The Duwamish Waterway and the Duwamish River Bridge is peaceful early on a Saturday morning as viewed thru the rails of part of the Alki Trail on the Spokane Street Bridge below the 150 foot high West Seattle Bridge at the south end of Harbor Island. On the weekdays the traffic on and over this gritty section of waterway is thick. Early on a Saturday morning it was quiet and calm.
The West Seattle Bridge is a cantilevered segmented bridge that was dedicated July 14, 1984 at the cost of $150 million. In 2009 it was renamed the Jeannette Williams Memorial Bridge after the city council person who actively worked to get the important transportation structure built.
The previous West Seattle Bridge was opened to traffic in 1924 and by the 1970s was one of the worst bottlenecks in the city due to the frequency the bridge opened to allow shipping to pass. In the early hours of June 11, 1978, the 550 foot freighter Antonio Chavez struck the 54 year old structure leaving it in the open position, unrepairable and unusable for automobile traffic for 6 years.
The city had planned on replacing the bridge with a span that wasn't impaired by shipping traffic as early as the 1960s, but a scandal that involved the bribery of state and city officials ended the project in the mid-1970s. Three bids to replace the bridge at the cost of $1.5 million came in, but the project was awarded to another firm with a bid three times higher and ties to the Speaker of the House in the state legislature. The conspirators went to prison.
Before the opening of the new bridge the property values in West Seattle were rather low. The opening of the bridge significantly increased property values and, as with many Seattle neighborhoods, the amount of development.
The Duwamish River Bridge is a Strauss heel trunion (single leaf bascule) railroad bridge that was opened in 1928 and is still in use today.
The Spokane Street Bridge was completed in 1991 with just a 45 foot high navigational clearance. Its design is unique in the world. A pair of 7500 ton, 480 foot long sections, each floating on an 8 foot steel barrel in hydraulic oil, pivots 45 degrees to open the shipping channel.
The industrialized terminus of the Duwamish River, where it meets Seattle's Elliott Bay, is commonly referred to as the Duwamish Waterway. The Duwamish River is actually named for the lower 12 miles of the Green River at the confluence of the Green River and the Black River. When the Lake Washington Ship Canal was opened in 1916 Lake Washington dropped 9 feet and the Black River dried up.
The Duwamish Waterway, the Duwamish River Bridge and Mount Rainier as viewed from the West Seattle Bridge several hours after the first photos were taken.
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