David Williams finds natural history stories wherever he looks and has incorporated these stories into his new book, "The Street-Smart Naturalist - Field Notes from Seattle."
Some of those stories verge on the fantastic. Others are wry and whimsical. Still others are subtle.
But he finds a few sad ones like the story of Ravenna Park's Douglas firs.
A popular attraction
Some of the largest, known Douglas firs of Seattle's past grew in Ravenna Park. They were nationally recognized as "vegetable skyscrapers," as a promotional brochure called them. "One known as the Robert E. Lee supposedly topped out at nearly 400 feet," Williams writes.
Another, named after Theodore Roosevelt measured 44 feet around and was called "the single most-famous thing in Seattle" by a chamber-of-commerce publication.
By the 1890s the Ravenna trees had become one of Seattle's biggest attractions. Williams writes that visitors to the trees included naturalist Enos Mill, Teddy Roosevelt and famed pianist Jan Paderewski.
"The Ravenna trees survived until at least the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition but disappeared under mysterious circumstances by 1925."
A big mystery
The trees' loss is one of the abiding mysteries of Seattle.
"Clearcutting of most of the city's other forests led to a push to preserve Ravenna as a city park, and in 1910, the city acquired the land through condemnation for $135,663."
But within a few years, the parks department had cut down the Roosevelt tree, supposedly because it was rotten. "By the early 1920s, all the big trees were gone."
Williams says that some people blamed the trees' demise on auto pollution. Some blamed a big storm in 1925. Others said chimney smoke from the growing neighborhood was the culprit.
"An article in the Seattle P-I (Dec. 17, 1972), which contains the most complete record of the mystery, leans toward then-superintendent of parks J. W. Thompson as the culprit." P-I reporter William Arnold de-scribed Thompson as a "hard-talking, hard-drinking engineer, who wouldn't care much what happened to the trees."
The mystery will probably never be solved because all records had long been destroyed by the time Arnold penned his piece. Did the trees end up as firewood? As lumber? No one knows.
At present, Seattle's largest Douglas fir grows in Seward Park. With a circumference of 23 feet, it probably started growing at least 500 years ago.
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