History of Sand Point Peninsula

The Sand Point Peninsula in Northeast Seattle is located on the shores of Lake Washington has undergone significant land use transformations from what was a wooded and marshland area inhabited at nearby Wolf Bay by hloo-weelth-AHBSH or Xachu, People of the Large Lake, a related band of the Duwamish Tribe.  Mud Lake was a 30-acre feature of this site which was initially surveyed in 1855.  By 1894, the Eastern Railroad divided the Peninsula from the uplands neighborhood to the west which was developed into a prominent residential community with a country club established in 1927.  During that same time period, local leaders advocated for the establishment of a Navy Base at Sand Point which was eventually built on land provided by King County.  By the late 1930’s, Naval Air Station Sand Point was fully functioning as an aviation training facility which became more prominent during World War II with population of close to 8,000 military and civilian workers.  After the Korean War, the Navy only used the base for Navy reserve training and by 1995 the base was closed and began another significant change in its historic usage. The City of Seattle and University of Washington applied to the federal government and was granted the property to adapt the military structures for a variety of public purposes such as housing, recreational, medical and educational uses.  More importantly, the City of Seattle took the initiative and paid for the restoration of land previously occupied by Mud Lake, into a series of highly functioning wetlands, proving that ecological impacts of infrastructure can be reversed by creating habitat conditions suitable for the recolonization of plant and animal life.