Auburn Game/Inuries

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Bread said:

At the southwest edge of Seattle, in King County, a plateau stretches from Puget Sound in the west to the Duwamish River in the east, home of the White Center neighborhood that straddles SW Roxbury Street, the southern boundary of Seattle. In 1870 pioneers tried farming among the forests, stumps, and swamps, but logging became the area's first successful enterprise. By 1900 logging roads began to link the area to the outside world, and logged land was then sold to small-scale farmers and real-estate speculators. In 1912 a streetcar line connected the area with Seattle, which spurred the development of a small business community. World War I then World War II brought waves of working-class people to the area to work in the war industries along the Duwamish River. Unincorporated and little regulated, White Center was perceived as untamed and independent. In the words of White Center poet Richard Hugo (1923-1982), "White Center had the reputation of being just outside the boundary of the civilized world." The postwar years produced a boom in affordable housing that stimulated new businesses, new schools, and a nearby shopping mall. From the 1970s on, the federal housing projects, built for wartime workers, evolved into homes for low-income families and eventually immigrant families, resulting in one of the most diverse communities in the Northwest. After 2000, investments in White Center by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Starbucks, the White Center Community Development Association, and others began a revitalization of the community that continues to this day.

The Beginning

On October 19, 1870, Ed Solomon bought 319 acres from the U.S. government for $1.25 an acre. He was the first non-Native American to settle in the Burien/White Center area of Washington Territory. Solomon's purchase was soggy and densely forested, fitting this description by local historian Clarence Gresset (1920-1976): "In the beginning the forest was everything, somber quiet, and all enveloping. The 600-year-old growth of fir predated the European settlement of America" (Gresset, 2). After struggling to drain the swamps and produce crops, Solomon gave up and sold his land in bits and pieces to newcomers. Mike Knapp and Peg Young, in their 1976 book White Center Remembers, retell the story of the early years in interviews with old-timers and their descendents.

Sam Carr and Tom Hood recognized that the value of the land was in timber. Their timber operation started in 1877 at the remote Seola Beach on Puget Sound, providing the first payroll in the area. Logs were slid down the ravines and collected at a booming ground on the beach. From there, booms were towed to sawmills in the region. The work was dangerous, resulting in serious injuries and sometimes taking lives. For this, loggers earned all of $1 for a 12-hour day, room and board included. The timber enterprise reached to Salmon Creek and what became Oak Park, and fields of stumps and crude roads of mud were left in its wake.

In the early 1880s Gottlleib Green, German-born and a Civil War veteran, arrived in White Center and purchased 80 acres. He built a sawmill at 102nd Street and 8th Avenue SW, the current site of a King County park. By the 1890s, as land was logged, it was subdivided and sold in 5- to 20-acre lots to families willing to try farming amid the stumps and bogs. Hearty souls dug wells, cleared stumps, put together crude shacks at the end of a trail and, over the decades, tried most anything to make a dollar on their patch of land. Some planted orchards, berries, potatoes, or mushrooms. Others raised foxes, rabbits, or mink.

mud in winter" (Gressett, 5).

In 1902 Jacob Ambaum bought 20 acres where St. Bernadette Church is today at SW 126th Street. The tax bill on his property in 1904 was $10.70. Ambaum is remembered as a road builder: "This man attempted to push a road through single handed with hand tools, a wheelbarrow and without pay. After two miles of struggle the county took over with blasting crews, followed with gangs of men, horses, slip scrappers and fresnos" (Gresset, 5). The result was Ambaum Road, which made its way to Burien and Des Moines. Jacob Ambaum then worked with several neighbors on McKinnon Road from Youngstown to White Center, a corridor later known as Delridge Way.

Soon another line was built from Glendale to Highland Park. As the nineteenth century came to a close, boats of the Mosquito Fleet were linking isolated places like Seola Beach to other points along Puget Sound.

Early settlers, and especially real-estate speculators, understood that a streetcar line connecting their rural outposts to Seattle was the key to growth and profits. In 1912 Sam Metzler, Jacob Ambaum, Hiram Green (1863-1932), George White, and other White Center leaders financed construction of the Highland Park and Lake Burien Streetcar Line. The line was hastily built on bare dirt starting near Spokane Street and West Marginal Way, in the vicinity of Youngstown in present-day south Seattle. The line eventually turned up Dumar Hill (Holden Street), then went south to White Center. It next followed the muddy Ambaum Road to Seahurst and Lake Burien. "There was no need to purchase a right of way," wrote Gresset. "Settlers along the proposed route were glad to cooperate. The benefits were so obvious that land, cash, labor and materials were offered" (Gresset, 8). When the streetcar line was completed, a nickel could get you to White Center, and a dime gave a two-hour ride to Seahurst and Lake Burien. Within months, part of the line was swept away by a mud slide, and the City of Seattle bought the line for $1, promising to repair it and continue the service. The line became the first municipally owned streetcar line in the Seattle area.

Among the challenges of a rural streetcar line were seasonal infestations of caterpillars. A sweeper car often preceded the streetcar, going ahead to rid the way of the yellow masses. Another oddity was conductors hunting pheasants from the windows of the streetcar on the first run of the morning. Winter 1933 produced another slide, and the line was closed for good. Meanwhile, White Center had become connected. In 1934 White Center residents knew the community had come of age when a blinker light was installed.

Sorry this is wrong. Here is correct info on center:

An open-air retail hub in the northern environs of Seattle, Northgate Mall was one of the first post-war, suburban mall-type shopping centers in the United States. Originally known as Northgate Center, it began business with 18 stores in April 1950. By 1952, the fully leased structure housed over seventy tenants,[1] with an adjoined 4-story Northgate Building medical/dental center and Northgate Theatre, which seated over 1300 patrons.[2]

Northgate was the first of three Puget Sound-area malls developed by Allied Stores (parent company of The Bon Marché) and designed by Seattle architect John Graham, Jr. The development was built over part of Thornton Creek, on land that had been a cranberry bog in Maple Leaf neighborhood.[3][4] Northgate was the first regional shopping center in the United States to be described as a mall,[citation needed] in this instance a double row of stores facing each other across a covered pedestrian walkway, and was the first mall to have public restrooms.

In 1952, Redmond sculptor Dudley C. Carter designed and carved the 59-foot (18 m) cedar totem pole that decorated the grand entrance to the central retail corridor, known as the "Miracle Mall". The shopping center was originally anchored by The Bon Marché (renamed Macy's 2005). There were also a J.J. Newberry 5 and 10, Butler Brothers variety store and an A & P Supermarket.

Other tenants signing on early that still exist were National Bank of Commerce (bought by Norwest Corporation, renamed Wells Fargo) and locally owned Nordstrom's Shoes. This was expanded into a full line clothing store in 1965. Opened as a Best's Apparel, a division of the Nordstrom Company since 1963, it was rebranded as Nordstrom Best in 1967 and Nordstrom in 1973. The 1965 expansion that added the Best's Apparel store also included an extension of the south end of the complex. This was anchored by a new J.C. Penney and QFC (Quality Food Center) grocery.

The "Miracle Mall" concourse had been partially enclosed with a "SkyShield" structure in 1962. This was replaced in 1973-1974, with the mall corridor being fully enclosed. The official name of the shopping complex was changed to Northgate Mall at this time. Seattle-based Lamonts added a store to the northern end of the concourse in 1977.

20 years later during the 1997 mall renovation, Toys "R" Us opened its door in October 30, 1997. It include the food court renovation. New stores includes Sam Goody and Foot Locker. New entrys and interior opened 1998.

After the acquisition of the Lamonts department store chain by Gottschalks in 2000, Gottschalks was located at Northgate Mall until September 2006. It closed after six years due to underperforming sales, and the former location is currently the home to DSW and Bed, Bath and Beyond. In January 2012, Toys "R" Us closed which coincided with the end of its lease.[5] A year later in 2013, Nordstrom Rack opened up in the formerly occupied by Toys "R" Us.

Capitalizing on Northgate's success, Allied Stores commissioned Graham to design the fully enclosed Tacoma Mall, which opened in 1964, and Tukwila's Southcenter Mall in 1968. By 1980, there were 123 stores at Northgate Mall. Construction began in the summer of 2006 on a 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m2) lifestyle-type addition to the mall