Sandy Wood lived right next to the abandoned railroad near the NE 93/94 St connection to the trail today. In fact that is the inspiration for the logo on our jersey. Sandy gave a very good speech about how their group formed, the effort it took, the precedence set by the Burke-Gilman Trail. They did all this before their was a Rails to Trails Conservancy. The full text of her speech follows.

Welcome everyone. It’s great to see so many folks gathered here today.

I’m Sandy Wood, one of the original members of the Burke-Gilman Trail Park Committee.

I’d like to tell you the story of how the Burke-Gilman Trail came to be.

In the Fall of 1970…. How many of you were alive then?…(raise hands). a small group of neighbors gathered for several weeks to watch a television program about local issues and discuss them. At the end of the series, we said “Let’s DO something.” To which I said: “Well, my husband & I just got a letter from the Burlington Northern announcing that they are going to abandon the rail line. Why don’t we see if it could become a trail.” The very next week we met to begin organizing our efforts.

By Christmas:

• we had researched the history of the railroad and named the future trail after Judge Burke and financier Daniel Gilman, the men responsible for the original creation of the railroad. It was known as the Seattle, Lakeshore & Eastern Railway and was established in 1885 to run North to join a northern transcontinental rail line when Seattle was bypassed, and Tacoma chosen,  as the terminus of the transcontinental railway.

• We had written to the Burlington Northern seeking donation of the railroad right-of-way to the City for purposes of creating a bike & pedestrian trail.

• And, very importantly, we had garnered the support of Mayor Wes Uhlman. One of our group, Estell Berteig, was at a community fair, saw the mayor about to walk by. Estell quickly pushed a stroller with her infant daughter out in front of the mayor and said “Hello”. The mayor said “Who is this?” to which Estell replied: “This is a little girl who’s going to need a bicycle trail.” So…. the door opened to our partnership with the City, and the Burlington Northern and the City entered conversation about acquiring the land, which was agreed to in 1973.

The path forward was not easy. There were competing interests for the use of the railroad right-of-way land. There was fear on the part of some residents along the line that a trail use would bring increased crime and lower real estate values.  Several of us spent endless hours canvassing door-to-door promoting a trail on the ROW. This was, of course in the days before internet, so we Xeroxed flyers and posted and mailed them everywhere we could think of. We secured the support of the Cascade Bicycle Club, the Sierra Club, the Mountaineers and numerous other organizations.

One of the significant steps along our way was a Hike-In which Merrill will told you about.

Another was an eventual decision by the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) …. the body that was charged with approving all interstate rail abandonments. After an Environmental Impact Statement demonstrated that the best use of the ROW was for creation of a trail, the ICC ruled that all future rail line abandonments must give a public agency or civic group first opportunity to acquire a right-of-way for use as public park land.

This ruling opened the door to rail-to-trail conversions across the nation and later the establishment of rail-banking policy, funding of a Rails to Trail Demonstration Grant program that enabled 9 rail-trails to be established and 10 years later the organization of the Rails to Trails Coalition.

Currently, there are over 32,000 miles of rail-trails across the nation, more than 1,250 in Washington alone!

While our Burke-Gilman Trail Park Committee and the City and the County worked initially to develop the first 12 miles of the trail from Gas Works Park to Lake Forest Park, other efforts soon led to expansion of the trail to the west, as well as to the North & East, connecting with the now very  extensive County-wide trail system. We all hope that the short “missing link” in Ballard can be completed soon.

Our little Burke-Gilman Trail Park Committee was just a bunch of young neighborhood families who had never organized anything much bigger than our toddler’s play dates. We learned so very much, both personally and as an organization over the six years we toiled to make the trail a reality.

We all did things and learned things we never dreamed of doing and grew in ways that shaped our lives moving forward. Whether it was communicating with government entities or meeting the media or presenting testimony at public hearings or writing letters or conversing with trail-side residents, we all pushed straight fearward and grew.

We learned much about local history.. We learned how governments work. We learned how to make friends of potential enemies. We learned how to grow and corral support. In short, we learned the enormous value of positive action and how it can result in impacts far greater than any of us could have dreamed.

Now, 50 years after the Burke-Gilman Trail opened… the first, and very successful, URBAN rail trail…. we all need to focus our efforts on ensuring that this local treasure gets the attention needed to maintain it for future generations.

THANK YOU.