusual size, when they appeared regularly in the marsh. They're considered an invasive species, but are actually kind of cute. And - keep your dogs on leash! - there may be coyotes. Meanwhile, wildflowers, cattails, prairie grasses, and incorrigible Himalayan blackberry abound.
As for fish, the huge carp in Carp Pond (at least I assume they are carp; I know nothing about fish), can cause quite a fright when they thrash around in the shallows in the spring.
Mammals of the human variety are drawn to the marsh for what planners like to call passive recreation. Birdwatchers train binoculars into trees and shrubs while runners zoom past. Families stroll through with babies and dogs in tow. Students cut through on their way to class.
High Water, Low Water
The section of a 1912 Baist Map shows Union Bay at its full extent prior to the lowering of the lake. The northern tip crosses what will later become NE 45th Street.
Union Bay, both the wet side and the dry, like so many parts of the engineered city, has been transformed over the years. Prior to the lowering of Lake Washington in 1916, the waters of the lake lapped up at least as far as today's NE 41st street and perhaps as far as NE 45th. If not actually underwater, the lands that became the IMA sports fields and University Village shopping center were decidedly damp.
With the digging of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, the average depth of the lake fell nine feet or so draining the wetlands around the bay. The city fathers were quick to take advantage of the newly available land opening it up as a landfill, one of several dumps along the lake shore. For four decades, 1926-1964, citizens were free to back their cars and trucks up to the edge of the fill and let loose alongside commercial dumpers. The result was a seagull-infested eco-nightmare. After the landfill was closed, the University began plans to return the land to nature. The first buildings of the Urban Horticulture Center opened in 1984. Meanwhile the upper portions of the landfill were made into athletic fields.
At the risk of dating myself, I have vague memories of going to the dump with my mother. Later I learned to drive in the network of roads created to serve the IMA fields and facilities.
A grainy video from the mid-1960s gives an unforgettable glimpse of the dump in its last days.Remnants
While the layered history of the landscape may not be apparent at first glance, a closer look reveals remnants poking through the earth, in some cases quite literally. A few years ago, one frequently came upon pieces of pipe, chunks of concrete, and other detritus pushing up from the ground, remnants of the landfill that existed on this spot for four decades. Restoration work has removed or covered up most of it, but not all!
A twisted chunk of metal embedded in the ground testifies to the site's history as a dump
The long-abandoned and always remote dime parking lot (E-5) regularly became a flooded wetland during heavy rains. Today it is being restored to natural habitat. And if you wonder through the spooky Yesler Swamp (aka Union Bay Boglands), once the site of a wharf and millpond for the adjacent Yesler Mill, you will glimpse pilings in the lagoon. Yesler's (second) mill was erected in 1888, barely survived the 1916 lake lowering, and finally succumbed to fire in the mid-1920s. Piles of cedar shingles and mounds of sawdust are a dangerous combination; sawdust can combust spontaneously.
The Urban Horticultural Center was built where once stood the old mill and, later, hastily constructed post-WWII university housing. When my sister and I were young, we were dragged to visit friends of our history professor father at this odd community of pre-fab little houses.
Finding Refuge
Although the marsh is surrounded by urban noise and tumult, it magically takes you to a place of calm and reflection, something sorely needed in these days.
To visit UBNA, park in the upper lot (E16) of the Urban Horticulture Center off of NE 41st Street. They won't mind if you're there for an hour or two. Yesler Swamp lies immediately adjacent to the parking lot on the east side. To get to the main loop trail of the marsh, head past the UHC buildings and demonstration gardens to what is called Wahkiakum Lane. Posted sign boards will guide you, or you can just wander.
An image from the Seattle Public Library shows the Yesler Mill on Union Bay with the railroad spur that served it and the mill pond to the right.