Week 9: Karey & Innisfree

Karey

This week, I spent time researching the history of my neighborhood. I plan to incorporate some of the information I gleaned into another map-poem.

I found this wonderful website https://wedgwoodinseattlehistory.com about the history of part of the neighborhood I live in (Seattle is divided into many neighborhoods and my house touches three: Wedgwood, View Ridge and Ravenna/Bryant). This website has information and maps about the history of everything in Wedgwood: the trees, the gas stations, the schools and the streams. Most of the information is from 1954 to present day (since my neighborhood didn’t become part of Seattle City Limits until 1954 and before that it was sparsely populated). 

In order to find more historical maps of my neighborhood, I decided to go to the Map Room at the Seattle Central Library (surprisingly, I had never been):​

The map room at Seattle Central Library

The Map Room was open, but, when I spoke to the person at the circulation desk, she told me that they’ve recently moved all of the maps of Seattle to the Seattle Collection Room which contains items related to Seattle’s history - including maps and atlases. Of course, the Seattle Collection Room was closed that day. So, I plan on going back later this week.

I also might visit the library at the University of Washington. They have a map room and I hope to borrow a map of my neighborhood (which includes the University of Washington) to trace and add to.

Innisfree informed me that Washington State University has an online digital collection of early Washington Maps. I found a few beautiful early maps of Seattle that included my neighborhood. Seattle was officially founded by colonists in 1852, but up until the early 1900’s no colonists lived in my neighborhood. The oldest map I found is this map from 1855. It shows everything north of Yesler Way (which includes my neighborhood) as “hills and woods thronged with Indians”:​

My neighborhood in 1856, credit University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.

I was particularly drawn to this map from 1894 because of it’s depiction of the wetlands near my current art studio:

My neighborhood in 1894, credit University of Washington Libraries Special Collections

Later, I was thrilled to discover that on the USGS Historical Topographical Map Explorer you can find specific locations (like my neighborhood), and then, using transparency sliders, overlay maps. I dragged the 1894 map with it’s depiction of the wetlands on top of a current map of my neighborhood:

Taken from USGS Historical Topographical Map Explorer

Then, I added a map from 1962 with a drawing of an airplane and an anchor where the naval base was during WWII (right on top of the wetlands). The cool thing is that naval base has recently been returned to wetlands through restoration - so, the image of the airplane overlaid on top of the wetlands in 1894 is both historically and currently true. ​

Taken from USGS Historical Topographical Map Explorer

I’m excited about these USGS Historical map overlays and will definitely be playing around with them more - perhaps tracing them and then adding to them myself.

---

Innisfree

This week, I worked some more on my map poems, including exploring various materials/methods for creating handmade maps, and started thinking about the history of the place I’m living in. I talked with Karey a bit about history of land use, this is something that is a key part of my research, how land use has changed over time, how our relationship to land has changed over time. 

My map poem attempts so far have been frustrating. I think this is partly just me getting a chance to practice with different materials and techniques. But there is also something about trying to produce features that look like a map, but aren’t based on a specific geography that is challenging. 

I tried practicing making a watercolor wash and adding contrasting points to this field of color. I actually love the way the color varies. I added the black points while the wash was still wet, so they spread out in interesting ways. But I was frustrated because I was attempting to distribute the points in a way that was “random” or at least looked like the way cities or other significant places would be distributed on a map, but I found that what I created had much more of an evenness to it than I was hoping for. ​

I also experimented with the watercolor resist, which is a sort of rubbery substance you can paint onto the paper. Then you paint over the resist. Once the paint is dry, you can use an eraser to remove the resist and uncover the white paper underneath. I find the way that it limits the spreading of the paint and provides an area of strong contrast beautiful. But it makes big mess of any brush you use and is difficult to control. 

In relation to local history, I started exploring and downloading images collected from local historical archives. In recent decades, our area, like lots of other places across the U.S. has been faced with unpleasant eutrophication of our waterways, leading to blue-green algae blooms. So one of the themes in my research is understanding how the history of land use relates to the development of this pollution. 

One of the things I have been exploring is how, as we have “developed” the landscape, we have changed the waterways and hydrology, literally changing how water flows across the land. One quick example of this can be seen in this map, which shows downtown Menomonie, and what is now the center of the UW-Stout campus. In this plat map from 1888, you can see a stream called Wilson basically flowing down what is marked as Spruce street. Today, the street is called 10th Ave and there is seemingly no trace of the stream that used to flow down to the river from there. Maybe in the future, I will look for the remains of that stream? Water must still collect in that area, but it is drained underground and must flow below the street to the river. 

The other thing I have been researching in the history of our area is the relationship with native people. Menomonie means wild rice, and local leaders decided to call the dammed-up river next to the town Lake Menomin in a deliberate effort to evoke a certain romanticism associated with wildness and nature in order to replace the logging industry with money for the local economy related to tourism. In this brochure from 1965, you can see the way that imagery related to Native Americans is used to promote tourism and suggest the wildness or exoticism of the country while the text reassures potential visitors that the area has all the modern amenities.