Bridge to Fremontbithia

A Brief History of Fremont, Antiquity to about 1940

Once upon a time, there was a magical kingdom ruled by an evil overlord. This lush, verdant kingdom was known as Fremontbithia. It was originally settled by creatures from an evil dimension called Nebraska. Before these creatures came, Fremontbithia was populated almost entirely by many many trees. The Nebraskans knew nothing of these strange "trees", for Nebraska had none. So, they built large temples to sacrifice the trees.

They also discovered something else here, too. In addition to harvesting all of Fremontbithia's trees, they wanted to make citizens beholden to a powerful demon named Electricity.

The demon had already possessed a strong hold on a neighboring land, the so-called Queen City, to the south of Fremontbithia. This land lay across a mighty waterway. (In some places, they first had to build it for the sake of the narrative.)

Electricity did not like the fresh water, for it dispersed its power rapidly in all directions when it instead wanted to go in one direction. For that reason, electric boosters conspired with Queen Anne of the Queen City to build a great structure to connect them to the demon's stronghold.

But this would not be Fremontbithia's only structure across the great waters...

Around the time Fremont consummated its municipality with Seattle in 1891, a wooden trestle was built in the present location of the Fremont Bridge. Writing in her history of public works in Seattle (ISBN 0960192816) as if she were writing for Seattlest, Myra Phelps eloquently described it as "a rickety wooden structure of antediluvian ancestry". In 1901, electric streetcar service began running across "the decaying structure until 1911 when it was razed to make way for the new ship canal."

Presumably, this and this is the second temporary bridge of which she speaks. It was but a temporary solution and it assuaged the whiner who didn't feel like walking several blocks to the east, where the Stone Way Bridge, yet another rickety trestle took up the slack of keeping people's feet dry over the crossing. It, too, had a streetcar running over its deck.

...but the demon's patience grew thin at it's tenuous grasp on Fremontbithia, for it had a short fuse. Nothing, after all, vexes a modern demon more than out-dated architecture. Thus, it bestowed Fremontbithians pages from the ancient scrolls. And so, construction began on a more permanent structure forged of strong concrete and steel. Its leaves were designed to be raised and lowered for marine traffic by the use ofancient magics.

On June 15th, 1917 the saucy little bascule that we know today opened for business. In those heady days, it carried both automotive and civilized traffic. It has undergone a few renovations during the years, including a belated spaying in 1936.

We can't confirm but we suspect that the old metal railings along the approaches were some later renovation, for they looked to be an appropriately brutal 1950s (or 1980s even) aesthetic. No matter, the ugly things are gone and in their place are gorgeous poured-concrete railings with somewhat Art Deco-inspired details (we call it Nouveau Deco). It seems that sometime after the late 1930s concrete became boring and uninspired as Mies and his ilk crapped their austere, reactionarily-unornamented, Modernist aesthetic into the world. Thankfully, ornamentation is back. The new railings look like they could have been torn out of some WPA project. They are hot hot hot. If we didn't know for certain that we'd end up guests of the state, with regularly-scheduled electro-shock sessions with the boys in the white lab coats, we would most assuredly copulate with this bridge. That's precisely how sexy it is.

...in the end, though, the citizens turned their backs on Electricity for their transportation needs. They left it in their bedrooms (and the rest of their houses) where it belonged. Instead, they sold their souls to other demons. These were named Internal Combustion and its lackey Gasoline. Internal Combustion promised the people great freedom and mobility.

To much great hoopla, Waiting for the Interurban was re-installed in it's rightful place along the now-buried tracks. The poor chumps they represent have been waiting a long time since the civilized era ended in the 1940s. Or maybe it is because they are waiting on the wrong street? In any case, they remain a frozen tribute to Seattle's previous lack of transit vision --as well as an apt metaphor for traffic itself. If the wiseacres who dress up the statue were really clever, they'd augment it by bolting a cast-aluminum single-occupant Hummer in that right-turn lane behind the sculpture.

Speaking of waiting on the wrong street, the most exciting part of all of this is the return of buses to the heart of Fremont. Only a little over a year since buses were re-routed, Metro routes 26, 28,31, and 74 have all returned to their normal routes as of 2nd June. We couldn't be happier. whine whine whine we don't wanna walk all the way up to the Aurora Bridge whine Is there a sadder bus stop in the city than the one at 38th and Bridge Way, where a majority of the above routes made temporary stops? We could hardly remember how genteel and urbane it is to board or step off the bus right in "downtown Fremont", especially with a rolled up newspaper and a lunch pail in hand. Perhaps we shall start wearing our fedora to work!

Finally, we tip our hats to the construction workers, engineers, traffic planners, SDOT (they have PODCASTS!), and Metro. Major infrastructural projects like this take a lot of careful planning and coordination. Unfortunately, they are frequently accompanied by a lot of belly-aching and spleen-venting. Me, me, me, and my damned commute! Oh! How inconvenienced am I! Considering that almost half of the work was done under the bridge while all lanes were open and that it was open at all during the major phase of the project, this is a monumental civic accomplishment.

Cheers to you, boys and girls! Bully! Bully! Well done!

And a fine street it is --efficient for automobiles and spacious for pedestrians and cyclists. View north toward Fremontbithia

Such elegant structures can only be shot properly in black-and-white.

...or, in our case, somewhat overexposed in grey-and-white.