4 ms·
These marks are all over Seattle too. Anywhere you see a weird diagonal street, a 5-way intersection, etc, is probably the ghost of a rail line. It's sad to me
by farnsworth 4y ago
These marks are all over Seattle too. Anywhere you see a weird diagonal street, a 5-way intersection, etc, is probably the ghost of a rail line.
It's sad to me that we lost so much to turn cities into a grid of highways.
- 13of40 4y agoI was out for a walk in Kirkland (across the lake from Seattle) the other week and found a little paved path that ran about 1/4 mile through a wooded area. I could tell by the amount of engineering they would have had to do to raise the grade that it wasn't just some 50s foot path. So when I got home, I looked at the King County Parcel Viewer (Google it if you live around here, it's worth it) with the 1936 aerial photo basemap...and couldn't find it. Some more digging revealed that it was a railroad built in the late 19th century to service the Great Western Iron and Steel Company, which was partially built but never finished. So even to all the people looking up and pointing at that airplane in 1936, the railroad was still something only their grandparents would have seen being built.
- WalterBright 4y agoThere's a shelf in a hill nearby in the woods. I eventually found out it is the remains of a "skid road" used to clear the logs out when the old growth was all logged out. Sometimes you can find a gigantic tree stump here and there.