Alaskan Way
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Alaskan Way, originally Railroad Avenue, is a major north-south street in
Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
, Washington, that runs along the
Elliott Bay Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is in the U.S. state of Washington, extending southeastward between West Point in the north and Alki Point in the south. Seattle was founded on this body of water in the 1850s ...
waterfront from just north of S. Holgate Street in the
Industrial District Industrial district (ID) is a place where workers and firms, specialised in a main industry and auxiliary industries, live and work. The concept was initially used by Alfred Marshall to describe some aspects of the industrial organisation of nat ...
—south of which it becomes East Marginal Way S.— to Broad Street in Belltown, north of which is
Myrtle Edwards Park Myrtle Edwards Park in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington is a public park along the Elliott Bay waterfront north of Belltown, Seattle, in the state of Washington (state), Washington, United States. It features a long bicycle and walki ...
and the
Olympic Sculpture Park The Olympic Sculpture Park, created and operated by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), is a public park with modern and contemporary sculpture in downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The park, which opened January 20, 2007, consists of a ...
. The right-of-way continues northwest through the park, just west of the
BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three Transcontinental railroad, transcontine ...
mainline, and the roadway picks up again for a few blocks at Smith Cove.Paul Dorpat
Seattle Central Waterfront Tour, Part 6: From Railroad Avenue to Alaskan Way
, HistoryLink, May 24, 2000. Accessed online 20 October 2008.
It follows a route known in the late 19th century as the "Ram's Horn" because of its shape.. The street gave its name to the
Alaskan Way Viaduct The Alaskan Way Viaduct ("the viaduct" for short) was an elevated freeway in Seattle, Washington, United States, that carried a section of Washington State Route 99, State Route 99 (SR 99). The double-decked freeway ran north–south along the ...
, which until 2019 carried
Washington State Route 99 State Route 99 (SR 99), also known as the Pacific Highway, is a state highway in the Seattle metropolitan area, part of the U.S. state of Washington. It runs from Fife to Everett, passing through the cities of Federal Way, SeaTa ...
through
downtown Seattle Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared with other city centers on the U.S. West Coast due to its geographical situation, being hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by ...
. The northern section of Alaskan Way is also signed as its honorary name, Dzidzilalich.


History

The idea of building a rail corridor along Seattle's Central Waterfront goes back at least to Thomas Burke and Daniel Hunt Gilman and the construction of the
Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway (SLS&E) was a railroad founded in Seattle, Washington, on April 28, 1885, with three tiers of purposes: Build and run the initial line to the town of Ballard, Seattle, Ballard, bring immediate results ...
in the years before the
Great Seattle Fire The Great Seattle Fire was a fire that destroyed the entire central business district of Seattle, Washington, on June 6, 1889. The conflagration lasted for less than a day, burning through the afternoon and into the night, during the same summer ...
of 1889. Railroad Avenue was built as a planked roadway on pilings over the waters of Elliott Bay. South of Downtown, the rail line constituted the one major man-made feature in an area of tideflats.. The portion of Railroad Avenue from Yesler Way in what is now the Pioneer Square neighborhood to University Street near today's Harbor Steps burned in the Great Fire, as did most of the city and most of its piers. All were soon rebuilt on a grander scale. In the case of Railroad Avenue, this was largely the work of the
Northern Pacific Railroad The Northern Pacific Railway was an important American transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the Western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest between 1864 and 1970. It was approved and chartered b ...
and Great Northern Railway. The tideflats were steadily filled in, placing the rails south of Downtown—and the route of the southern portion of today's Alaskan Way—on dry land. Around 1900, Railroad Avenue was a chaos of horses and buggies, pedestrians, and rail cars, with multiple railroad tracks and sidings. The congestion of the rail corridor was somewhat relieved when the Great Northern built a rail tunnel (1903–1906) under Downtown. From that time, only traffic that actually needed to access the waterfront had to use Railroad Avenue; other trains could bypass the busy corridor. Still, there continued to be problems with the structural integrity of the planked roadway. Pilings had been driven into soft tideland substrates, waves caused continual damage, and railroad freight cars continually stressed the structure. Between 1911 and 1916, a concrete
seawall A seawall (or sea wall) is a form of coastal defense constructed where the sea, and associated coastal processes, impact directly upon the landforms of the coast. The purpose of a seawall is to protect areas of human habitation, conservation, ...
strengthened the portion of the waterfront between S. Washington Street and Madison Street. Federal funds supplemented a local levy to allow the city to extend the seawall northward to Bay Street, which was completed in 1936. On July 6, 1936, the city council renamed Railroad Avenue to Alaskan Way, with "Pacific Way" and "Cosmos Quay" also under consideration. A citizen's committee convened by mayor John F. Dore had chosen "The Pierway" out of 9,000 public suggestions, but it was also not considered by the council. Railroad Avenue was replaced by Alaskan Way, along the same route but built on
landfill A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was ...
rather than on pilings. The moniker was adopted in 1936 by the city council after a lengthy debate over the name of the city's new waterfront promenade, with the winning suggesting coming from the Alaska-Yukon Pioneers Association to honor the Klondike gold rush. Other front-runners included Pacific Way, Seawall Avenue, Maritime Drive, and Cosmos Quay. In the early 1950s, the Alaskan Way Viaduct was built, paralleling Alaskan Way for much of its distance.


Redevelopment

In early 2019, a replacement tunnel for the Alaskan Way Viaduct was completed, leading to the closure and demolition of the old viaduct. Starting in February 2019 (when the tunnel opened) and to be completed over six months, the old viaduct was demolished to make way for new development along Seattle's downtown waterfront, including the reconstruction of Alaskan Way itself, which will be completed in 2024. In October 2018, Alaskan Way was temporarily shifted west to facilitate the demolition of the viaduct. The rebuilt Alaskan Way surface street will consist of up to 8 lanes of traffic along its lower section, including two lanes in each direction for general traffic, one lane in each direction for transit, and two turn lanes for ferry access. This new configuration has faced criticism from local businesses and residents; however, the configuration was deemed necessary by city and state transportation officials. In April 2023, the central section of Alaskan Way was given an honorary name, Dzidzilalich, which was derived from the
Lushootseed Lushootseed ( ), historically known as Puget Salish, Puget Sound Salish, or Skagit-Nisqually, is a Central Coast Salish language of the Salishan language family. Lushootseed is the general name for the dialect continuum composed of two main di ...
name (meaning "little crossing-over place"), one of the
Duwamish Duwamish may refer to: People * Duwamish people, a Lushootseed-speaking Indigenous people in Washington state * Duwamish Tribe, an unrecognized tribe of Duwamish descendants Places * Duwamish Head, a promontory jutting into Elliott Bay * Duw ...
villages on Elliott Bay. The designation was approved by the city council in February 2023 and applies to the section between Dearborn Street and Pike Street. It also includes Elliott Way, a four-lane street connecting Alaskan Way near Pike Place Market to Belltown that opened in May. The bicycle lanes on the new promenade are planned to end near Pier 62, with a gap to the Elliott Bay Trail at Pier 70 (Broad Street). A new bicycle lane on the west side was proposed to begin construction in 2023, but its design was opposed by the
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due to potential conflicts with cruise ship passengers using the Bell Harbor Pier. A revised design from SDOT to move a portion of the lane near Pier 62 to the east side of Alaskan Way drew criticism from local bicycling activists. An updated plan for the bicycle lane, announced in July 2023, would close the lane on days with cruise ship arrivals and departures but leave it otherwise open. During days with closures, cyclists would be redirected to a shared-use path on the east side of Alaskan Way for several blocks. The new pedestrian and cycle track on the east side of Alaskan Way is planned to be constructed in the former Waterfront Streetcar tracks and funded by a $45 million grant pledged by
Melinda French Gates Melinda French Gates (born Melinda Ann French; August 15, 1964) is an American philanthropist. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, she was educated at Ursuline Academy of Dallas, Duke University, and Duke's Fuqua School of Business. Shortly afte ...
,
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, the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, and the
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. Construction began in December 2024 and is expected to be completed in mid-2025; the protected bicycle lane will require a
road diet A road is a thoroughfare used primarily for movement of traffic. Roads differ from streets, whose primary use is local access. They also differ from stroads, which combine the features of streets and roads. Most modern roads are paved. The ...
that reduces the on-street lanes to one per direction.


Notes


References

* * {{Streets in Seattle Streets in Seattle