Ballard, Seattle

Early settlement

As with all of Seattle, the area now called Ballard was settled by the ancestors of today's Coast Salish people at the end of the last glacial period, specifically the Duwamish (dxʷdəwʔabš) tribe.^[4] There were plentiful salmon and clams in the region.^[5] When settlers from the United States arrived, the area around Shilshole and Salmon Bays was home to a settlement (called šilšul) that has since been excavated; its artifacts are in the collection of the Burke Museum in the University District.^[6] According to oral traditions from before European contact, the group living around Shilshole may have been in decline due to a "great catastrophe".^[7] The decline of the Shilshole village was thought to have been due to raids from the slave-holding Haida people from the Queen Charlotte Islands (Now called Haida Gwaii) in British Columbia, and these raids also alarmed non-Indigenous settlers.^[8] The remaining dozen or fewer families were evicted by American settlers in the mid-19th century. The last member of the Shilshole village, named Hwelchteed but better known as "Salmon Bay Charlie", was evicted and forcibly removed in 1914 to make room for the construction of the Hiram Chittenden Locks.^[7][9][10]

The first White resident in the area, homesteader Ira Wilcox Utter, moved to his claim in 1853.^[5] Utter hoped to see a rapid expansion of population, but when this did not happen, he sold the land to Thomas Burke, a judge.^[11] Thirty-six years later, Judge Burke, together with John Leary and railroader Daniel H. Gilman, formed the West Coast Improvement Company to develop Burke's land holdings in the area. They anticipated the building of BNSF's Great Northern Railway along the Salmon Bay coastline on the way to Interbay and central Seattle. The partners also built a spur from Fremont's main line of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway. Today three miles (5 km) of this line, running along Salmon Bay from N.W. 40th Street to the BNSF Railway mainline at N.W. 67th, are operated as the Ballard Terminal Railroad.^[12]

During the late 19th century, Captain William Rankin Ballard, owner of land adjoining Judge Burke's holdings, joined the partnership with Burke, Leary, and Gilman. In 1887, the partnership was dissolved and the assets divided, but no one wanted the land in Salmon Bay so the partners flipped a coin. Capt. Ballard lost the coin-toss and ended up with the "undesirable" 160-acre (0.65 km²) tract.^[13]

The railroad to Seattle stopped short at Salmon Bay because the railroad company was unwilling to build a trestle to cross the bay.^{[citation needed]} From the stop at "Ballard Junction," (as the terminus was called) passengers could walk across the wagon bridge and continue the journey to Seattle. In addition to gaining notoriety as the end of the railway line, the fledgling town of Ballard benefited economically from the railway because it provided a way to import supplies and to export locally manufactured products. This trade connection spurred the growth of mills of many types. After the Great Seattle Fire in 1889 the mills provided opportunities for those who had lost jobs in the fire, which in turn spurred the growth of the settlement as families moved north to work in the mills. Ballard's first mill, built in 1888 by Mr. J Sinclair was a lumber mill; the second, finished the same year was a shingle mill.^[14] The local western red cedar's wood was extremely well-suited to the creation of shingles, and Ballard quickly became the center of shingle production in the region, earning the nicknames "Shingletown" and the "Shingle Capital of America."^[15] Ballard High School's mascot was the Shingle Weavers until the 1950s, when it switched to the Beavers, referencing the timber industry more generally.^[16] Ballard experienced an influx of Scandinavian immigrants during this period, and Scandinavian culture and traditions would be influential on Ballard as it developed.^[17]

City of Ballard

With the rapid population growth, residents decided that laws were needed to keep order in the community, a process that would require a formal government. In the late summer of 1889, incorporation as a town was discussed but eventually rejected. However, several months later, on November 4, 1889, the residents again voted on the question and this time they voted to incorporate. The first mayor of Ballard was Charles F. Treat.^[18] A municipal census, conducted shortly after the passing vote showed that the new town of Ballard had more than 1500 residents, allowing it to be the first "third-class town" to be incorporated in the State of Washington, which had been admitted to the U.S. just a week after the vote.^[19]

By 1900, Ballard's population had grown to 4,568, making it the seventh-largest city in Washington, and was faced with many of the problems common to small towns. In 1904, the drinking and gambling had become so bad that the mayor ordered the City of Ballard officially closed for the day to prevent gambling.^[20] The city had troubles with loose livestock, and so the Cow Ordinance of 1903 made allowing cows to graze south of present-day 65th St. a punishable offense. Ballard also faced more serious problems: the lack of both a proper water supply and a sewer system. Due to its location on Salmon Bay, there was a lack of nearby freshwater springs, which meant that water came from groundwater wells. The absence of a proper sewage system contaminated the ground water, compounding the problem.

The town continued to grow and reached 17,000 residents by 1907 to become the second-largest city in King County.^[21] However, like many of the other small cities surrounding Seattle, it continued to be plagued by water problems.^{[22][23][20][24][25]} The growing population had overwhelmed the city's ability to provide services, particularly safe drinking water and sewers, and Ballard's city government had tried unsuccessfully to deal with the crises. That made the citizens begin to consider asking Seattle to annex the town.^[26][27] In 1905, the residents voted, deciding against annexation in hope of another solution, but the water issues remained.^[28] In July 1906, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that Seattle was not allowed to provide water service to surrounding communities.^[29] Ballard had been dependent on a water sharing agreement with Seattle, but the Supreme Court decision left it with inadequate water and forced a second vote on the annexation question. The inability of local resources to cope with the situation caused the majority of residents to vote in favor of annexation. On May 29, 1907 at 3:45 a.m, the City of Ballard officially became part of Seattle.^[30][31] On that day, Ballard citizens demonstrated mixed feelings about the handover by draping their city hall with black crepe and flying the flag at half-mast.^[30]

Modern history

During the early 20th century, the Ballard area was home to the Ballard Shipbuilding Company, which produced ships for the US Navy during World War II as well as ships for civilian purposes. The area was also home to a significant number of fisheries and canneries. These marine industries formed the backbone of the Ballard economy for much of the 20th century.^[32]

At the end of the 20th century Ballard began to experience a real-estate boom. By early 2007, nearly 20 major apartment/retail projects were under construction or had just been completed within a five-block radius of downtown Ballard. This growth in urban density is the result of the neighborhood plan created by former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice. Mayor Rice's plan aimed to reduce suburban sprawl by targeting certain Seattle areas, including Ballard, for high-density development.^[33]

Libraries

The Ballard Public Library was first created as the Carnegie Free Public Library in 1904. In 1907, after annexation, the library became part of the Seattle Public Library system. The original Carnegie building on Market Street was replaced with new construction on 24th Avenue NW in 1963. 42 years later, in 2005, a new library building on 22nd Avenue NW designed by architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, was opened as part of the Seattle Public Library's "Libraries for All" initiative.^[50] The original Carnegie building on Market Street is a restaurant.^[51]

Transportation

Ballard has several major streets that connect the neighborhood to other parts of Seattle as well as regional highways and freeways, such as Interstate 5. Northwest Market Street runs west from Ballard to State Route 99 (Aurora Avenue), becomes North 45th Street, and continues to an interchange with Interstate 5 and into the University District. Northwest Leary Way connects to Fremont and the Fremont Bridge over the Lake Washington Ship Canal.^[52] The neighborhood's busiest road is 15th Avenue Northwest, which carries a daily average of 35,000 vehicles north of Market Street and continues towards Crown Hill. It crosses the Ship Canal on the Ballard Bridge, a drawbridge that carried 45,000 daily vehicles in 2023, on its route through Interbay towards Downtown Seattle.^[53]

King County Metro provides local and express bus service on several routes within Ballard and to surrounding areas.^[54] The RapidRide D Line, a bus route with some bus rapid transit features, began service in September 2012 and runs on 15th Avenue Northwest.^[55] It replaced an earlier local bus route that had been a trolleybus route operated by the Seattle Transit System until 1963.^[56][57] Metro has two other routes with frequent service that serve Ballard: route 40, which runs on Northwest Leary Way to Fremont and continues to Downtown Seattle; and route 44, a trolleybus route that runs on Northwest Market Street and North 45th Street towards the University District and University of Washington station.^[58][59] Both routes were listed as future RapidRide corridors to be funded by the 2017 Move Seattle levy.^[60]

Proposals to build rapid transit between Ballard and Downtown Seattle date back to 1911, when civic planner Virgil Bogue proposed a citywide subway system.^[61] The Forward Thrust program proposed two ballot measures in 1968 and 1970 to fund a modern subway system that would have several stations in Ballard on a line towards Downtown Seattle.^[62] They both failed to reach the required 60 percent threshold to pass.^[63] The Seattle Monorail Project, which began with a voter-approved ballot measure in 1997, proposed a 14-mile (23 km) monorail line between Ballard and West Seattle that would be completed by 2009.^[64] After several subsequent ballot measures and changes to the design and financial projections, the project was shelved in 2005.^[65]

In 2016, voters approved a funding package for Sound Transit that included the Ballard Link Extension, a project to extend the regional Link light rail system to Ballard. The neighborhood's station was planned to be built near the intersection of 15th Avenue Northwest and Northwest Market Street, and the construction of the project included a possible second tunnel being constructed in Downtown Seattle.^[66][67] In June 2026, the Sound Transit Board voted to defer the portion of this extension from Seattle Center to Ballard in response to funding shortages.