Fremont is easily reached from downtown Seattle by traveling along the west shore of Lake Union. Early residents of Fremont would often paddle a canoe across Lake Union as water travel was easiest.
The Fremont neighborhood was one of Seattle’s most successful early suburbs, with people moving to the site beginning in 1888. When I speak of “Fremont” in this blog post, I mean the area as it is now defined, which is broader than the original property of the first homestead claimant, William A. Strickler, in 1854.
Technically Fremont did come into existence until developers bought the property which had once been the homestead claim, and named it Fremont in 1888. The original boundaries of Fremont went north as far as N. 39th Street only, and from east-west it was from 3rd NW to Albion (not quite as far east as Stone Way.) Up until 1888 no one lived within the bounds of that property because it had been tied up in legal issues.
Another early resident of what is now considered Fremont, was John Ross. His homestead claim of 1853 was to the west of Fremont, on both sides of what is now the ship canal, and included land at what is now the site of Seattle Pacific University.
Much of the story of Fremont parallels the growth of Seattle itself, and studying the history of Fremont has given me a better understanding and framework for the history of our city. In 2009 I participated as a volunteer in a survey of Fremont’s residential housing, and today I am still benefiting from that free education in history, architecture and research resources.
Even before Fremont had an official name, its strategic location at the northwest corner of Lake Union was known to Seattle pioneers who recognized that a waterway there would make it easier to transport heavy products such as timber and coal. In the year 2016- 2017 we had a study project and commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the ship canal.
B.F. Day arrives in Seattle
Fremont in Seattle has a vibrant, walkable commercial district with many small, locally owned shops.
B.F. Day and his wife Frances arrived in Seattle in 1880. Circa 1884-1886 the Days established a home to the northeast of 39th Street and Fremont Avenue, outside of the first plat of Fremont in an area which is now considered part of the neighborhood.
In their years in Seattle the Days lived through a series of major events: the Chinese Expulsion of 1886, Seattle’s Great Fire of 1889, the economic crash called the Panic of 1893, and the Yukon Gold Rush of 1897.
In this two-part blog post I will tell about the social, political and economic impacts of Seattle’s tumultuous years of the 1880s and 1890s. Some themes we will see are the early Seattleites’ eagerness to acquire land and develop it, the desire to reshape the landscape by digging a canal for transportation of products via a waterway, and the pioneers’ struggle to overcome catastrophic events such as political upheaval, fire, and economic depression.
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Wedgwood in Seattle History 