Matthews Beach is a
neighborhood
A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...
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; it and
Meadowbrook are the southern neighborhoods of the annexed township of
Lake City (1954). Matthews Beach lies about northeast of the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...
, about northeast of
Downtown
''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...
.
The general boundaries of Matthews Beach are:
* bounded on the north by NE 120th Street and Lakeside Place NE, the
Cedar Park neighborhood,
* on the east by
Lake Washington;
* on the south by NE 95th Street and Paisley Drive NE, the
Sand Point and
View Ridge neighborhoods; and
* on the west by 35th and 45th avenues, the
Meadowbrook neighborhood (se
map
Neighborhoods in Seattle are informal. The residents living west of Sand Point Way may consider themselves belonging to the adjacent neighborhoods of
Meadowbrook or
Wedgwood. The entirely residential neighborhood abuts
Lake Washington and includes
Matthews Beach, a seasonally popular city park with the largest
Fresh water
Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salt (chemistry), salts and other total dissolved solids. The term excludes seawater and brackish water, but it does include ...
swimming beach in the city.
History
Matthews Beach is named after John G. Matthews, who had his homestead on the site in the 1880s.
[Seattle Parks and Recreation] What is now Matthews Beach neighborhood has been inhabited since the end of the last
glacial period
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betw ...
(c. 8,000 BCE—10,000 years ago). The ''tu-hoo-beed'' (Thornton Creek) ''hah-chu-ahbsh'' (Lake People) of the
Duwamish (''Dkhw’Duw’Absh'', People of the Inside) tribe
Lushootseed (Skagit-Nisqually) Coast Salish
The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak on ...
village was about north.
Matthews Beach Park
The
Burke–Gilman Trail borders
Matthews Beach Park on the west and follows the course of the old
Northern Pacific Railway
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 ...
line, originally of
Judge Burke and
Daniel Gilman's
Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway (c. 1886). The low-lying areas of the park and adjacent neighborhood is a former wetland which surrounded the mouth of
Thornton Creek. As with nearby
Magnuson Park at Sand Point, most of the wetland disappeared when the
Army Corps of Engineers lowered the lake in 1916 by building the
Montlake Cut and the
Lake Washington Ship Canal. The area south of the main beach was the site of
Pan Am's offices and the dock for Pan Am’s
Boeing "Clipper Ships"—the world’s first commercial air transports over ocean.
Matthews Beach Park now boasts a hilly knoll with towering
Douglas fir
The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is the tallest tree in the Pinaceae family. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Or ...
s and other trees, picnic tables, a playground, and a swimming beach with lifeguards and a diving platform in summer months.
empties at the southern end of the park, which has been partially rehabilitated to include a wildlife pond, native plants, and bird nesting areas. The Thornton Creek watershed has hosted at least five indigenous species of Pacific salmon and trout, and has been the subject of
daylighting efforts at locations further upstream.
Gallery
See also
*
Thornton Creek
*
Meadowbrook neighborhood
*
Northgate district
References
Further reading
*
See heading, "Note about limitations of these data".
*
* Page links t
"Village Descriptions Duwamish-Seattle section" Recommended start i
Dailey referenced "Puget Sound Geography" by T. T. Waterman. Washington DC: National Anthropological Archives, mss.
.d. ef. 2 ''Duwamish et al. vs. United States of America, F-275''. Washington DC: US Court of Claims, 1927.
ef. 5 "Indian Lake Washington" by David Buerge in the ''Seattle Weekly'', 1–7 August 1984
ef. 8 "Seattle Before Seattle" by David Buerge in the ''Seattle Weekly'', 17–23 December 1980.
ef. 9 ''The Puyallup-Nisqually'' by Marian W. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940.
ef. 10
* Note caveat in footer.
*
History excerpted from Morgan, Brandt. ''Enjoying Seattle's parks''. Seattle: Greenwood Publications, 1979.
*
Sources for this atlas and the neighborhood names used in it include a 1980 neighborhood map produced by the Department of Community Development (relocated to th
Department of Neighborhoodsand other agencies),
Seattle Public Library indexes, a 1984-1986 Neighborhood Profiles feature series in the ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', numerous parks, land use and transportation planning studies, and records in the .
aps "NN-1120S", "NN-1130S", "NN-1140S".Jpg [sicdated 13 June 2002; "NN-1030S", "NN-1040S".jpg dated 17 June 2002.">ic.html" ;"title="aps "NN-1120S", "NN-1130S", "NN-1140S".Jpg [sic">aps "NN-1120S", "NN-1130S", "NN-1140S".Jpg
*
See also Lake City, Seattle, Washington#Bibliography">Bibliography
Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliograph ...
at Lake City, Seattle, Washington">Lake City for complete list Wilma referenced.
Viewing locations only; the book has walks, hikes, wildlife, and natural wonders.
See "Northeast Seattle" section, bullet points "Meadowbrook", "Paramount Park Open Space", "North Seattle Community College Wetlands", and "Sunny Walter -- Twin Ponds".
Seattle Parks and Recreation.