Gas Works Park

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Gas Works Park

Gas Works Park in Seattle, Washington is a 19.1 acre (77,000 m²) public park on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant, located on the north shore of Lake Union at the south end of the Wallingford neighborhood. The plant, which operated from 1906 to 1956, was purchased by the City of Seattle for park purposes in 1962, and the park was opened to the public in 1975. It was originally named Myrtle Edwards Park after the city councilwoman who had spearheaded the drive to acquire the site and who died in a car crash in 1969. In 1972 the Edwards family requested that her name be taken off the park because the design called for the retention of much of the plant. In 1976, Elliott Bay Park was renamed Myrtle Edwards Park.

Gas Works Park incorporates numerous pieces of the old plant. Some stand as ruins, while others have been reconditioned, painted, and incorporated into a children's "play barn" structure. A Web site affiliated with The Seattle Times newspaper says, "Gas Works Park is easily the strangest park in Seattle, and may rank among the strangest in the world."

Gas Works Park also features an artificial kite-flying hill with an elaborately sculptured sundial built into its summit. The park was for many years the exclusive site of a summer series of "Peace Concerts." [1] These concerts are now shared out among several Seattle parks. The park also hosts one of Seattle's two major Fourth of July fireworks events. The park is the traditional end point of the Solstice Cyclists and the start point for Seattle's World Naked Bike Ride.

The park originally constituted one end of the Burke-Gilman bicycle and foot trail, laid out along the abandoned right-of-way of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad. However, the trail has now been extended several kilometers northwest, past the Fremont neighborhood towards Ballard.

Because it is built on a former industrial site, the park has had intermittent problems with soil contamination, despite repeated efforts at removing and capping wastes.

Despite its somewhat isolated location, the park has been the site of numerous political rallies. Among these was a seven-month continuous vigil under the name PeaceWorks Park, in opposition to the Gulf War. The vigil began at a peace concert in August 1990 and continued until after the end of the shooting war. Among the people who participated in the vigil at one point or another were former congressman and future governor Mike Lowry, then-city-councilperson Sue Donaldson, sixties icon Timothy Leary, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

Gas Works Park has been a setting for films, such as Singles and 10 Things I Hate About You. It has been featured twice on the travel-based television reality show The Amazing Race--once as the finish line for Season 3 and another time as the starting line for Season 10.

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