Denny Regrade, Seattle, Washington - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Denny Regrade is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

, USA, that stretches north of the central business district to the grounds of Seattle Center

Seattle Center

Seattle Center is a park and arts and entertainment center in Seattle, Washington. The campus is the site used in 1962 by the Century 21 Exposition. It is located just north of Belltown in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood.-Attractions:...

. Its generally flat terrain was originally a steep hill, taken down as part of a mammoth construction project in the first decades of the 20th century. The neighborhood is named after that project, though in modern times the label is used almost interchangeably with Belltown

Belltown, Seattle, Washington

Belltown is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, in the 98121 Zip Code, located on the city's downtown waterfront, on land that was artificially flattened as part of a regrading project...

, which is officially a subset of the Denny Regrade.

Denny Regrade was adopted as a band name for a circa 1974 Seattle-based rock and roll band. They were also known as the Aurora Flyboys.

Regrading projects

The Denny Regrade project was the removal of Denny Hill, one of the proverbial seven hills of Seattle

Seven hills of Seattle

The seven hills of Seattle is an unofficial designation of several hills that historians claim the city of Seattle was built on and around. The name comes from the similar tradition in several other cities, most notably Rome and Constantinople....

. It ran east from First Avenue between Pike Street and Denny Way. Hill and street were named after the Denny family

Denny Party

The Denny Party is a group of white pioneers credited with founding Seattle, Washington because they settled at Alki Point on November 13, 1851.A wagon party headed by Arthur A. Denny left Cherry Grove, Illinois on April 10, 1851...

, who were among the city's earliest white inhabitants. The First Avenue regrade was started in 1897 and completed on January 6, 1899. From 1902 to 1911, the hill was sluiced into Elliott Bay

Elliott Bay

Elliott Bay is the body of water on which Seattle, Washington, is located. A line drawn from Alki Point in the south to West Point in the north serves to mark the generally accepted division between the bay and the open sound...

by pumping water from Lake Union

Lake Union

Lake Union is a freshwater lake entirely within the Seattle, Washington city limits.-Origins:A glacial lake, its basin was dug 12,000 years ago by the Vashon glacier, which also created Lake Washington and Seattle's Green, Bitter, and Haller Lakes.-Name:...

using hydraulic mining

Hydraulic mining

Hydraulic mining, or hydraulicking, is a form of mining that uses high-pressure jets of water to dislodge rock material or move sediment. In the placer mining of gold or tin, the resulting water-sediment slurry is directed through sluice boxes to remove the gold.-Precursor - ground...

techniques, in a series of regrades along Pike and Pine Streets, Second Avenue, and the massive Denny Regrade No. 1 which regraded everything remaining between Fifth Avenue and the waterfront. In 1929–30, Denny Regrade No. 2 removed the final pieces of the hill east of Fifth Avenue using steam shovel

Steam shovel

A steam shovel is a large steam-powered excavating machine designed for lifting and moving material such as rock and soil. It is the earliest type of power shovel or excavator. They played a major role in public works in the 19th and early 20th century, being key to the construction of railroads...

Denny Hill

Seattle is located on a narrow strip of land between Lake Washington

Lake Washington

Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It is bordered by the cities of Seattle on the west, Bellevue and Kirkland on the east, Renton on the south and...

on the east and Puget Sound

Puget Sound

Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...

on the west. The north-south orientation of the lake and of the city's many hills is the result of glaciation. The terrain was first gouged by south-moving glaciers, and when they retreated, marked by mounds of rock debris left in their wake. Denny and Queen Anne

Queen Anne, Seattle, Washington

Queen Anne Hill is a neighborhood and geographic feature in Seattle, Washington, northwest of downtown. The neighborhood sits on the highest named hill in the city, with a maximum elevation of . It covers an area of , and has a population of about 28,000...

Hills are two of those north of what is now downtown Seattle.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.