Thousands protest planned freeway through Seattle's Arboretum on May 4, 1969.

  • By Alan J. Stein
  • Posted 6/03/1999
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 1229
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On May 4, 1969, several thousand citizens march in Seattle's Arboretum to oppose construction of the R. H. Thomson Expressway. The expressway, which is planned to connect downtown Seattle with the Evergreen Point floating bridge (SR 520), would cut directly through the botanical park.

Construction near the Arboretum later continued but citizen protest eventually won out, leaving half-finished on-ramps and exit-ramps along the freeway that locals referred to as "bridges to nowhere" for years to come.


Sources:

Walt Crowley, Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 269.


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