This week in history: Denny Regrade plan voted down
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The first week or so of March was a busy one in Seattle history. Here are a few highlights from HistoryLink, an encyclopedia of state history.
March 5, 1912: Seattle residents downvoted Virgil Bogue's comprehensive plan, backed by the Municipal League, to create an ornate city center on the newly flattened Denny Regrade.
- The eight-year-long regrade, designed to level the city's steep hills so that horse-drawn wagons could travel the streets more expeditiously, ran from Second to Fifth Avenue and from Pike to Cedar Street.
- The plan would have grouped civic buildings in Belltown and connected them with wide boulevards to Elliott Bay and Lake Union and eventually to Kirkland via a tunnel beneath Lake Washington.
March 2, 1899: Congress approved the creation of Mount Rainier National Park, over 369 square miles of land overshadowed by an active volcano over 14,000 feet high.
- More than a century later, the park attracts close to 2 million visitors annually.
March 2, 1853: President Millard Fillmore established Washington Territory, carving it out of the massive Oregon Territory.
- When Oregon gained statehood in 1859, Washington Territory was expanded to include present-day Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming.
- These boundaries were readjusted in 1863, when Idaho Territory was created and Washington's current state lines were established.
March 1, 1910: The Wellington avalanche, the largest avalanche disaster in U.S. history, occurred not far from Stevens Pass when a peal of thunder dislodged a snow shelf, killing 96 and sweeping trains and carriages down the mountain.
- The site can be visited by way of the Iron Goat Trail.