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You can discover
the history of the Lynnwood trolley by strolling back through time along the
Interurban Trail. Look to the north as you stand near the intersection of 196th
Street SW and Alderwood Mall Blvd. Envision tracks stretching through a tunnel
of giant old-growth evergreens and follow the tracks all the way back to
the year 1910.
Owned and operated by Seattle-Everett Traction, hourly
trolley service between Everett and Seattle began on May 2, 1910 at 5:20 a.m.
The Morrice family, homesteaders on acreage where the Alderwood Mall is now
located, could walk to the near-by Forest Park station and board a trolley
for a comfortable 45-minute journey to Seattle instead of hitching the horses
up to the wagon for a two-day trip.
During the heyday of the interurban
railway, the premier builder of heavy wooden interurban cars was the Niles
Car & Manufacturing Co. of Niles (Cleveland), Ohio. These cars, with their
graceful arch windows and beautiful woodwork, were the finest examples of the
carbuilders' art. In 1910 Seattle-Everett Traction took delivery of six of
these cars, numbered 50-55.
Forest Park seemed an appropriate name for
the new station located two and a half miles south of Martha Lake amid 6,000
acres of old-growth fir, cedar and hemlock owned by the Puget Mill Company.
But by 1917, only a few tall stumps stood as silent witnesses to the days when
the Forest Park Station had been the center of a dense forest. Soon the logged-off
land grew only alder trees and the company filed the plat of "Alderwood
Manor," creating a 720-acre development of 5-acre poultry farms.
Near
the Forest Park Station on the west side of the tracks, 10 acres were divided
into small urban lots, forming a "town center" to serve the surrounding agricultural
community. The station was renamed "Alderwood Manor" as well, and
by 1922, the population had grown from 22 to nearly 1,500. Additional stations
were built to serve the rapidly growing area. The Cedar Valley station was
south of Alderwood Manor and to the north, Intermanor and Manordale were between
there and the Martha Lake station.
A brick Tudor general store served
the growing community of Alderwood Manor as a post office. Mail now came
in on the trains from Seattle instead of being routed through Edmonds. The Washington
Co-op Poultry plant was built just south of the station and at night
freight trains delivered supplies and loaded eggs, fruit and other products
for markets in Seattle and beyond.
Although Highway 99 was paved all
the way to Everett in 1927, many people could not afford cars and still depended
on the trolley for transportation to Seattle or Everett. The Nile cars purchased
in 1910 were very luxurious and much more comfortable than the early
autos. But by 1939, the era of the interurban had given way to the age of the
automobile.
In 1960 Interstate 5 was constructed along the route of
the old Interurban right-of-way through Lynnwood. Although times, transportation
modes and life styles have changed, old timers and commuters alike sometimes
wish for a return to the days when people could travel from Lynnwood to
Seattle by trolley. |
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