If you walk through Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood with Peter Lape, he can show you the things that used to be.
Standing at the corner of First Avenue and Washington Street on a recent day, he gestured downhill.
"About half a block down is probably where that shoreline was ... when non-Native settlers moved here," Lape said.
Today, the street continues for another two blocks until it slides underneath the Alaskan Way viaduct. Beyond that is more land, including the giant pit where workers are trying to free the Highway 99 tunneling machine known as Bertha. That project will bring yet another change to the look of Seattle's waterfront, if not to the actual contour.
Lape is curator of archaeology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture as well as an anthropology professor at the University of Washington. He's also part of The Waterlines Project at the Burke, which just published a new map showing Seattle's old natural shorelines, and outlining where they are today. Hardly any still have their natural shape and, in places, the changes are enormous.
The Duwamish River is one good example. What we know today as a sharp, angular waterway full of cargo ships and other marine traffic was once a snaking river that came out of the woods and spilled onto vast tidelands. Those tidelands, by the way, were filled in to create Seattle's SoDo, Harbor Island, and even part of West Seattle.
Farther north is the Interbay area of Seattle, wedged between Queen Anne and Magnolia. Today it's a mix of cruise ship docks, roadways and bridges linking the two neighborhoods. But on the Waterlines map, it's a giant beach. There are placenames in the Lushotseed language, used by the Coast Salish people. And almost everything is covered in trees.
Seattle looked like that for thousands of years. But when westerners made contact in the 1850s, change came quickly.
"This place was altered within a generation; half a generation, really," said Amir Sheikh, a researcher at the UW who led the team that produced the map. "I can't even imagine how alienating it must have felt. I've been here 20 years, but when I go down to South Lake Union, I get turned around with just the development that's happened in the last two years."
The new map highlights four self-guided tours throughout Seattle. It’s available at the Burke Museum or at the Milepost 31 visitor’s center, on First Avenue in Pioneer Square. You can also download it here. And you can learn more about the team behind the map, which also includes artist Donald Fels.
