Community Corner
Edmonds Logging History Unearthed by Road Project
Crews installing new water and sewer lines on 76th Avenue in the Perrinville area found old cedar and fir logs that decades ago might have been the surface of a skid road.
A bit of Edmonds logging history has been unearthed by a project to install sewer and water lines along a city street, 76th Avenue West, reports the Everett Herald.
About eight feet under the street, excavation crews found several 30-foot western red cedar and Douglas fir logs, flattened on the surface and possibly once used as a log skid road.
"It's crazy," said Jeff Elekes, public works director for the city of Lynnwood, which is cooperating with Edmonds in the project.
The logs were lying horizontally and might also have been used as a base structure for an older road above. Elekes said the logs probably provided a firm foundation for the road over boggy or wet spots, a common practice decades ago.
They were well-preserved and remarkably intact probably because they had been covered by rocks and dirt and protected from oxygen.
Caitlin Kelly, collections manager at the Edmonds Historical Museum, said several logging companies operated in the Perrinville and Meadowdale area and its possible that 76th Avenue was a skid road to slide logs down to Puget Sound at Brown's Bay.
For the Herald story, click here.
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