Street Smart Naturalist

David B. Williams
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Personal Journals
  • Updated Weekly

A free newsletter oriented toward building stronger connections to place through stories of human and natural history in the Pacific Northwest streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com

  1. 5d ago

    Shipwrecks of Lake Union

    Many years ago, I started a book project about stories buried in Seattle. One of my favorites was the discovery during excavation for Light Rail of Yiddish newspapers, broken ceramics, and other artifacts 40 feet underground. That project eventually morphed into my book Too High and Too Steep, but one part of the story continued to intrigue me: what lies beneath the surface of Lake Union. Last week, I finally had the opportunity to pursue that subject again, when I tagged along with a team that is documenting boats of all sizes and types—canoes to barge, wood and steel craft, advertently and accidentally sunk—that have found their final resting place on the bottom of the lake. Before diving into the subject, I need to make a quick geology interlude. Lake Union formed during the retreat of the great glacier that covered this region—the Puget lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet—around 16,000 years ago. As the ice retreated back to the north, a chunk broke off, settled in a depression between two ridges, melted, and formed a lake. With its steep sides, which curve down to a maximum depth of about 50 feet, Lake Union has a bowl-shaped profile. Our day began at 7am on the east side of Lake Union. Four of us, Phil Parisi (project lead of shipwreckcity.org), Libbie Barnes (curator of exhibits and engagement at MOHAI), George Spano (boat owner and maritime aficionado), and I piled into George’s little boat. It had just enough room for the four of us and gear. The plan was to go out to known sites of submerged objects and drop a remotely operated underwater vehicle, or ROV, into the water and pilot it down to see what was there. For equipment, we had Phil’s laptop and his BlueRobotics BlueROV2, equipped with sidescan sonar and a GoPro camera. After we reached our first spot, LU025, located under the Aurora Bridge, Phil and George dropped (literally) the ROV, which was attached to a yellow tether, into the water. Phil and Libbie then got under a dark blanket (too bright otherwise) to observe realtime footage from the GoPro on Phil’s computer screen. With the GoPro acting as his underwater eyes, Phil used an Xbox controller to take the ROV down to what had been described previously as a pile of logs. “Yes, it’s a log,” said Phil, when Finn, as he calls the ROV, was nearing the bottom, 45 feet down. George and I kept watch for anyone, such as rowers, pleasure boaters, and tugs, who might hit us or get entangled in the tether, which floated on the surface. Phil found nothing else beyond the logs, which could have come from one of the many log booms that had been moved across the lake to mills in Ballard in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He wasn’t surprised as others had been down to this location but he wanted up-to-date footage, which was one of the goals of the project. People have long known of and even visited some of the wrecks and other submerged materials in Lake Union. These include DCS Films (Dan Warter, Carl Stieglitz, and Scott Caldwell) and the Maritime Documentation Society and Coastal Sensing Survey. Via divers and sidescan sonar, which is an acoustic imaging method that creates detailed images of the seafloor and objects resting on it, they have produced maps, photos, and videos of what sits on the bottom of Lake Union. Phil’s plan has been to synthesize that data and generate underwater footage of every object. “Our goal is to create an underwater archive of Lake Union,” says Phil. Like others, me included, he knows that there are many stories hidden beneath the surface, which add additional layers to the maritime connections that have long been important to the residents of this place. As he notes on his website, people have been using these waters for thousands of years to fish and to travel. In a landscape of challenging topography, water would have been the logical means of getting around, a fact that many present day residents also realize. Unfortunately, any sunken Indigenous canoes would have succumbed in the depths long ago. Non-Native residents have been using the water since they first arrived around 1851 but not until the 1870s did steamships begin to move across Lake Union. The first was the side-wheeler Clara, piloted by Curtis Brownfield to transport coal for the Seattle Coal and Transportation Company. (Lewis and Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, pg. 161 & 192). That company also operated what may be the first vessel to be abandoned in the lake, the large, steam-powered ferryboat Lena C. Gray. In 1878, when the SC&TC failed, the Lena was stripped of her iron. “Her days of usefulness are ended, and she will be allowed to decay at the landing,” wrote an unnamed reporter for the Puget Sound Dispatch. (If this wreck exists, it’s probably buried under fill, as Lake Union used to extend farther south.) Over the next several hours, we motored to another 11 locations, six of which had wrecks in various states of mouldering. All were made of wood often with some metal ribbing for support and strengthening. We also saw 50-gallon drums, tires, red Solo cups, a sort of fence-like structure, pilings, and a fiberglass boat. We saw only one identified boat, the Kahlenberg, a 50-foot long wooden ship built in 1913 and sunk or abandoned at unknown time. This was my favorite wreck primarily because Phil let me control the ROV; it was quite stunning to drive Finn through the hazy pea green water and suddenly come upon the bow of a ship, 45 feet underwater, an eerie testimonial to a past life. At present, Phil and his team list 105 known lakebed targets. About 70 are wrecks of some sort of vessel including barges, cabin cruisers, landing craft, and ships. Most of them were probably abandoned or scuttled; it’s a lot easier to simply abandon a ship than pay the disposal fees. Because no official record of wreckage exists, researchers have found very little documentation about any of them. As the team continues to search, more shipwrecks will probably be found. Phil’s goal is to get a better picture, literally and figuratively, of what lies beneath. I, of course, applaud his and his team’s work to preserve the past. Like every aspect of the city, Lake Union is an evolving landscape where new generations of visitors and residents alter the lake and adapt to it and those who live and work around it. By unearthing (unwatering?) the past, not only can we better understand how those stories continue to shape Lake Union and us, but we can also begin, as Phil puts it, to think about preservation, pollution, and our shared responsibility to care for urban waterways. If you are interested in helping fund the work of Phil and his team at shipwreckcity.org, here’s a link to do so. I am tickled to announce that Wild in Seattle was awarded a Gold Medal by Foreword Indies in their Regional category. Thanks to Elizabeth Person for her wonderful drawings, which bring the book to life, and to Mountaineers Books for their support, editing, and design. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  2. Jun 4

    Of Ditches and Fantastic Fishes

    Over the past two weeks I have had the pleasure of visiting some less-than-favorable habitat. The first was a sort of pond under crackling power lines, the second a straightjacketed creek in the middle of a farmer’s field. Both times I was not alone; I was with scientists interested in fish, in particular, some of the most fascinating fish in Washington state. The pond is home to Olympic mudminnows and the creek to western river lampreys. “My kayak is almost bigger than the pond,” said Lauren Kuehne, a freshwater ecologist with a deep passion for Olympic mudminnows. She had just paddled out in search of the little fish in what felt like an artificial accumulation of water, formed perhaps by the damming effect of the road where we stood. If Lauren had not directed me to this spot of cattails and cedar stumps, I wouldn’t have suspected that it was home to a unique fish; Olympic mudminnows are Washington’s only endemic freshwater fish, meaning they occur no place else in the world. Sitting in her kayak, Lauren carried a small net, which she periodically dipped into the water under cattails and other aquatic plants. (The generic name of Olympic mudminnows, Novumbra, meaning new shadow, poetically refers to the species’ predilection for lurking in the dark under vegetation.) A few minutes into her search she found her quarry, which she netted and deposited into a white bucket. About an inch and half long, the narrow, brown mudminnows were dwarfed by a robust, six inch salamander. “I think we are in a nursery,” said Lauren, as she netted additional mudminnows, none longer than about two inches. Not that she expected to find any individual much bigger, mudminnows in our part of the world top out at about 4 1/4 inches. Over the next 45 minutes, Lauren continued to probe the vegetation, splitting her time between walking along the road and in her kayak. Marginal, human-created habitat such as this little wet spot is classic for Olympic mudminnows. In fact, the first scientific discovery of the species was in a ditch. As one scientist has said: “If you pull up to a spot and it’s really a nice place to have a picnic or swim, that is not the place for mudminnows.” They are fish able to survive in ditches and less than ideal conditions. For many years, mudminnowologists thought that the fish didn’t coexist well with other species because they were often isolated. Turns out, however, that mudminnows are not loners, but can probably tolerate environmental conditions that other species can’t. That they are able to survive in riparian/wetland areas that can preclude other fish makes them extra special and an important component of our local ecosystems. In particular, if they are the lone predator, they can play a role in community structure by preventing species such as biting midges and mosquitoes from becoming too prevalent. Not only was our location the product of human activity, but the presence of mudminnows wasn’t natural either; early researchers proposed that the fish inhabited only a few drainages on the Olympic Peninsula. They are here, twenty miles east of Puget Sound, because a local landowner introduced them. This person also owns property on the Olympic Peninsula near a population of the fish, collected some, and deposited them here. “Apparently, he felt the world needed more mudminnows. He isn’t wrong,” said Lauren. Whether one would call my second location a ditch or creek may be in the eye of the beholder. Winding for less than a mile, the yard-wide ribbon of dirty brown water flows in a slightly wider channel through tall grasses and past the occasional tree. For this piscine adventure, I was with Monica Blanchard, a biologist with Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, who is both knowledgeable and passionate about lampreys. Joining us were several county and non-profit employees who worked with the fish. “I could talk all day about lampreys,” said Monica, when all of us were sitting in a classroom prior to our field time. Unfortunately, we had only three hours, but in that time, Monica made it clear that she loved every aspect of them. We learned that lampreys evolved 450 million years ago and have changed very little since then; that they lack bones and jaws; that two species live in the state, the bigger and far better known Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) and western river lampreys (Occidentis ayresii). Both species are born in freshwater, migrate to salt water, and return to freshwater for spawning and death, though western rivers can also leave their birth stream and travel only to a lake (such is the case in Lake Washington), as well as never leave their birth stream. Monica also added: “Never say anything definitive about lampreys. The next day they’ll surprise you.” After our class session we headed to the ditch, where Monica pulled out a curious backpack. It looked like a 1970s RadioShack kit with knobs, red lights, levers, and warning sign but was actually a Smith-Root LR-24 Backpack Electrofisher. Using two paddles attached to the LR-24, Monica’s plan was to run enough electricity into the water to “tickle” out the lampreys. “We just want them to feel it and be annoyed enough to emerge,” she said. Within a few minutes, Monica had annoyed several. All were western river lamprey larva, brown, eyeless, and less than five inches long. Once again,I would never have seen them without a friendly biologist, Monica. As with the mudminnows, I had no idea that such a relatively mundane looking body of water contained such a wonderful animal. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, I have regularly observed plants and animals inhabiting places we often overlook—the paving stones of our backyard, utility poles, and empty lots—and I am by no means very knowledgeable. It’s when I go out in the field with ecologists that my little mind is blown open by the complexity, diversity, and beauty of the more than human species we co-exist with. I worry though that far too often we take such places and their inhabitants for granted; we tend not to honor these ecosystems for their biodiversity or to recognize the ecosystem contributions of their resident plants and animals. As I regularly state, I hope all of us can take the time to slow down, pay attention, and enjoy the world around us. It really is quite wonderful. N.B. - In case you are interested, my plan is to return to fuller discussions of Olympic mudminnows and lampreys. Stay tuned. Thanks to Lauren and Monica and Jeff Jensen for help with this newsletter. June 16, 2026 - 7pm - Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park - I will be chatting with Kevin Fedarko about his book A Walk in the Park. Here’s a link to register for this here event. Word of the week - Lamprey - A name that dates back to 1297 and is believed to derive deep in its past from lampetra, which comes from the Latin lambĕre to lick and petra stone, in allusion to the fact that the lamprey attaches itself by a sucker to stones. Some wordsmiths though question this origin, claiming that lampetra “may be merely an etymologizing perversion,” or so opines the OED. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  3. May 28

    My Wife: The Rattlesnake Dowser

    Last weekend we ventured over the Cascade divide to the dry, east side of our fair state. We spent three nights in a sort of modified shed at Rimrock Lake, about 10 miles east of White Pass. Saturday morning, we woke to snow covering the trees perhaps a few hundred feet above us. Before we could walk out the door, snow began to fall at our shed. I do love spring in the Cascades. None of the snow stuck at our elevation but when we drove up the pass, we soon encountered a couple inches on the road. Being the brave people we are not, we turned around and returned to the lower, drier desert. Two days later, after the temperatures had returned toward more acceptable, we hiked in Waterworks Canyon, a few miles west of Naches. A small creek runs intermittently through lovely basalt cliffs dotted with color sparks of lupine and balsamroot and phlox. Perched high on a rim, a chukar, a non-native partridge, looked very hawkish, until I zoomed in with my binoculars and noted that the bird was rather stout compared to the svelte outline of a bird of prey. We had hoped to see bighorn sheep, which people regularly report, but alas, no luck for us. We did, however, meet with one of our favorite desert denizens, the western rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus). Marjorie was the first to see the serpent. Although I like to think of myself as the observant one, I can think of several times in the past few years that she heard or saw a rattlesnake before I did. This has occurred on trails, once in a parking lot, and once in a driveway. I also remember one time when she trailed me and a pal on a hike and yelled “Stop. Did you realize that you just stepped over a rattlesnake?” The snake was dead but still…she was the one to see it, hence she is my rattlesnake dowser. On our most recent encounter, I had stopped at a creek crossing. The previous mile had been hot and exposed so a break (with squished PBJs on homemade bread….mmmm!) under the dense vegetation was in order. As I was standing by the water, Marjorie pointed out the snake I had not seen on the other side, about 8 feet from me. “Oh, it’s a rattlesnake,” she said, not because of the snake warning us but because Marjorie had noticed the rattles. We didn’t seem to bother the serpent, who simply began to move slowly across the trail. Slithering along, the handsome beast periodically stopped and tongue flicked. Eventually the snake crossed the trail and curled up. We ate our yummy sandwiches and watched the well-camouflaged reptile, which seemed to watch us. Isn’t that what we humans always think—that everyone notices us? My theory is that the snake didn’t really give two hoots about us. If you look at the video above, you can see that about two-thirds down body, a slight bulge appears. We speculated that this was the reason the snake neither rattled nor moved away; why bother worrying too much when you have a full stomach. Of course, the cool of the trees and shrubs and water may also have played a role in keeping the snake calm. On the photo above, you can count nine rattles. This does not mean that the snake has lived nine years, or even has had nine lives, like a cat. All it means is that the snake has shed his or her skin nine times; rattlers add a rattle each time they shed their skin, which occurs two to four times a year. Plus, rattles periodically break off; so the number of rattles tells you nothing about age. This myth has persisted since its first appearance in print—in 1615—in Francisco Hernandez’s Four Books on the Nature and Virtues of Plants and Animals for Medicinal Purposes in New Spain. When we left the creek, about 45 minutes after arriving, the snake was still curled up, periodically tongue flicking, but mostly motionless. Watching the forked tongue was pretty darned cool, to say the least. What an amazing way to detect the world, to stick out your tongue and taste aromas that create a map and provide guidance to one’s surroundings. Although Aristotle thought that a forked tongue allowed a snake to double the pleasure of taste, more modern research has proposed that the twain creates a stereoscopic field of observation; depending on the strength of the signal in each fork, a snake can detect which direction, for example, a prey is traveling. Marjorie first noticed the other snake we saw, too. This one was dead and on a dirt road, which seemed to get limited vehicle traffic. Stretched out, the gray reptile appeared to be napping. Upon closer inspection, we noticed a bit of red and some viscera, as well as what looked like a puncture wound. We concluded that the snake (what I think was a western racer) had arrived via the sky; some sort of bird had grabbed a slithering meal, only to have the snake attack or wriggle out of the bird’s talons. Unfortunately for the snake, gravity called and upon hitting the ground, the combination of death grip and meeting the substrate at terminal speed resulted in death. At least that’s the story we concocted. Over the years, I have long appreciated Marjorie’s snake noting skills. Mostly, they give us the opportunity to interact with a serpent that we might have passed by. But occasionally, and I would include our recent creekside encounter as one of them, her abilities prevented us (aka me) from stepping into harms way. Always great to have one more reason to appreciate her! June 16, 2026 - 7pm - Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park - I will be chatting with Kevin Fedarko about his book A Walk in the Park. Here’s a link to register for this here event. A sad note. Paul Dorpat, Seattle’s great public historian and founder of our local Now and Then series, died Wednesday. Generous with his time, savvy with his wit, and always willing to share and discuss Seattle history, Paul inspired and contributed to my work, and to countless others, in innumerable ways. He was one of a kind and he will be missed. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    7 min

  4. May 21

    Mount St. Helens: 46 Years After the Big Blast

    As has happened every year since 1981, we in the PNW noted the anniversary this week of the eruption of Mount St. Helens. At 8:32 AM on May 18, 1980, the mountain erupted for the first time since the 1850s. We couldn’t see the eruption from our house in Seattle but I have a vivid memory of watching the coverage on our black and white television. I was in awe of the seething mushroom cloud of ash and debris, the scary-looking tree-choked rivers, and the cloud of blackness that shrouded nearby towns and cities. (If I remember correctly, my brother was driving home from college and didn’t have a clue what was going on…alas.) Of the state’s five volcanoes, Mount St. Helens is the most active and youngest, at least its pre-1980, 9,677-foot summit. During its first stage of life, a sort of proto-volcano—a low hill, perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 feet tall though it may have been higher at times—existed from about 270,000 to 35,000 years ago. Between 35,000 and 4,000 years ago, the little edifice started to bulk up, reaching to about 6,000 feet, though still more lumpy than conical. I find it completely fascinating that people would have seen this growth; the oldest archaeological site in the vicinity shows habitation back to 9,200 years ago. In Sahaptin, the language of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the name Lawetlat’la means smoker, a clear reference to the volcanism. Mount St. Helens then entered its mature, modern stage, ultimately forming the beautiful pre-1980 summit though not until the addition of rock in an eruptive cycle from about 1650 to 1725. Another round of eruptions occurred in the middle 1800s. They were witnessed by many who recorded the events. On March 30, 1847, artist Paul Kane wrote of having “a fine view of Mount St. Helen’s throwing up a long column of dark smoke into the clear blue sky.” When George McClellan passed by on July 31, 1853, he noted seeing smoke rising from Mount St. Helens. Four years later, an unnamed reporter for the Washington Republican wrote of the mountain “presenting a grand and sublime spectacle.” After this cycle, Mount St. Helens went quiet until 1980. Following the big blast of May 18, five additional eruptions in 1980, all much less grand, generated ash plumes, pyroclastic flows, and dome destruction. In addition, another twenty dome building eruptions between December 1980 and October 1986 produced a nearly 900-foot-high lava dome. The mountain then shut down until September 25, 2004, when seismicity picked up to levels not recorded since 1986. Coincidentally, I was on the summit with friends on September 24 and was supposed to meet a group of University of Washington geologists to go into the crater on the 25th. They never showed so we hiked out onto the Pumice Plain. We knew nothing of what was happening at Mount St. Helens until we arrived back in Seattle on the 26th and my mom told me that land managers had closed access to most of the mountain. Seven days after we were on the summit, Mount St. Helens erupted with a small plume that rose about a mile over the summit. It remained active until 2008 and has not erupted since. The other night I had the privilege of hearing Carolyn Driedger of the United States Geological Survey give a talk for the Mount Saint Helens Institute. I have long known Carolyn; she’s a great communicator about the mountain. She made several key points particularly in regard to science. Mount St. Helens is the “master teacher,” which provided lessons to scientists and emergency managers around the globe that helped save uncountable numbers of people. The mountain also showed how research couldn’t be siloed; scientists needed to cross disciplines and share information in order to understand such a complex situation. This may seem rather obvious but Carolyn told of how the different researchers at the time didn’t collaborate. The results could be catastrophic with a failure to communicate information needed to help in predicting future eruptions. She noted that when the USGS built its Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, WA, it purposely designed the facility so that researchers in different fields would have adjacent offices with the hope of cross discipline discussions. This plan has been a success. As I have written previously, Mount St. Helens is one of my favorite locations in Washington. It is both a geological and an ecological treasure unlike any other spot in the state, and I would argue, in the world. Not only is it beautiful and inspiring, but it also has, as Carolyn noted, provided essential scientific information that has rewritten our understanding of volcanoes, emergency response management, and how to communicate in a disaster. The mountain has further rewritten our understanding of succession, or how plants and animals replace another species over time following disturbance, such as a volcano or flood. In the words of ecologist Jerry Franklin, one of the region’s key forest researchers: “The learning that initiated at Mount St. Helens is global. In a sense it’s universal.” And yet, I don’t think the mountain gets the recognition it deserves. I am always surprised by the number of people I talk to who haven’t been to the volcano. They think nothing of driving three hours north to hike in the North Cascades but don’t do the same going south. I understand that access has been difficult the past few years, and that a lack of funding has resulted in the closure of visitor services, but for anyone who does take the time to discover the stunning geology and ecology, you will be richly rewarded. Another problem is that Mount St. Helens isn’t as sexy as it used to be. The first few decades of research led to the unprecedented discoveries that shifted the paradigms of geology and ecology, but those stories are still playing out. Forty-six years is a mere blip in the geological and ecological timelines of a landscape like Mount St. Helens. New research continues to help clarify, recalibrate, and unearth both the simple and complex relationships that are shaping the future landscape, as well as forcing scientists to ask new questions to help further the lessons that this master teacher is providing. If you want to know more about Mount St. Helens, I recommend the following. Eruption by Steve Olson tells the story of the 57 people who died on May 18, 1980, and how they came to be where they were. Not surprising, it was a mixture of politics, history, and geology. After the Blast by Eric Wagner provides the best account of the amazing ecological stories of the mountain. The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, USGS Professional Paper 1250 - Weighing eight pounds and totaling 844 pages, 62 scientific studies, and a map, the Twelve-Fifty is a stunning account from the mountain’s reawakening on March 20, 1980 through the May 18 eruption to the months of research that followed. It is not a document to be taken lightly. Roadside Geology of Mount St. Helens by Pat Pringle - An approachable and practical guide to the mountain’s geology. I also recommend the classes and programs at Mount Saint Helens Institute. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  5. May 14

    How Not to Harness a River

    A poured concrete block the size of a Sprinter van is not something one normally finds in a river. Even less likely is finding an additional 21 such blocks strung across the length of a half mile wide flood plain. But such a location exists about four miles southeast of Auburn, Washington, on the White River. Not only do the massive piers, as they were described when built more than a century ago, litter the river valley, but many of them still retain remnants of the ten, one-inch steel cables strung between the blocks. Known as the Drift Barrier of the White River, the concrete and steel fence was meant to subdue the river by catching woody debris carried by the current, particularly during flooding, which plagued settlers in the White/Duwamish River and Stuck/Puyallup River valleys. In the words of famed engineer, Hiram Chittenden, the river “being impossible of navigation, of little use for irrigation, and too near sea level for power…is thus more of a nuisance than anything else.” The solution to the White River’s unredeeming attributes was to artificially straitjacket the water, control the flow, and flush it through a sort of “storm water surface sewer…harmlessly to the sea,” concluded Chittenden, who knew a bit about controlling water as the designer of Seattle’s locks. Primary to this plan was the Drift Barrier. It would catch both natural drift, such as trees that fell into the river, as well as logs and other material from the ever expanding logging operations upriver. In Chittenden’s words, drift “constitutes the gravest feature of the flood problem” not only by taking out bridges but also by creating log jams that changed the path of the river; if the drift wasn’t eliminated, it was “almost useless” to make any of the other proposed changes. Construction of the Drift Barrier began in September 1914. After building a temporary road, workers excavated a 12 foot by 12 foot tunnel 79 feet deep, at the end of which they anchored the cables that would run between the blocks in an infrastructure of massive I-beams, wrought iron pipes, and two blocks of concrete, one 15-feet thick and one 10-feet thick. The fence would consist of twenty six, diamond-shaped piers, 24 feet wide by 27 feet long and spaced 64 feet apart, center to center. Each pier had an angled top—sloping from 13 feet tall to 11 feet tall—and sat on a concrete foundation that extended an additional 3 to 7 1/2 feet down into the river sediment. Total weight of each pier, about 330 tons. Running between each pier were the steel cables, which would catch the drift. Workers connected the final cables in May 1915. Visiting the Drift Barrier after the first big storms of 1915, in November and December, project chief engineer William J. Roberts wrote: “It is performing its duty exactly as expected.” The barrier was so successful that he submitted a summary report in 1920, which recommended that similar barriers should be built on other rivers. Within a few years, however, the tone had shifted. The barrier required extensive maintenance, at least five piers had been buried or sunk into the river sediment, floods had severed cables, and drift continued to build massive, unstable piles that required significant money and work to eliminate. By 1933, a new chief engineer was writing “the barrier has already been abandoned.” I first visited the abandoned Drift Barrier in January 2026. I was lucky to go with Josh Latterell, an ecologist with King County. He had first come across the barriers about a decade ago. Josh had no clue as to why the blocks were there or what function they had though clearly, they had been built in place and clearly for a purpose. He eventually talked to more knowledgeable colleagues who provided some of the background story. The first pier we found rose about three feet above the White River. (Intriguingly the river has changed sides completely; in 1915, water ran along the west bank and now the channel runs along the east bank.) Mostly submerged, it didn’t look so formidable, as opposed to another block on the river’s edge. When Josh gingerly climbed to the top, he stood about ten feet above me. Down at ground level I was eye level with several eye bolts as big as my hand and the old rusty one-inch steel cables that had formerly stopped woody debris. Climbing through blackberries and around big logs and interlaced branches that forced careful stepping and diligent observation to avoid getting thwacked in the face, we located twenty-two piers, running in their original line across the valley. Most piers lacked connecting cables, but a few pairs of piers retained theirs. Softened by a jacket of moss, the strands of steel were still taut (see comment below) and embedded into the concrete. To my twenty-first century mind, trying to fence in a river seems both arrogant and ecologically unsound, but I also understand why people such as Chittenden proposed it and know that it isn’t appropriate to apply my mindset to theirs. For as long as settlers had farmed the bottom lands along the White River, flooding had been a problem. It had destroyed bridges and train tracks; wiped out homes and farms; ripped out telegraph poles; and killed people and livestock. Understandably, residents wanted protection from the regular flooding and the unpredictability of the river. The engineers were simply trying to help and building the Drift Barrier was an obvious solution. The White River, not surprisingly, did not cotton on to this solution. Like most rivers, the White was unstable, or more accurately, reactionary. When conditions changed, the river responded, constantly meandering and braiding across the flood plain, creating and destroying habitat, as well as the artificial barrier that we built in the hopes of controlling this dynamic ecosystem. It seems that if the Drift Barrier tells us anything, it is that a river does not want to be harnessed or straitjacketed. Rivers are alive and the more we understand this fundamental, the better we can treat rivers with the respect they deserve. Tonight, May 14 - Barnes and Noble in the U-District - 5pm - I will be chatting with my co-author Jennifer Ott about our book Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal: A History and Guide. Here’s info to register. June 16, 2026 - 7pm - Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park - I will be chatting with Kevin Fedarko about his book A Walk in the Park. Here’s a link to register for this here event. And, if you want to hear an interview with me about Operation Mother Goose, here it is. It ran on KUOW’s Soundside on Wednesday, May 13. Apparently, I am the historian on this subject; it helps that I think I am the only historian, as well. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  6. May 7

    An Urban Scavenger Hunt

    With spring in the air and more and more people getting out and enjoying the loveliness, I thought I’d return to a scavenger hunt I put together several years ago. Not surprisingly, it’s a bit dorky but I hope that you will enjoy it and perhaps find some inspiration for further exploration. Although my knowledge is primarily Seattle biased and based, I feel confident that you can find these treasures in any large city and probably many towns. The list is not in any particular order. And, please let me know if you have other suggestions for future scavenger hunts. Fossils - The most commonly used building stone in the country is Indiana’s Salem Limestone. Deposited 330 million years ago in a quiet sea, it is pointillist rock made of fossils instead of dots. Crinoids. Brachiopods. Corals. Bryozoans. Whole and shattered. But the Salem is not the lone building stone with fossils; I have found fossils of all sizes in buildings in most cities I have visited. If you have a magnifying lens, or better yet a Hastings Triplet, you’ll be the envy of all who seek fossils. Lions, Eagles, and Walruses - No matter where you walk in a city, they are watching. They being the carved and terra cotta animals and human faces that adorn buildings. The most common are lions and eagles but you can also encounter ducks, squirrels, fish, and, in Seattle, walruses. If you have binoculars, and can get over the peeping Tom feeling, they are invaluable. (If you want to go the extra mile, at least in Seattle, I know of bronze duck tracks downtown. Perhaps they were made by the terra cotta duck shown below?) Hitching Posts - Back in the era when horsepower actually meant equine energy, people needed a place to hitch their horses. Understandably, most hitching posts have gone the way of, well, the horse and buggy, but a few remain, a reminder of the era when the worst output from your source of transportation was poop. Lichens - Colorful, abundant, persistent, and ubiquitous, lichens are everywhere. Neither plant nor animal—lichens have been described as more like an ecosystem than an individual organism. They grow through a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae, or cyanobacteria, can be found on wood, rock, cement, automobiles, roof tiles, bird baths, etc. etc., and will be here long after we are. What more could you want in your urban world? Local Geology - Okay, here’s my true dorkdom shining through. A good way to get an insight into your local geology is to look at older buildings because early builders typically used local rock. For example, Seattle’s oldest structures are made of a 50-million-year-old sandstone quarried in Tenino, Wilkeson, and Chuckanut and 32-million-year-old granite from Index; these are the closest sources for good building stone. Early builders also sought out nearby glacially-deposited clay beds to make bricks for structures and streets, as well as limestone for the lime for cement. Native Trees - Seattle’s most abundant trees are probably its native Douglas firs. Two other common natives are bigleaf maple and red alder, both of which pioneer disturbed habitat. I don’t know about other locations but I am sure that wherever you live, you’ll find native trees growing. I suggest seeking them out in parks, cemeteries (great places for lichen lovers), or arboreta. Or, if you can’t find a native tree, then you could consider planting one or more. Ghost Forest - Many years ago I had a floral epiphany. The tree trunks I saw around town were once trees, which probably meant that they were part of a forest of what I assumed was the native ecosystem since many stumps were in parks. In Seattle, I know of about a dozen, most of which are western red cedar. Look for the springboard notches, where loggers inserted planks to allow them get above the “knees” that often made up the bottom of a cedar tree. Also look for nurse logs and nurse stumps, great habitat for new life. Phone Booth - Perhaps the hardest item to find on the list but a few still persist, a reminder of when superheroes and Ma Bell were bedfellows, so to speak. Evidence for Native people - In Seattle, we have Lushootseed (the Native language) place names, such as Licton Springs and Shilshole, as well as more and more interpretive signs that incorporate Native plant names and that tell the story of Indigenous people past and present. We are also fortunate that several recent books help tell those stories, too. If your city and its residents aren’t recognizing and acknowledging the original inhabitants, then it seems some things need to change where you live. Evidence for Historic Water Features - Urban development typically results in the paving over of many hydrologic features, such as creeks, seeps, and springs. But water has a way of bypassing these attempts to hide its story and creates hints for those who seek them out. One simple example in Seattle is Spring Street, named for the springs that provided drinking water to the nascent town. Others clues include water-loving plants (such as horsetails and devil’s club), backyard streams, weeping hillsides, and place names. Ghost Signs - Pentimenti from a bygone era, ghost signs are a reminder of those who came before, or at least those previous hawkers of their wares. Most signs are disappearing because of urban renewal but you can still find them, often on brick buildings, up high, and nearly always fading. Here’s another fun word to describe them, palimpsests. California Coolers - Once upon a time, people used the outside air to keep their food cool. Basically a closet with a screened opening on an exterior wall, the coolers worked well for fruits and vegetables. They were popular in apartments and can still be seen on older apartment buildings around Seattle though sometimes the old openings have been closed. Hatchcover - One of the more mundane places in the city to encounter urban art is your local hatchcover, or what some call manholes (the p.c. term peopleholes just sounds icky). Not only does Seattle have lovely hatchcovers, it also has ones with maps, which I think are pretty darned nifty. Two of the hatchcovers below are in Seattle. (Do you know why they are round?) I wish you a wonderful spring and summer filled with exploration, observation, and inspiration. Please let me know if you have topics you’d like me to pursue. I am always in search of fun ideas. May 14, 2026 - Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal - 5pm - Barnes and Noble University District (formerly the UBookstore) - My co-author Jennifer Ott and I will be discussing the new edition of our book about the history of the Ship Canal and Locks. Info for registering. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  7. Apr 30

    Spring Fling

    Spring has long been my favorite season, primarily because the weather is so mutable. This week we topped 70 degrees, had fog and rain and a few sunbreaks, and some classic days of gray. Even better was the return of green as plants rioted out their leaves and flowers pushed out their advertisements seeking pollinators. Not to be outdone, birds were trilling and singing and calling and gracing the air with their songs and territorial announcements. Here’s a sampling of what I have been seeing and hearing. A Hearty RhodyDepending on your world view the rhododendron in our front yard is either half dead or half alive. I lean toward the latter. This plant is a survivor. When we moved into our house, we had two healthy, moderately sized rhodies in the front yard. One is now dead and one, the survivor, looks as if we had abused it, with several leafless limbs. I do admit that we subscribe to some tough love—if a plant cannot survive without us watering or attending to it, then it’ll probably be returning to the soil whence it came—but we don’t mistreat them. Over the years this rhody had suffered so we had trimmed it, hoping that it would put its energy into its remaining healthy parts. It has and each year continues to brighten our yard with a vernal burst of hot pink efflorescence. Weed KillerI am not proud to admit to this sign of spring. As gazillions of plants push their way skyward, I change my status from mere mortal to someone deciding the fate of life and death: Which seedling will survive and which will be yanked from the ground, out of its womb, and die in our compost bin? I don’t have exact criteria; I tend to focus on smaller, weedy plants that I think will spread faster and farther if I don’t do something. These “offensive” plants include some small mustards, an aggressive mint, and a grass or two. I have mixed feelings about being a plant killer. I like that we have mostly native plants and these interlopers don’t necessarily benefit native animals. Nor do they benefit native plants, and, in some situations, may prevent natives from growing. But I also know that I should be more tolerant. Instead of killing plants who are simply doing their thing, particularly ones that are able to grow in an urban environment, I should be celebrating them for their tenacity and adaptability. I do like to think that I have become more tolerant and pull up fewer plants than I used to but let’s cut to the chase, when spring arrives, I become a killer. For me, this is one of the great ironies of the season. Bird SoundsI am one of those nutty, annoying morning people who wake up early and pop out of bed ready to go without need of coffee to evolve into a human. (I admit I do need coffee because I am addicted to it but that’s another issue.) Because of this tendency to wake early I have the pleasure of hearing birds singing loudly. As I have written before, I am not good at identifying song so I rely, like many, on the Merlin app to identify who is plying the airways. Below is a list generated at our house, when eight species were chorusing on Tuesday. While this may not be a high tally, it still was joyful that so many birds were singing, even at our house sandwiched between Interstate 5 and Aurora Avenue. Animal EncountersI recently had the pleasure of meeting two babies, surely a sign of spring. My first encounter was sitting at my desk working on my computer. I had reached up to rub my head when I felt something odd and a bit squishy. I grabbed it and flung it on my desk; it was a half inch long slug. I had just returned from a bike ride and suspect that when I put my helmet down in the grass at the end of the ride, the slug had availed themself (slugs are hermaphrodites so they seems appropriate) of the cozy helmet and then found even greater joy latching onto my noggin, most likely not suspecting that they would soon be traveling far from home. After picking up the startled, and I hope, not too injured, mollusc from my desk, I placed them in a more suitable habitat, our yard. Later in the day, we were eating dinner outside with friends when I noticed a string dangling from my ball cap. I was quite delighted to see it, as I have recently started wearing prescription glasses and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it previously. Reaching up to detach the string, I discovered a wee caterpillar dangling from it. I suspect that the little critter had latched on to my hat during a walk we had done at Magnuson Park. Once again, being the gentle soul I am, I returned the caterpillar to the wild, hoping that it makes wiser foraging decisions in the future. Orwell - This is one of my favorite quotes from George Orwell, who was quite the devoted nature guy.“The point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing. Even in the most sordid street the coming of spring will register itself by some sign or other, if it is only a brighter blue between the chimney pots or the vivid green of an elder sprouting on a blitzed site. Indeed, it is remarkable how Nature goes on existing unofficially, as it were, in the very heart of London.”George Orwell - Some Thoughts on the Common Toad - April 1946 May 6, 2026 - A Lake with No Limits - 5:30pm - Center for Wooden Boats - As part of an event co-sponsored by the Eastlake Community Council and the Floating Homes Association, I will be discussing the history of the Ship Canal and Locks. I will be joined by Anna Bachman, Clean Water Program Director for the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance. For further information. May 7, 2026 - Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal - 6pm - Ballard Locks - My co-author Jennifer Ott and I will be discussing the new edition of our book about the history of the Ship Canal and Locks. Some info on Facebook about the event. I’d also like to recommend a podcast produced by my friend Shin Yu Pai: Ten Thousand Things. Shin Yu explores a collection of objects and artifacts that tell us something about Asian American life – from a second-hand novel to a blue suit worn by a congressman on January 6. Her show is informative, thought provoking, and fun. She starts her fifth season on May 5. Here’s a Spotify link to the trailer for the season. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  8. Apr 23

    Dinosaurs Among Us

    Birds are dinosaurs. “This is one of the greatest achievements in the history of paleontology,” writes Steve Brusatte, in his splendid new book, The Story of Birds: A New History from their Dinosaur Origins to the Present. Tracing the evolution of the idea of the bird-dinosaur connection, as well as the actual evolution of birds, Brusatte reveals a complex, layered story that justifies his statement. But I have to disagree slightly with him. Our understanding that birds are dinosaurs is not just a paleontological achievement. I would argue that it is one of the great achievements of science, illustrating a combination of geology, ecology, physics, and biology. Each of these fields, along with others, has helped provide the details that show the conclusive connection of these iconic animals. As Brusatte writes, the idea goes back to the time of Darwin and Wallace and their fleshing out natural selection. Thomas Henry Huxley, often called Darwin’s bulldog for his defense of Mr. D, was the first (in 1868) to draw the link between our feathered friends and the biggest beasts of the past. Using his knowledge of anatomy, Huxley concluded that “the leg of a barnyard chicken is a miniature version of any T. rex leg you see in a museum,” writes Brusatte. In the middle 1800s few dinosaur fossils had been found so when Huxley made the connection, he was actually referencing a small, two-legged theropod (the group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex) known as Compsognathus. That lack of evidence was problematic because Victorian scientists, like their modern counterparts, couldn’t cotton to the bird/dinosaur connection without the facts. Not until 1964 would the idea be revived, when paleontologist John Ostrom unearthed Deinonychus, a species unlike the prevailing image of dinosaurs. Instead of a lumbering, tail dragging, plodding lummox, Deinonychus were agile, active, fast, and formidable predators, he wrote. Ostrom based his description on the bones he found, which showed a lithe, long-limbed beast with sickle-like claws on each hand. (Deinonychus means terrible claw.) The fossils made him think of Archaeopteryx, a Jurassic Period fossil, long known as the oldest evidence for birds. When Ostrom compared the skeletons of the two species, it was clear, he concluded, that Archaeopteryx, with their classic avian feathers, had evolved from a theropod dinosaur, such as an ancestor of Deinonychus. The dinosaur-bird link was back, writes Brusatte. Ostrom’s linkage of birds and theropods is a key point that Brusatte stresses. The family tree of dinosaurs is a phenomenally diverse group, persisting for hundreds of millions of years and ranging from chicken-sized, feathered, two-legged carnivores (e.g. Tyrannosaurus rex) to school-bus sized, four-legged plant-eaters (e.g. Brontosaurus). Birds are simply one limb of that tree, similar to the many branches of the mammal family tree. Comparing body shapes, one might not link bats, whales, apes, and anteaters, and yet we easily fit them in the same family. “A bird is a dinosaur version of a bat. A dinosaur that got small, evolved wings and developed the ability to fly but retains many hallmarks of its dinosaur relatives,” writes Brusatte. Over more than 300 pages, Brusatte provides the thrilling evidence. For some, the most exciting is feathers. In 1996, exquisite dinosaur fossils with stunningly detailed feathers began to come out of China. As numerous additional species came to light, it confirmed the direct relationship between birds and dinosaurs; so feathered were dinosaurs that Brusatte could write “feathers were to dinosaurs what hair is to mammals: the default condition.” But feathers don’t mean that dinosaurs could fly or that all birds fly. Consider moas, emus, ostriches, and penguins; they gave up flight and kept their feathers, a subject that Brusatte describes in a wonderful chapter on earth-bound birds. But birds are more than light boned (usually), winged, and feathered. They were the “intellectual champions among land-dwelling animals for many millions of years…[until] a few million years ago, perhaps, when some big-brained ape” came along, writes Brusatte. In addition, birds evolved the superbly adaptable beak, or what he describes as “revolutionary new inventions.” Birds are also fast growing; one reason you rarely see baby birds is that they simply mature too quickly. And, of course, birds vocalize, cacophonying the world with harmonies, tweets, chirps, honks, cackles, whistles, squawks, and screeches. Brusatte’s writing is clear, concise, and up to date. Over the past few decades paleontology has become truly multi-disciplinary (as well as adaptive of new technology) and he appears to know everybody who is making it so. I particularly appreciate how generous he is in referring to and praising the stellar work of these other scientists. He also illustrates how paleontology has emerged out of its hidebound, white male, western-based past, with research from around the world and a full diversity of scientists. (One area where this manifests itself is how scientific names of dinosaurs have started to reflect a more encompassing and respectful view of where fossils originate.) For anyone who pays attention to the natural world, birds are ubiquitous. I can’t remember a day without encountering one, no matter where I have been, from the urban chaos of downtown Tokyo to the Douglas firs of my backyard to alpine meadows high in the Cascades. As a geogeek, I have long known that birds are dinosaurs, but Brusatte’s book puts birds in a new and exciting perspective, linking these amazing animals to me, to the ecosystems I love, and deep into the planetary past when dinosaurs ruled the world. Now, they simply rule the sky but what a graceful reign it is. No matter where you look, the connective tissues of life abound, glorious in their complexity and beauty. If you are interested, I’ll be chatting with Steve Brusatte about his new book on Saturday, April 25, at Town Hall at 7:30PM. Here’s how to register. Get full access to Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind at streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min
See All (78)

About

A free newsletter oriented toward building stronger connections to place through stories of human and natural history in the Pacific Northwest streetsmartnaturalist.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    David B. Williams
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    78
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © David B. Williams
  • Show Website
    Street Smart Naturalist

You Might Also Like