The Fremont neighborhood in Seattle is located at the northwest corner of Lake Union. Map courtesy of HistoryLink.
The Fremont neighborhood in Seattle was founded in 1888 by real estate developers. It was a “planned community” where the developers first set up a lumber mill to create jobs and provide lumber for housing. The developers laid out house lots and then advertised that the first one hundred lots would be sold for $1 each.
Fremont was settled by enterprising individuals who sought to establish homes and businesses in the new community, which was like a suburb with its own name, as it was outside of the Seattle City Limits at that time.
Some people who were already in Seattle moved to Fremont in 1888 to get in on the new development. Other people came from quite far away. One such, was the John Quincy Denton family of Quincy, Massachusetts.
The John Quincy Denton family
Quincy, Massachusetts, is part of the greater-Boston area. It was known as the “city of Presidents” because it was the birthplace of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The town was founded in 1625 and was named after Colonel John Quincy, the maternal grandfather of Abigail Adams.
Quincy was officially incorporated as a city in 1888. The heritage of the John & Lucy Denton family went back generations in Quincy, but they left Quincy in that year of 1888, to become part of a pioneer community in Fremont, Seattle. With them went Lucy’s sister Eliza Jane Smith and her husband Fielding Smith, and Clarinda Norton, the mother of Lucy and Eliza Jane. John Denton’s occupation was grocer, and Fielding Smith was a stoneworker. They would be able to establish themselves in Fremont in these occupations.
John & Lucy Denton came to Fremont with their two little boys, and their next son was the first baby to be born in the new Fremont community. He was born on March 31, 1889, and they named him Fremont Quincy Denton.
Fremont Quincy Denton
“Monty,” as he was called, was the first baby to be born in Fremont but he was soon joined by multitudes of other children whose families were moving to Fremont. Schooling was, at first, conducted in private homes and then in rented spaces. Fremont citizen B.F. Day gave land for a new school building which opened in 1892 and is still open today. 
Fremont was founded at a small stream called The Outlet or Ross Creek. In the 1880s it was widened via hand-digging, enough to accommodate logs floating to mill.
Fremont’s wooden trestle bridge was where small boys would stand to fish with string attached to a stick and safety pins baited with worms. At age 18 in 1907, Monty Denton may have used more sophisticated fishing methods, but he was caught by a game warden and fined $50 for spearing salmon in the Fremont canal.
Monty started out his working life as a delivery boy for the meat market of William Murphy, one of the other early settlers of Fremont. Monty apprenticed at the market and became a meat cutter himself. In these early 1900s years, meat was sold separately at shops and was cut to order, rather than being sold in packages as is done today.
Murphy Meat Market at 706 Ewing Street (North 34th) circa 1901. Photo from UW Special Collections Item #1296.
The Old Timers Reunions
Goddard & Murphy, UW Special Collections photo #1345.65
By 1934 some of the early Fremont settlers were retired and living elsewhere. The idea came to them to have an annual Old Timers gathering, for all those who’d lived in Fremont in early years.
Among the Old Timers were Captain A.J. Goddard and William Murphy who had each been community leaders and had served to represent Fremont on Seattle City Council. They were the first of the Old Timers to be given the honorary title of Mayor of Fremont, and next was Thomas W. Lough of Fremont Drug Company.
In 1948 it was the turn of Fremont Q. Denton to receive the honorary degree of Mayor of Fremont.
Fremont Q. Denton in 1948
The Godfather of Recycling in the 1970s
By 1970 all of Seattle was suffering from what was called the Boeing Bust. Seattle’s economy had been dependent on the high level of employment of Boeing Aircraft Company. It was said that for every Boeing worker, four other people had jobs to support the population, working in schools, medical care, restaurant work and other services. When Boeing began massive layoffs, the population of Seattle fell and there was an economic depression with a high level of unemployment.
The Fremont Fair and Solstice Parade 2026
In the early 1970s social services were founded to help meet economic needs in Seattle. One of these was the community gardening program called P-Patch (honoring the former Picardo Farm in the Wedgwood neighborhood). Another was the organizing of a food bank in Fremont, which evolved into the Fremont Public Association, now called Solid Ground.
Like many of the Fremont pioneers of early years, in 1972 a man appeared out of nowhere (it was said that he came from New York City) and he began to organize to meet the needs that he saw in Fremont. One of his first ideas was to hold a street fair and use the publicity to raise funds for a food bank in Fremont.
In 1973 the neighborhood newspaper, the North Central Outlook, advertised the street fair of that year and said that there would be voting for the Mayor of Fremont. Armen Napoleon Stepanian, the organizer of the street fair, won the election. The theme of the fair that year was “recycling,” a concept which was new to the community. At the 1973 fair, attendees were encouraged to bring aluminum cans, glass bottles, newspapers and other recyclables.
In 1975 Mr. Stepanian set up Recycling Center No. 1 on North 34th Street and started a home pick-up route for paper, cans and bottles, reaching a list of subscribers in Fremont and nearby. In 1988 the City of Seattle bought out the program and scaled it up to provide recycling throughout the city.
Armen Stepanian at his recycling station in Fremont. Seattle Times photo by Vic Condiotty.
Having completed his mission in Fremont, Armen Stepanian went out to assist other cities with recycling programs. When he returned to Washington State he spent the rest of his life in Ocean Shores, Grays Harbor County, and died there on December 17, 2024, at age 93.
The legacy of the Mayor
In the 1970s when Armen Stepanian began his organizing efforts in Fremont, the “Boeing Bust” economic depression had caused decreased rents. Fremont became home to students of the University of Washington and many artists and craftsmen, as well as those who, like Mr. Stepanian, wanted to promote the well-being of the community. When it began in 1972, the annual Fremont Fair had fifty exhibitors which included some art & craft vendors. By 1977 the Fair had more than three hundred exhibitors. These included social service agencies like the Fremont Public Association, and artists, craftsmen and small locally-owned businesses.
The legacy of the Mayor of Fremont, Armen Stepanian, is the community spirit of social uplift and the creative atmosphere of artists and small businesses which exists today in Fremont. The annual Fremont Fair is still held, and the Fremont community is one of very few in the city which has its own Chamber of Commerce to support local businesses. Fremont also has an Arts Council and many volunteers who maintain arts areas such as the Friends of the Troll’s Knoll.
Fremont Arts Council photo of the Fremont Fair 2026.
Sources:
“Recycling Our Roots,” history article on the SolidGround.org page by Mike Buchman, April 17, 2014.
Washington Digital Archives, dates of birth/marriage/death.
Books:
“Norton Family,” Descendants of Captain G. Barbour, Volume Four, 1899, by E.D. Barbour. Accessed online via Ancestry.com
Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ecotopia, by Jeffrey Craig Sanders, 2010. Seattle Public Library 307.76097.
Newspaper references:
“Spearing Salmon in the Fremont Canal,” Seattle Daily Times, September 26, 1907, page 7.
“Pioneers of Fremont Will Gather Thursday,” Seattle Daily Times March 27, 1948, page B4.
“The Face of Fremont,” Seattle Times, June 2, 2002, page 130 by Marc Ramirez.
