Ravenna Creek (Stream)

Ravenna Creek once carried Green Lake's overflow down to Union Bay on Lake Washington [1]. When both lakes were lowered, in 1911 and again in 1916, the creekbed vanished in two stretches, one between Green Lake and Cowen Park, the other between Ravenna Park and Union Bay [1]. What is left runs through the Ravenna and Roosevelt neighborhoods as a daylighted length of nearly 3,500 feet, all of it inside Ravenna and Cowen Parks [1]. Its source is a wetland in Cowen Park's northwest corner, and springs within Ravenna Park feed it further, along with a second branch starting near NE 65th Street and 23rd Avenue NE [1]. Until 2006 that water finished at a sewer grate where the trail met a soccer field [1]. A daylighting project that year cut the creek loose from the sewer and stretched its bed 650 feet toward the southeast corner of the park, where a pipeline takes it south along 25th Avenue NE and into University Slough, putting it back in touch with Lake Washington [1]. In 2008 a sewage spill of 8,000,000 gallons flooded it [1].