Seattle's freeway revolt: How residents fought a concrete jungle

Ah, Seattle in the 1950s.

It was a landscape ripe for the painting by freeway planners who were still bent on an automotive-dominated future of America. The city's system of trolleys and streetcars had been demolished in favor of buses and cars, and its growth in the post-war era signaled the need to increase capacity for transportation around the region.

They started with Interstate 5, but soon plans were hatched to build an extensive network of freeways around the city.

Along with I-5, planners devised a parallel freeway on the Lake Washington side (the R.H. Thomson Expressway) that would have run from the Duwamish neighborhood in the south to Bothell in the north, and the Bay Freeway that would have connected Seattle Center to I-5 with a highway via a massive viaduct that cut through South Lake Union.

Perhaps most grand of these plans would have been the expansion of Interstate 90 through Mercer Island to a 14-lane bridge linked to the R.H. Thomson Expressway and an open trench (instead of the tunnels we have now) that would have destroyed the Mount Baker Ridge portion of Seattle along Lake Washington.

The plans were right in line with America's obsession with the automobile as predominantly white, middle-class families fled to the suburbs and drove their big American iron to and from work each day.

And had it not been for the realization by some residents of what creating all those freeways would do to the city's landscape, they might well have been built.

Parts of them did get built, namely the "ramps to nowhere" over the Washington Park Arboretum, a popular spot for diving for decades and evidence of what might have been.

But the construction of I-5 through downtown, effectively separating downtown from Capitol Hill and First Hill, and razing homes and other structures on 4,500 parcels of land, was enough to start a revolution of sorts.

The Seattle freeway revolt, as it has come to be called, was a movement that lasted decades and managed to halt construction of the R.H. Thomson Expressway and the Bay Freeway, and ultimately altered the I-90 plans to a more reasonable size and with a thought to public transit.

And now, thanks to a grant from 4Culture and the King County Lodging Tax Fund, archivists have made it easier than ever to piece together a comprehensive history of that fight, who fought it, and how they won or lost.

"Seattle's Freeway Revolt: A Directory of Historical Resources," available on Seattle Public Library's website, is a sweeping, 113-page document that collects a vast trove of information on the history of the movement.

Instead of a history in itself, the directory provides an overview of the fight and then links and directions for finding the various books, articles, photos, maps, plans and other assets germane to the fight to stop a massive freeway expansion in Seattle.

"We're thrilled to help share this inspiring story of grassroots civic activism, which had such a profound impact on the city," said Priscilla Arsove, who helped organize the project, in a news release.

This year, 2018, marks the 50th anniversary of the formation of Citizens Against the RH Thomson, one of the main activist groups that pushed to stop construction of the highways.

Finding the pieces of the story still won't be easy for the intrepid historian, as the directory points to dozens of news articles that exist only on microfilm at the Seattle Public Library, while other documents live in the Seattle Municipal Archives while still others exist at state or university archives.

But at least you know where to look to piece together a fascinating bit of Seattle history, one that has been often considered the birthplace of the city's modern-activist, consider-everyone culture.

Daniel DeMay covers Seattle culture, city hall, and transportation for seattlepi.com. He can be reached at 206-448-8362 or danieldemay@seattlepi.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Daniel_DeMay.