Seattle, Washington story
A Glacial Legacy
Long before the walking paths and sport courts of Green Lake Park existed, the landscape was shaped by a force of nature. About 50,000 years ago, the Vashon Glacial Ice Sheet carv…
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Long before the walking paths and sport courts of Green Lake Park existed, the landscape was shaped by a force of nature. About 50,000 years ago, the Vashon Glacial Ice Sheet carved out the basin that would become the lake we see today. When the city finally received the land from the State of Washington in 1905, the lake looked very different.
Over the next fifteen years, the city diked, dredged, and filled the area, causing the lake to shrink by nearly 100 acres. In a strange twist of urban origin, the very last fill deposited into the lake came from the excavation of Aurora Avenue. It's a place where prehistoric glacial power meets early twentieth-century engineering, creating one of the city's most beloved escapes.
Updated June 2026