1970 - 1979

Timeline

1971
Charles Jordan Marine Park, a quiet respite near the bayfront at the 14th Street Marina (today the Central Docks), is dedicated during the Salty Sea Days celebration. Jordan, a beloved citizen activist, had served at that point as the Port of Everett’s attorney for 25 years (outlasting several commissioners, he served through 1972). Jordan — who was known for his dedication to the Port and his desire to see it prosper — attended nearly every Port meeting and was tasked with reviewing and representing the Port in innumerable legal reviews and actions large and small. The park was designed in 1970 by internationally known landscape architect Richard Haag, famous for his work on Gas Works Park in Seattle and on the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. The park, which some dubbed “Mt. Montezuma” or the “Missile Silo,” was deconstructed by 2010; it is now the site of a parking lot east of the Milltown Sailing Association building.

1971
Boatland USA (the Morris marina supplies and equipment shop) closes and the Port purchases its assets, including its building on Norton Avenue where the Morris brothers built their popular pleasure boats in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

1971-1973
The Port undertakes the design and construction of the Hewitt Terminal expansion, between piers 1 and 3. The terminal, already the site of the Alumina Dome, will also be used as a hub for the American Tug Boat Company, among other things. Project plans include the addition of a new Pier 3 that can handle heavier loads (and is later upgraded in 1992 and 1993).

1972
The Equator is placed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 14, the first Everett property to receive this designation.

1972
The Port agrees to lease an old paint shop on 13th Street to the Everett Firefighters Local 350 for use as a “look-in” museum where visitors could peer through large windows to see old-time fire engines, hoses, helmets and gear. The annual rent: $25. The museum, a popular tourist stop, stays in operation into the early 2000s.

1972
Pier 2, site of the old City Dock (and the infamous Everett Massacre), is demolished to make room for the new Pier 3 and Hewitt Terminal expansion project. Pier 2 had been in disrepair in its later years; in 1969, the manager of American Tug Boat Company told the Port that he’d have to make repairs to the pier “to keep it from falling into the bay.”

1972
The Port, acknowledging the “7,000 listed trailer boaters located in Snohomish County” and thus “recognizing a need for a public boat launch … that can be reached by all users” proposes to create one, in partnership with the city and county — the beginning stages of what is now known as the Jetty Landing and Boat Launch.

1972-1979
The Port undertakes a long-term project to transform the site at 21st Street and Norton Avenue — including property from the 1890s-era Robinson Mill (and later plywood) and nearby tidelands — into Norton Terminal (opened in 1980 with plans to use at as a container-cargo dock, as well as a possible site for steel fabrication). The project includes adding fill at the shoreline, acquiring and demolishing the plywood factory and other structures and constructing a new pier.

1974
The United States vs. Washington, better known as the Boldt Decision, affirms Native American treaty fishing rights. The move affects the local and regional commercial fishing industry for decades to come.

1974
Weyerhaeuser donates its Mill B cafeteria murals to the city of Everett. Painted by Kenneth Callahan in the 1940s, the murals celebrate the region’s logging and sawmill heritage.

1974
Archaeologist and Everett resident John Lyle Mattson conducts a preliminary archaeological dig of the former Native American village of Hibulb at Preston Point, once one of the largest villages of the Snohomish tribe. The site, located on the south bank of the Snohomish River below Legion Park, yields 930 artifacts, some of which are now housed at the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve in Tulalip, just north of Everett. Both the former Hibulb Village location and a portion of Legion Park above it are recognized state archaeological sites.

1976
The abstract steel sculpture Surf II is dedicated; it’s Everett’s first piece of public art. Originally located downtown on Colby Avenue, it’s moved to the Port’s boat launch area around 1983 where it stands today. The 40,000-pound piece stands 14 feet at its highest point and features nine finger-like pieces that jut toward the sky. The sculptor, Stanley Wanlass, said the design was inspired by his love for water and trees.

1977
The Norton Avenue Boat Launch (now called the Jetty Landing and Boat Launch) opens on the Port’s north bayfront area around 10th Street with six launch lanes. The property is co-owned with the City of Everett and Snohomish County. (The facility, improved in the years since, is today the largest public boat launch in Western Washington. It covers some 20 acres, contains 13 boat launch lanes, a fishing pier and paved parking for approximately 300 vehicles with boat trailers. It’s also home to the annual Everett Coho Salmon Derby, the West Coast’s largest salmon fishing derby.)

1979
Weyerhaeuser Mill B, located since 1915 on the Snohomish River in north Everett, closes its doors.

1979
The USDA Forest Service publishes a paper synthesizing information about the relationship between wildlife and their habitat. The work does away with the notion of old-growth forests as “biological deserts” — setting the stage for deeper thinking about whether good timber management means good wildlife management, thus foreshadowing conflicts over the northern spotted owl in the decades to come.

1979
In July, a dramatic fire at the old 800-foot-long Pier 3 destroys the wooden dock, along with a 120,000-square-foot Port of Everett warehouse, which was leased to the Scott Paper Company. The news spreads beyond Washington state; the Statesman Journal out of Salem, Oregon, reports at one point “the entire length of the pier was sending sheets of flame 100 feet in the air.” The pier had been built by the Great Northern Railway in 1908 and was deeded to the Port in 1959.

Accommodating the Rise of Pleasure Boating While Supporting the Commercial Fishing Industry

By the 1970s Boeing was Everett’s largest employer, and Port business was tightly tied to the aerospace company. The Seaport needed to keep up. Construction to create a new Pier 3 (next to the original 1908 Pier 3) and an expanded Hewitt Terminal left little room for Pier 2, once the site of the old City Dock; the structure was razed in 1972. Late in the decade the vintage Pier 3 exited the same way many older
structures at the Port have: by fire. The Port also spent most of the decade filling, cleaning up and transforming the site at 21st Street and Norton Avenue into the Norton Terminal for cargo operations.

Improvements continued at the Everett Yacht Basin — by 1972 there were slips for 822 pleasure boats and 180 commercial fishing boats. The Port also created a public boat launch with six lanes at 10th Street, dubbed at the time the Norton Avenue Boat Launch, to serve the area’s growing number of recreational boaters.

A downturn for the commercial fishing industry would cause the number of working vessels to fall dramatically over the next few decades. In 1974, United States vs. Washington, better known as the Boldt Decision, upheld the treaty fishing rights of the local Native American tribes, which greatly curtailed the amount of fish that non-natives could catch. Fish runs were dwindling as well, leading to a one-two punch to the local fishing community.

Tidewater Plywood, the last of the wood-products mills on the north bayfront, left by the early 1970s. By the end of the decade boat and marine industries filled the area, including Cruise-A-Home, which offered a fiberglass pleasure craft that was part houseboat and part cruiser. It would become a popular fixture in Northwest waters.