Sal on I-405 Southbound: Lynnwood to Tukwila
By WithBy
Categories: Society & Culture, Places & Travel
The history, landmarks, and stories along I-405 southbound from Lynnwood to Tukwila, timed to the drive exit by exit. Spoken by Sal and Peggy.
20 episodes indexed on PodSearch.
Recent episodes
- Exit 2 — Horses, Then Sounders
Sal: Between exits one and two. Sal: Just south of the freeway, between here and State Route 167, sat Longacres, the home of Thoroughbred racing in western Washington. In 1933, after the state legalized betting on horses, founder Joseph Gottstein leased a 107-acre dairy farm at Renton Junction…
- Exit 3 — Dragons in Renton
Sal: Between exits two and three. Sal: State Route 167 runs south from here toward Kent and Auburn, following the Green River valley. Sal: In the office parks beside this interchange sits the headquarters of Wizards of the Coast. Peter Adkison founded the company in 1990, naming it after a guild…
- Exit 4 — Five and Dime
Sal: Between exits three and four. Sal: State Route 515 climbs Talbot Hill here, leading toward Benson Hill. Down below, downtown Renton grew around its rail junctions and coal mines. Sal: On South Third Street stands a two-story building from 1954 that was the first store in the Northwest to…
- Exit 5 — Reading Over Salmon
Sal: Between exits four and five. Sal: State Route 169 follows the Cedar River inland toward Maple Valley. Where the river flows through Renton sits one of the most unusual public libraries in the country. Sal: Built in 1966, the Renton Public Library spans 80 feet directly across the river on…
- Exit 6 — Bombers to Circuses
Sal: Between exits five and six. Sal: Between the freeway and Lake Washington sit the Boeing Renton Factory and the municipal airport. Sal: The plant covers over a million square feet on land that was semi-swampland until Lake Washington was lowered in 1916. During World War Two it built 1,119…
- Exit 7 — Pier Over Water
Sal: Between exits six and seven. Sal: Northeast Thirtieth Street meets the freeway here. Running up to this exit along the shore, Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park covers 57 acres of Lake Washington. Sal: For decades the shoreline shipped coal from Coal Creek, stored logs, and held surplus ships…
- Exit 9 — Punts on Water
Sal: Between exits seven and nine. Sal: Northeast Forty-Fourth Street is the exit for Kennydale and Hazelwood, where the highway hugs a narrow shelf between the hills and Lake Washington. Sal: Just north of the interchange, on 19 acres of waterfront, sits the Virginia Mason Athletic Center, the…
- Exit 10 — Coals to Newcastle
Sal: Between exits nine and ten. Sal: This exit links Lake Washington Boulevard and 112th Avenue, the way up into Newcastle. Sal: In 1863 surveyors discovered rich coal seams along Coal Creek, and six years later surveyors named the settlement Newcastle, borrowing the old English coal town's name…
- Exit 11 — Smokestacks to Wireless
Sal: Between exits ten and eleven. Sal: Factoria Boulevard leads into south Bellevue's commercial hub. When promoters platted the townsite in 1911, they named it Factoria and promised coal smoke belching from hundreds of smokestacks. Peggy: Belching smokestacks as a civic sales pitch. Sal: The…
- Exit 12 — Trestles and Tile
Sal: Between exits eleven and twelve. Sal: This junction links Interstate 405 with Interstate 90, the crossroads of the Eastside. Sal: Beside Mercer Slough stands the Frederick W. Winters House, built in 1929 by an azalea and flower bulb farmer. Listed in 1992, it is the only property in Bellevue…
- Exit 13 — A Strawberry Town
Sal: Between exits twelve and thirteen. Sal: By the 1920s Bellevue was known for its strawberries, a chief crop of many families, mostly Japanese. In mid-June 1925 the town held its first Strawberry Festival behind the Main Street school. A committee raised forty dollars to pay for it, and three…
- Exit 14 — Whalers on the Lake
Sal: Between exits thirteen and fourteen. Sal: Northeast Eighth Street leads into downtown Bellevue, a name taken from the French for "beautiful view." Bellevue Square opened here on August 20, 1946, with a Frederick and Nelson department store. Nordstrom, then a local shoe store, joined in 1958…
- Exit 17 — Burgers, Horses and Ships
Sal: Between exits fourteen and seventeen. Sal: State Route 520 meets the freeway here. From 1981 to 1986, Microsoft had its headquarters nearby, in the Northup Building on Northup Way in Bellevue. Sal: Next door stood the Burgermaster drive-in. Raymond Chen, who has worked on Windows for more…
- Exit 18 — Pittsburgh of the West
Sal: Between exits seventeen and eighteen. Sal: Kirkland is named for Peter Kirk, who owned a steel mill in Workington, England. In 1888 he and his partners formed the Moss Bay Iron and Steel Works, and Kirkland was to be their "Pittsburgh of the West," with British street names like Piccadilly…
- Exit 20 — Kirkland on the Label
Sal: Between exits eighteen and twenty. Sal: Up on Rose Hill, a branch of Forbes Creek runs past Costco's warehouse number eight. Costco's store brand carries this town's name. When it introduced Kirkland Signature in 1995, the name was a spin on the location of the company's headquarters. Seattle…
- Exit 22 — Formerly Mudd Lake
Sal: Between exits twenty and twenty-two. Sal: Totem Lake gave this neighborhood its name, though the lake itself covers only two acres. It sits at the head of a branch of Juanita Creek, inside a park of 17.2 acres, and it has gone by other names: Lake Wittenmyer, Lake Watstine, and Mudd Lake. Its…
- Exit 23 — Taming of the Slough
Sal: Between exits twenty-two and twenty-three. Sal: The freeway crosses the Sammamish River here, which for decades was the Sammamish Slough and the course of the Slough Race. Starting in 1928, outboard boats raced up and down the 13-mile link between Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish, crashing…
- Exit 24 — Where the Crows Went
Sal: Between exits twenty-three and twenty-four. Sal: State Route 522 meets the freeway near the delta of North Creek. The state bought 58 acres there in 1994 for a shared campus of the University of Washington Bothell and Cascadia College, and restored the creek's floodplain as it built. Classes…
- Exit 26 — The Twenty-Sided Company
Sal: Between exits twenty-four and twenty-six. Sal: North Creek runs through one of the last mature conifer forests in the Bothell area. The North Creek Forest covers 64 acres along a mile of the creek, with 7 streams and 9 wetlands, and it cools the water for the chum, coho, sockeye, chinook and…
- End of the road — A County of Corners
Sal: Between exit twenty-six and the end of the road. Sal: This stretch was the last piece of Interstate 405 to be built. The section between Woodinville and Lynnwood opened to traffic in November 1969. Planners first drew it along Swamp Creek from Kenmore, but after opposition from residents it…
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