Cowen Park (Seattle)

Ravenna Park and Cowen Park comprise a single contiguous recreation and green space in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle, Washington in the United States. These public parks encompass the ravine with a maximum depth of 115 feet (35 m) through which Ravenna Creek flows.

The ravine that is the central feature of Cowen and Ravenna Park was formed when melt-off from the Vashon Glacial Ice Sheet formed Lake Russell and proceeded to cut drainage ravines through new glacial fill. Lake Russell disappeared when the ice sheet retreated north of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but some features remained, including the Green Lake drainage basin, which continued to empty through the Ravenna ravine into Lake Washington. The deeper pockets of the basin became Bitter Lake, Haller Lake and Green Lake. Many creeks and brooks and springs fed into Green Lake, whose outlet was on the east side of the route of Ravenna Boulevard, in a deepening ravine which became Cowen and Ravenna parks.

Ravenna Creek's original source was from Green, Haller, and Bitter lakes, then the Cowen Park ravine west wall when the watershed was diverted to sewers (1908–1948). The water table is relatively shallow, held by the extensive layer of clays that underlay the metro region. The creek source is actually seeping from the original west wall of the ravine, even though the gulch has been partially filled at the southwest corner of Cowen Park. The inscription on the gateway to Cowen Park states, "In memory of Charles Cowen, who in 1906 gave to the City of Seattle the twelve acres comprising this park."

For many decades of Seattle city history, the Ravenna Park ravine had been ignored by loggers and farmers and still possessed full old-growth timber rising nearly 400 feet (120 m). The trees remained through the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, at which they were featured exhibitions. Public controversy about them declined after their gradual disappearance in suspicious circumstances by 1926. Today, none of that size remain anywhere in the world.

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