Ridgecrest History

Ridgecrest gets its start

Ridgecrest is the quintessential post-WWII neighborhood, and is the sixth of what we might call “The Big Six” original neighborhoods that were formed before Shoreline became a city. These all still retain their original neighborhood names, if not exactly their original territories. Ridgecrest is more or less the same size as it was when it originally recognized itself as a cohesive neighborhood, except for the big swath cut across its west side, called The Freeway. Before the construction of Interstate 5, Ridgecrest extended across what is now the freeway and beyond that concrete barrier to 1st Ave. NE.

The name Ridgecrest comes from a large plat planned by real estate developers Myrick R. and Georgie W. Wood, who submitted their plat on February 17, 1941. The first advertisement for Ridgecrest appeared on April 13, 1941, even though the plat itself was not officially filed for record until May 2, 1941. There were 272 lots with “streets, water and lights” offered for $250 to $394 each. The tract office was located at NE 155th St. and 6th Ave. NE. But in that year, it became clear that a war would effectively stop most building or development, and real estate sales and construction ground to a near halt, except for projects to house military, as in the case of the Navy hospital to the east of Ridgecrest, now called Fircrest. It would not be until 1946 that the Ridgecrest concept would really take off.

Pre-war history

There is a whole early history of Ridgecrest, though, prior to the big post-war boom, that is worth exploring. As was typical of northwest King County, the area had been logged off by timber interests, mostly in the 1880s. Early property holders, the first non-natives to purchase the land from the U.S. government, were primarily attracted by what they could get off the land. Marshall Blinn and William Carpenter, professional timbermen, owned virtually all of the Ridgecrest territory, acquiring the property for $1.25 an acre, logging it off, and then selling it to land speculators. Few permanent settlers ventured into the Ridgecrest area. The earliest currently-standing house was built in 1900, at 15526 10th Avenue NE.

The first platting in the area occurred in 1904, when the Green Lake Five Acre Tracts plat was filed by Allen P. and Sarah H. Mitten, who never lived in or anywhere near Ridgecrest. Real Estate developer George Meacham handled the sales for this plat, and it became known as “Meacham’s Green Lake Five Acre Tracts” -- $200 buys five acres, as advertised. “Some tracts are bottom land; some are part bottom and part upland. Just see them. You will buy.” The coming of the Interurban Electric Trolley line provided some incentive for potential buyers. Adjacent to the north edge of the Green Lake Five Acre Tracts followed Murphy’s Interurban Acres in 1909, a plat filed by school teacher Katharine Murphy, who is identified in the filing papers as a “spinster.” (This was the county’s way of identifying someone whose property was not beholden to a spouse. Unmarried men were also often identified in official papers, such as “John Doe, a single man.”) Sales for this tract were handled by West and Wheeler, and the name “Interurban Acres” was purposely chosen as a sales tool. Platting broke up the big chunks of land into manageable proportions more suited to the property buyers who were looking for their piece of rural America, but not too much.

Small streams and trails crisscrossed the area, and a second-growth of trees had already begun to spring up as these plats became available to the public for sale. Slowly, very slowly, small subsistence farms, orchards, chicken coops and the occasional poultry barn began to dot the land. The coming of automobiles changed the pace of growth, however, and several new plats in the Ridgecrest area hit the market in 1926 - Home Gardens Addition, Northend Country Estates, and Paramount Park Div. 2, and in 1927 Saulsbury Heights. Now that many people owned their own cars, they could live the American dream just about anywhere. More houses sprang up, and small businesses, especially grocery stores and gas stations, began to appear. The feeling was still quite rural though, and much of the area remained unplatted and unoccupied.

And let us add this as a bit of a footnote: It was at this time (1927) that a company called “Corinne Simpson and Wilson Small Farms” opened an office at 175th and 15th. Besides selling one-acre to five-acre tracts, their specialty was building log homes or selling log home kits to people for a do-it-yourself experience. Several log homes, probably from this company, were built in the Ridgecrest area, and at least a couple of them still stand, such as the one at 16247 11th Ave. NE, built in 1928!

15526 10th Ave NE, the earliest-built still standing house in Ridgecrest.

Several log homes were built in the Ridgecrest area, and at least a couple of them still stand, such as the one at 16247 11th Ave. NE, built in 1928.

World War II and the Paramount Park connection

When the Navy Hospital at NE 150th Street and 15th Avenue NE made its debut for World War II in 1942, the bucolic nature of the area was still relatively intact. Navy people and support workers needed places to live however, and a boomlet of building occurred in the area to accommodate them. Many people were coming to the Pacific Northwest to work in war-time industries, and either stayed or returned as the war ended in 1945. A real housing crisis occurred, and the relatively wide-open spaces of northwest King County were the perfect antidote to this condition. In May of 1946, J. L. Carroll, Albert Lapierre and builder Lew Hykes incorporated Ridgecrest Homes, and the real estate office of Carroll, Hillman and Hedlund began advertising more than 400 houses in Ridgecrest for GI’s only. A business district was created around NE 165th Street and 5th Avenue NE, and in November 1946 the “Civilian Production Administration” approved the building of a grocery store there.

Other developments followed, such as Balch’s Parkwood Addition and Conifer Terrace, and fit in almost seamlessly with the initial Ridgecrest project. Along with Hykes-Bilt Homes by Lew Hykes, Albert Balch and Lovell Homes were on offer from two of the more prolific builders in the area. Although the first homes were offered to veterans, developers were soon able to welcome non-veteran buyers as well. By April 4, 1948, over 700 homes had been built and sold, and more were coming.

This added a great strain to the four-year-old Shoreline School District, which had only two grade schools in what is now the city of Shoreline, along with one elementary in Lake Forest Park, and five in what would become North Seattle. The superintendent and board could not plan fast enough for what they saw would be furious growth of the student population. The new Ridgecrest Elementary was ready for children in September of 1948. Almost overnight, the Ridgecrest area had gone from being a rural area to being a lively suburb with backyards and streets filled with the laughter, and occasional tears, of hundreds of children and their young parents. In 1949, the Crest Theater was added to the business district, making Ridgecrest one of the luckiest new suburbs around.

From the beginning, with so many families moving in next door to each other at a rapid pace, there was a unique kinship among neighbors, and the feeling of being a cohesive neighborhood seemed to permeate the collective thinking. In 1955, the neighborhood formed the Ridgecrest Community Club and began having a unified voice when speaking to the King County Council (Board of Commissioners) and other government entities. They also wanted to do things as a community and create a community gathering place - a club house and a park for families to enjoy. They sponsored a boys’ baseball team and a float in the North City parade during Sourdough Days. In 1957, the club began using a site owned by a community member at NE 167th Street and 1st Avenue NE. However, the freeway was about to consume that property and everything else in its way. The club decided it needed to actually buy a site, and thanks to Hugh Runyon, a local barber and club member, they found another site at 1st Avenue NE between 161st and 163rd Streets for $11,000. They made a down payment in 1959, and with some creative fundraising, had it paid off the following year. Today, this land is known as Ridgecrest Park.

Meanwhile, directly south of Ridgecrest, another area - the Paramount Park neighborhood - was also booming. It had developed in much the same way as Ridgecrest, with early plats in the 1920s by Saulsberry and others setting the stage. It reached such a crescendo in the early 1950s that the school district was compelled to build another elementary school just ten blocks south of Ridgecrest Elementary! Paramount Park Elementary opened in 1954, named for the plat of the same appellation, and this how the families there ended up forming the new Paramount Park neighborhood, which was, and is, a very energetic community.

Ridgecrest has been an active, participatory neighborhood ever since the post-war boom, and people growing up there in the 1950s and’60s have many fond memories of the things parents did with their children, and all of the activities there were for them to share in. While few streams crisscross the land now, today’s well-established rows of comfortable mid-century houses and a welcoming business district keep Ridgecrest a favorite destination for homebuyers today.

The Crest Theater opened in 1949 and started the “Crest Theater Boys Club.”

The membership card had a picture of the theater on one side, and the membership information on the other, including signatures of an official supervisor and sponsor. Members were entitled to discounted, and occasionally free, movies, and other kid-friendly perks. Cards were marked with a different stamp each time they were used at the theater, so eventually the whole card could be covered in various “stamps of the day.”

Thank you to the Shoreline Historical Museum for transcribing this history of the Ridgecrest Neighborhood.

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