Renton, Washington

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Thursday, 17 May 2007 12:02

The Black River

The Black River is one of Renton's almost forgotten legacies.   Since before recorded history, it was lazy meandering river that carried the outflow from Lake Washington southwest to the Duwamish River and finally on to Puget Sound.  Its existence has all but disappeared from recent memory since the early 1900s when the Lake Washington Ship Canal was completed to create a navigable waterway between Puget Sound and Lake Washington.  Before that time, this river served as a waterway well known to both the native wild salmon fish runs, Duwamish Indians and early pioneer white settlers.  For thousands of years, the river was the gateway between fresh water spawning beds upstream from Lake Washington and the Pacific Ocean for the Chinook, Sockeye, Coho salmon as well as other species of migrating fish.  

The native Duwamish people, like many native Pacific Northwest tribes, derived their livelihood from the annual salmon runs as the latter returned to spawn.  For more than 1,400 years, the Duwamish people favored this river for fishing and generations of these native people maintained permanent fishing camps along its banks. 

Soon after the establishment of Seattle, during the early 1850s, the early white settlers paddled their way upstream along this river in search of fertile lands to settle, farm and cultivate.  As these early white settlers moved into the region, they quickly learned what the Duwamish people knew as a valuable resource.  It was near the banks of this river that the first white settlement in the area was to be the earliest beginnings of the city of Renton and a vital resource for its continued livelihood.

Conceived as early as 1854, the newly established and fast growing Puget Sound region soon saw the need for a navigable deep-water passage between Puget Sound and Lake Washington.  The booming coal and lumber industries had to ship goods overland by wagon or down the rather shallow Black River, to Seattle, or from Lake Washington in small flat-bottom boats to meet the rapidly growing demand for lumber and coal.

The project to link Lake Washington to Puget Sound, via Lake Union, did not begin until 1911 nor was it fully completed until the 1930s.  However, when the “Montlake Cut” and the Lake Washington Ship Canal was competed on October 21, 1916, the canal resulted in the lowering of the water level of Lake Washington by nine feet.  The Black River was ultimately doomed and within a span of a few days, it had dried up.

An essay recounting this engineering feat can be found at the History Link website. (Click here to read the story).

Today, only a very short section of original Black River remains.  Filled in and reclaimed most of the original riverbed quickly disappeared in the following years.  Its original course now exist on old maps of the area. 

What remains of the old river carries the outflow of Springbrook Creek and other small streams in the area.  Enacted by law, The Black River Riparian Forest is an 82-acre tract of natural wildlife habitat and remains as a mere vestige of the Black River.  Amidst the sprawling urban and industrial development at the southern end of Renton's West Hill, the Black River Riparian Forest has become a protected Blue Heron nesting sanctuary.  This sanctuary supports as many 150 nesting pairs of Blue Herons among the Black Cottonwood trees of the forest.

Click here to view images of the Black River