Washington Park Arboretum

Washington Park is a public park in Seattle, Washington, United States, most of which is taken up by the Washington Park Arboretum, a joint project of the University of Washington, the Seattle Parks and Recreation, and the nonprofit Arboretum Foundation. Washington Park also includes a playfield and the Seattle Japanese Garden in its southwest corner.

To the north is Union Bay; to the west are Montlake and Madison Valley; to the south is the Washington Park neighborhood; and to the east is the Broadmoor Golf Club.

Lake Washington Boulevard E. runs north and south through the park, parallel to the creek. A secondary road, for most of its length named Arboretum Drive E. and for a short northern stretch named E. Foster Island Road, runs along the Arboretum's eastern edge. E. Interlaken Boulevard and Boyer Avenue E. run northwest out of the park to Montlake and beyond. State Route 520 cuts through Foster Island and the Union Bay wetlands at the park's northern end, interchanging with Lake Washington Boulevard just outside the arboretum entrance. A footpath winds underneath the freeway overpasses and over boardwalks, along the Lake Washington ship canal, and into the gardens of the Arboretum.[1]

The Arboretum is well known for Azalea Way in the springtime, a stretch of the park which offers a unique tapestry of azaleas of many colors. The area is a popular site for strolling and is utilized by photographers and artists. The manicured Azalea Way stands out in stark contrast with the Arboretum's wild and heavily canopied areas.

The land occupied by the Washington Park Arboretum has been developed and is owned by the city, but the Arboretum is operated primarily by the University of Washington.

Arboretum Creek is approximately 4,000 feet (1,200 m) long, entirely within the park. Its average channel width is 4 feet (1.2 m) and its average channel depth is 2 feet (0.61 m). The creek's source is a spring-fed stream in the Alder Creek Natural Area, three publicly owned properties on 26th Ave East between East Helen and Prospect streets. The stream feeds the koi pond in Washington Park's Japanese Garden, near the playfield at the park's southern end. It also receives runoff from Rhododendron Glen and the Woodland Garden, as well as sub-surface drainage from the neighboring course of the Broadmoor Golf Club. It empties into Lake Washington via Willow Bay, itself a minor arm of Union Bay, having passed through numerous culverts under Lake Washington Boulevard.

State Route 520 has a set of ghost ramps in the marshlands the arboretum. They are often referred to as "ramps to nowhere". However, one ramp is currently used for the on ramp to SR 520 Eastbound. The others are unused. They were originally part of a plan to build the R. H. Thomson Expressway which would have cut through the arboretum and down through Seattle towards the I-90/I-5 interchange. Citizens rallied a freeway revolt against the plan on May 4, 1969. Construction near the Arboretum later continued but citizen protest eventually won out and the plan was dropped in 1971.

The freeway revolt that stopped the R. H. Thomson Expressway had its origins in opposition to SR 520 itself. Architect Victor Steinbrueck, writing in 1962, objected to the "naked brutality of unimaginative structures such as this proposed crossing of Portage Bay, which eliminates fifty houseboats while casting its shadow and noise across this tranquil boat haven."[3]

In 2013 the Washington State Department of Transportation announced plans to dismantle the ghost ramps.[4] To commemorate the ramps and protest their demolition, a local art collective created an installation, Gate to Nowhere, on one of the ramps in 2014.[5][6] The piece consists of a layer of reflective acrylic wrapping a pair of support columns.[7]

In the spring of 2016, some of the SR 520 ghost ramps have begun to be dismantled to make way for the construction of a new causeway linking the new floating bridge to the mainland.

The Seattle Japanese Garden is a 3.5 acre (14,000 m2) Japanese garden in the Madison Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The Garden is located in the Southern end of the Washington Park Arboretum on Lake Washington Boulevard East. The Garden is one of the oldest Japanese Gardens in North America, and is regarded as one of the most authentic Japanese Gardens in the United States.[11]


The Washington Park Arboretum, a large urban park
just north of Madrona, is particularly full of contradictions.
The Arboretum is a tame and cultivated park designed to
appeal to the suburban sensitivities of Seattle’s upper middle
class. Wide paths arc between rare trees and run alongside
meandering waterways, perfect for kayaking.

Off the beaten path, however, the Arboretum is a muddy
labyrinth of little-used pathways. The park is a maze of secretive
walkways and islands, a freeway underpass frequented by
graffiti artists, hidden nooks and crannies where teenagers go
to experiment with alcohol, and gay men and the occasional
lesbian cruise for anonymous sex. The Arboretum is also
dotted with “phantom overpasses” — structures that were
supposed to connect to I-520, but were never completed or
demolished. Although blocked off in a perfunctory manner,
they are still a popular destination for urban explorers.
The God-Machine’s strategy in this neighborhood has been
to pacify the area with plenty, giving the humans exactly what
they want in the hopes that they will remain blissfully ignorant
of the machines grinding on beneath their feet. So far, the
strategy has worked remarkably well, and the underground
world of Madrona and Madison Valley is riddled with caverns
full of mysterious Infrastructure. Some of these structures are
only tangentially related to the humans who live out their
lives above them — in that the occasional mortal life must be
sacrificed to keep the great gears turning, or the odd overly-
curious mortal must be eliminated or redirected — but only a
few, like the Arboretum and its addictive lilies, directly impact
the lives of humans.

THE GHOST HIGHWAY
The Ghost Highway is a bit of subverted Infra-
structure in the Arboretum. Anyone who knows the
proper mental keys can, if walking (not driving)
along the abandoned overpasses, relocate
themselves to any stretch of highway anywhere in
the continental United States, provided they have
a piece of asphalt struck from the stretch of road
they want to appear on. Some Demons claim that
the Ghost Highway works the other way, too; with
a piece of one of the Arboretum’s abandoned
overpasses and the proper mental key, you can
teleport from any stretch of highway anywhere in
America straight to the heart of the Arboretum.

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