Yesler Swamp – A Thousand Years Later

The Laurelhurst Community Club (LCC) published this information in a recent newsletter:

LCC Centennial Feature: Yesler Swamp – A Thousand Years Later 

by Carol Arnold and Jean Colley 

The Yesler Swamp project began in the summer of 2009 with a group of four neighbors. We didn’t know each other very well, but we all wanted to improve the wild, swampy six-acre wetland at the corner of NE 41st Street and Surber Drive. 

On the shoreline of Union Bay, the site was clogged with invasive plants and strewn with trash. University of Washington students had earlier blazed a trail through the area, but it was muddy and not maintained. 

Originally, the site was a seasonal dwelling for the Duwamish, a people who lived on the shores of Lake Washington for a thousand years. Today most of the area is owned by the UW. We met with UW Botanic Gardens staff and began planning. We decided to call the area “Yesler Swamp” to reflect its status as a true swamp—a wooded wetland— and its recent history as the site of Seattle pioneer Henry Yesler’s mill. 

We applied for a small grant from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, but were turned down. “Four friends isn’t a community,” they told us. 

So on a cold afternoon in the fall of 2009, we held a party at a Laurelhurst home, served hot soup, and invited the neighbors to join us. Some forty people attended. Optimistically, we put out a plate for contributions to build a boardwalk in Yesler Swamp. 

We formed Friends of Yesler Swamp, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing the community together for the project. We sponsored monthly “Swamp Walks” for kids, bird watchers, mushroom lovers, and history buffs. The Laurelhurst Community Club supported our project, and the Botanic Gardens staff contributed expertise and administrative assistance. 

Now that we were a real community organization, Friends of Yesler Swamp won grants from the Department of Neighborhoods, the Seattle Parks Foundation, King County Conservation District, and other private foundations. We hired a landscape architecture firm to design an environmentally friendly boardwalk. We began applying for permits from the five governmental agencies whose mission was to protect the fragile ecosystem. 

An enthusiastic group of environmental studies students from the UW joined our effort, sponsoring bi-weekly work parties to clear out the invasive English ivy and blackberries. 

Hundreds of neighbors came to fun events in Yesler Swamp, helped with the restoration, and donated money. Five years later, Friends of Yesler Swamp—supported by nearly four hundred friends and neighbors—had raised almost a half million dollars. The boardwalk was opened to the public in 2015. 

Today everyone can enjoy Yesler Swamp. Visitors stroll along the handicapped accessible boardwalk, watch the pair of Blue Herons, glimpse Lake Washington, see an active beaver lodge, and think for a moment about the people who long ago lived near Yesler Swamp.