Our Growing Hamlin Park

Back in the late 19^th century the Hamlin family homesteaded and logged off a good bit of what is now southeastern Shoreline- the area we know as Fircrest, Shorecrest High School, Kellogg Middle School, South Woods Park, the Washington State Labs, and Hamlin Park- then farmed it for decades. Hamlin Creek was a salmon stream, part of the .  

In 1923 the US Navy bought it and built a hospital. There are two naval cannons on site, both veterans of the Spanish-American War’s Battle of Manila Bay, and believed to have been mounted in Hamlin Park back when the big Naval Hospital was built next door, or perhaps they were at the old hospital and were moved later. It’s all a bit fuzzy. After WWII they sold or gave the property to the state, which opened Firland as a tuberculosis hospital to replace the older Firland Sanitorium (now Crista). Fircrest, for severely developmentally disabled patients, was opened as part of Firland in 1952 and is there to this day.

The City of Shoreline has 330 acres of parks and open space altogether, and 80 acres of it is a big part of the old Hamlin farm, seemingly donated to the County by the Hamlins between 1939 and 1952: the aptly named Hamlin Park. This drawing seems to show it soon after 1947. Additions and improvements have been made over the years to produce the park you can see today.  The park has a wide variety of features, including trails through a well regrown second-growth forest, baseball fields, horseshoe pits, picnic areas, playgrounds, open space, and public art. Orienteering is popular. Maps and How-tos are available at the Shoreline website. Because of its relatively undisturbed environment (hard to believe after logging, farming, trampling and the rest) it is a good place for mushroom enthusiasts. Picnic shelters and other facilities can be rented, as can athletic fields.

In 2007 the city contracted with Seattle Urban Nature to assess the environmental situation in Hamlin Park and four other sites and produce vegetation management plans. They found Hamlin Park has a number of ecological problems accruing from its years of mostly unintentional misuse. There is a large area in its center which is essentially bare beneath the trees- no understory vegetation- and a lot of  around its edges, primarily English Ivy, Himalayan Blackberry, Scotch Broom, English Holly, and others. Hamlin Creek has two branches, but for most of their lengths they are pipe-bound.

I’d have to say Hamlin Park has a great future. The city will be building more trails and closing certain informal ones to retain public access while letting abused land heal. Invasive plants will be expunged and natives nurtured. If we’re smart Hamlin Creek will be daylighted, at the very least on city property. Currently the city is anticipating the release of a large part of the Fircrest property along 15^th Ave NE. My first impression was it would be an excellent addition to the park, but the city has a strong interest in repurposing it into a professional office campus, thus adding significant commercial capability to Shoreline as a northern extension of the existing Ridgecrest/Briarcrest business area.

Add fifty years and this could become a truly rich, mature forest and diverse recreational facility, well connected to the rest of the city and beloved of its neighbors. Let’s hope. Better yet, let’s make it so.