The Lake Sammamish Harbor Seal

Strange as it may sound, there once was a seal who lived 25 years in Lake Sammamish. Lovingly referred to as “Butch”, the 250 pound harbor seal was first spotted in 1950. At first, locals thought he might be a muskrat or an otter, but his size quickly ruled out those options. Harbor seals, unlike other pinnipeds, are known to live in in low-salinity waters, like rivers and estuaries. But how did Butch get to Lake Sammamish in the first place?

It is possible that Butch made his way from Puget Sound, through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks to Lake Union and then Lake Washington, and finally up the Sammamish Slough. There have been other seal sightings in Lake Union and the north end of Lake Washington. There is just one flaw in this explanation; Butch was wearing a collar. It may be more likely that Butch was a pet someone released in the lake once they tired of him.

Butch the seal being lured ashore by Shannon, the golden retriever, in order to capture him for medical treatment (2003.022.006b)

In 1961, Jack Jarvis of the Post-Intelligencer reported that Butch was outgrowing his collar. It was cutting into his neck and blood was found on the dock where he usually slept. Some members of the community worried that this wound would make the seal more aggressive, while others maintained that he was a friendly (albeit mischievous) creature.

There was a brief effort to establish a Save Butch Fund”, designed to facilitate capturing and rehoming Butch at Woodland Park Zoo. This plan was ultimately abandoned due to unknown cost for such an undertaking and the risks associated with tranquilizing the seal.

Butch being netted and taken for medical treatment in 1975 (2003.022.005b)

Over the years, Butch became a known and mostly accepted part of life on Lake Sammamish. He would occasionally bump up against swimmers or wave a flippers at folks on the docks. He established a sort of friendship with several lakeside dogs, although the dogs may not have found his style of “play” very fun. He would sometimes pull a dog a short ways under the water before releasing them to swim back to the surface.

In September of 1975, Butch nearly drowned a dog named Shannon when he dragged her from a dock and into the water. This incident, and a few others, indicated that the seal was becoming a threat to the community. The collar around his neck was still a concern and he likely needed medical treatment as well. Department officials lured Butch from the water with Shannon, netted and sedated him for transport. The aim was to release him into Puget Sound when he had recovered.

Butch the seal netted for medical treatment by the Washington State Dept. of Game in 1975 (2003.022.004b)

Unfortunately, he never made it to Puget Sound. Butch died September 12, 1975, from complications of old age. The collar wound was the most severe problem, which had constricted his breathing. Butch’s skeletal remains were given to the Museum of Natural History at the University of Puget Sound where they were to be used for long-range mammal comparison research.

Resources

Campbell, N. P. (n.d.). Butch the lake sammamish seal . Butch the Lake Sammamish Seal by Nan P. Campbell. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.historylink.org/File/5542

Do harbour seals (phoca vitulina) housed in fresh water need to be supplemented with salt? VIN. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.vin.com/apputil/content/defaultadv1.aspx?id=3864854&pid=11257&print=1

Harbor Seal facts. SeaDoc Society. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.seadocsociety.org/harbor-seal-facts

Team, C. (2018, November 23). Butch the Harbor Seal Lives 25 years in Lake Sammamish. Friends of Lake Sammamish State Park Website. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.lakesammamishfriends.org/blog/2018/11/21/harbor-seal-lives-25-years-in-lake-sammamish

Eastside Heritage Center Archives

The Sammamish Slough Races

By Steve Williams, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

Before “Seafair” the Eastside event of the summer was the “Sammamish Slough Race”. Starting in the spring of 1928 and running for another 48 years, motorboats raced each other up and down the 13 mile narrow 'river' connecting Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish. As the map shows, it was a torturous route with hazards including 63 sharp turns, bridge pilings, sandbars and occasional floating logs. Steve Greaves, who started racing at age 14 and went on to set over 30 world and national records, said “There was really nothing like it in the country. Even today most will tell you it was one of their favorites. It was certainly the craziest. I remember coming around a bend going through Redmond and having to dodge a cow getting a drink of water.”

KFKF Radio flyer, with Sammamish Slough power boat race route, April 1969 (2004.015)

An estimated 40,000 spectators watched from bridges and river banks on the tight corners where wild crashes and side flips often occurred. Sometimes spectators would help racers get their boat back in the water, or if it couldn't be repaired, hand the driver a beer and invite him to watch the race with them. In later years there were five different classes of boats and over 100 entries, some from Tacoma, Hoquiam, and even Oregon. (The number of spectators probably doubled). With the development of small hydroplanes speeds hit 80mph, but nearly a third of the racers often failed to finish due to crashes or mechanical problems. Spectators noted the special 'race smell' of the alcohol fuel burned by the hydros, and said that “hearing the boats coming long before seeing them turn the corner added to the excitement.”

1962 Bob Carver / Seattle Times (EHC Vertical Files)

According to Seattle Times reporter Craig Smith, “A different division would start every five minutes from Lake Washington and head upstream. Waiting with cameras poised at the most dangerous turns were newspaper photographers and cameramen from Movietone, who would film crashes that would be shown in the nation's theaters.” Howard Anderson, a national VP of the American Power Boat Association said, “I don't think there was a race like it in the nation, ever.” Dick Rautenberg, a competitor from Bothell agreed, saying, “That was the most fun of any racing we've done.”

1963 Seattle Times (EHC Vertical Files)

Another significant local event happened in 1953 when the Golden Water Ski Club teamed up with the Seattle Outboard Association to race towed skiers up and down the Slough. The upstream inning time was 24:37 minutes, while downstream with the current, slow as it was, cut the time to 22:43. Of course all the turns made it fun for the skiers and even more challenging for the drivers.

The Slough itself had a long and storied boating history. Native canoes traveled up and down, but were also used in gathering plant material, and in fishing and hunting waterfowl. Small scows and narrow steamboats arrived with settlers in the 1880's. (A few even had hinged smokestacks that could be folded down when going under low bridges). For half a century, logs were floated or towed downriver to sawmills - during spring floods havoc occurred as log-jams blocked the river and farmers fields were covered with water for months at a time.

In 1964 – 1966 it all changed when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged and widened the Slough. The 3.8 million dollar flood control project took out 30 miles of 'squiggles and kinks' and straightened it to 10 miles of 'steep-sided ditch.' A concrete weir, or submerged dam, at Marymoor Park now keeps Lake Sammamish at a relatively constant level, and there is a nice paved bicycle trail running along the high bank of the slow moving 'Slough'. The thrill is gone, but the excitement and challenge of the “Race” will long be remembered as the Eastside's precursor to “Seafair.”

Sources:

10/21/1999 Seattle Times article “Old river new routes” by Peyton Whitely.

4/15/1994 Seattle Times article “Unpredictable 'Slough Race' a bygone rite of spring” by Craig Smith.

3/24/1963 Seattle Times article “The Taming of the Slough” by Eileen Crimmin.

5/2013 newsletter of the Redmond Historical Society “Showcasing Our History: Sammamish River Races”.

4/2014 newsletter of the Redmond Historical Society “Northwest Original: The Sammamish Slough Race”.

7/1953 magazine; “Sea and Pacific Motor Boat” report of Russell Swanson.

2015 book; “Lake Sammamish Through Time” by Kate N. Thibodeau.

3/30/1977 Sammamish Valley News, article by Wendy Reif  "Slough Race bottoms out"

The Campbell Lumber Mill

By Steve Williams, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

One hundred and sixteen years ago in 1905, a huge lumber mill began operations at the northeast corner of Lake Sammamish in Washington State. James Campbell and L.B. Stedman invested $100,000 (over 30 million in today's dollars) and logged a major portion of the land east of the lake during the next two decades. They built an entire company town at Adelaide to support the mill; including a store, hotel, blacksmith shop, tool house, foreman family home and bunkhouses for 50 men.

Key to the whole operation was the Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad which ran along the shoreline between the mill and town. It had been been built by Daniel Gillman in 1889 and provided direct shipment to Seattle and other northwest destinations. Seattle expanded from a population of 3,533 in 1880 to 237,194  in 1910, and all those people needed housing. Because the railroad was there first, most of the mill was actually built on pilings extending out over Lake Sammamish.

OR/L 79.79.145 - Campbell Mill, Lake Sammamish, 1905.

The lumber company had three locomotives of its own and laid 16 miles of track across the virgin timber lands east of Redmond and Lake Sammamish. Bunkhouses for the lumberjacks were built on rail car frames and could be hauled into the woods to the end of spur lines where the trees were being cut. The logs were hauled back to the mill location, also called Campton, and were dumped in the lake for storage until they could be milled into lumber. The water washed off dirt and rocks, and prevented drying out – all of which was better for the saw blades. “Ponding” also allowed the logs to be easily sorted and moved about, and that resulted in pilings and large log booms at the north end of the lake. Old timers said that “There were so many logs that you could practically walk from one side of the lake to the other on them.”

OR/L 79.79.061 - Weber's Tug Boat, "Daisy."

The Campbell Mill operated for nineteen years, but was lost to fire in 1924 when the firemen discovered that their unused hoses had rotted and were full of holes. Many early mills and houses suffered the same fate as embers from wood-burning stoves and steam engines dropped onto wood-shinged roofs. The Lake Sammamish Shingle Mill was also located on the east shore, just south at Weber Point, and The Monohon Mill was further south towards the end of the lake near Issaquah. Beginning in the 1880's, Redmond had at least 12 different mills, but the big time logging was nearly done by 1930.  Within 50 years most of the old growth prime timber had been cut and the land was ready for stump-pulling, row-farming and dairy herds.

Today, if you go boating at the north end of Lake Sammamish you can discover rows of pilings that once supported the mill or held the log booms in place. Now, those pilings make a great protective nursery for young fish, and a hangout for all sorts of ducks and other wildlife. You can also join the Mountains to Sound Greenway in planting conifer seedlings to do your part in restoring a bit of northwest forest. Our forests help limit climate change by storing carbon, reducing flooding, evaporation and lowering temperatures. The extraction economy of a century ago is being replaced by a restoration economy of carbon credits and tree planting today.

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Resources

“Our Town Redmond” by Nancy Way, Marymoor Museum, Redmond, Washington 1989.

“Index of Lumber Businesses & Mills” by Eric Erickson, Issaquah Historical Society 2003.

“Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition”by Shauna & Brennan O'Reilly, Arcadia Publishing 2009.

“Seattle in the 1880's” by David Buerge, The Historical Society of Seattle and King County, 1986.

Redmond Historical Society website - www.redmondhistoricalsociety.org 2021.

Photos from Eastside Heritage Center collection

Eastside Stories: Logging the Eastside

No. 2 | February 20, 2019

Eastside Stories

Subscribe to Eastside Stories by emailing us at: info@eastsideheritagecenter.org

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Welcome to Eastside Stories, a new series from the Eastside Heritage Center. Through these periodic postings we will bring Eastside History to life and highlight the people, places, and events that have shaped its remarkable evolution.

Logging the Eastside

When the first intrepid settlers made their way to the Eastside in the 1860s, mostly what they found were trees. Really big trees.

As with so many things in life, this presented both a problem and an opportunity. The problem was that most settlers wanted to do what most Americans did at that time: farm. The Homestead Act of 1862 made land pretty much free for the grabbing, and as the area around the town of Seattle got carved up, settlers headed across and around Lake Washington to stake their claims and start farming. But there were those trees—up to 150 feet tall and several feet across.

The opportunity was to turn those trees into dollars.

A crew from the Siler Logging Co. in Redmond cut a large cedar tree. The loggers on the upper left and right are standing on spring boards.

(OR/L 79.79.044)

The Puget Sound area had its start as timber country. The first commercial transaction in the new metropolis of Seattle (the Denny Party huddled in a cabin on Alki Point) consisted of the sale of a load of logs to a schooner captain for use as pilings in San Francisco Bay. The rapid growth of San Francisco after the Gold Rush provided a ready market for lumber, shingles, and pilings.

Getting those enormous logs to mills and ships presented a challenge. Water was the answer, and the timber cutters made their way along the many miles of shoreline on Puget Sound, gradually working their way inland. But since Lake Washington still lacked a good connection to Puget Sound, getting Eastside logs to mills was impossible at first. So the earliest Eastside settlers clearing their farms often had no choice but to burn the logs.

A locomotive belonging to the Hewitt and Lee logging company in Bellevue hauls a load of logs. (2002.147.004)

Three important changes, beginning in the 1880s, made Eastside logging profitable. First, mills began to spring up along Lake Washington, and then gradually inland. It would always make more sense to ship higher value lumber and shingles than to transport logs, so mills followed the loggers inland. A number of the largest mills were around Lake Sammamish, which was served by early rail lines.

Second, transportation improved. In 1885 a log sluice opened in Montlake, between Lake Washington and Portage Bay. This ditch had a gate at the upper end (Lake Washington was about nine feet higher than Portage Bay at that time) which was opened to let rushing water carry logs to the mills along Lake Union. Railroads began to extend across the Eastside in the 1880s, allowing easier shipping of logs and lumber.

Employees at Webber's Shingle Mill on Lake Sammamish. (OR/L 79.79.049)

Third, mechanization began to take over. Steam powered donkey engines pulled logs from hillsides and gullies using steel cables known as “wire rope.” Hand saws and axes were replaced with mechanized harvesting equipment. Trucks replaced horses and oxen.

By the 1920s, most of the Eastside had been logged off. Remaining smaller trees that were not worth cutting for timber, and are often seen standing alone in photos of the period, were taken for pulp. As timber was cut and stumps removed, farms spread across the Eastside. Aerial photos from the 1930s show few heavily wooded areas, with most of the Eastside taken up by farms and sparse second-growth forests. 

Today, a sharp-eyed observer can see evidence of early logging. Western Red Cedar rots very slowly, and original stumps can be found in second growth forests around the Eastside. On the sides of many of these stumps, notches for springboards—platforms that allowed loggers to cut above the fat base of the tree--can still be seen. 

Looking at the mature residential areas and dense second growth forests of the Eastside, it can be hard to imagine that 100 years ago most of the Eastside was quite barren. Fortunately those big trees have a way of growing back to provide us with beauty, shade and oxygen.

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Our Mission To steward Eastside history by actively collecting, preserving, and interpreting documents and artifacts, and by promoting public involvement in and appreciation of this heritage through educational programming and community outreach.

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

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Eastside Heritage Center is supported by 4 Culture