The spring-fed Madrona Park Creek now flows in the steep ravine below 37th Avenue and above Madrona Woods.  It travels under 38th Avenue in a new culvert, then falls down a steep cascade. It continues under a trail in a small culvert, then through its original channel in the Spring Street Ravine.  A large fish-passable culvert moves it under Lake Washington Boulevard and from there it wends its way through Madrona Park’s northernmost meadow and into Lake Washington at a newly-created wetland cove.

Before 1855

Native peoples inhabited the area around Puget Sound for many thousands of years.  There were important villages to the north and south, but Madrona was probably mainly a transit point between Lake Washington and the interior and Puget Sound.

Before white settlement, people from many parts of what is now Washington State probably walked, rode on horses or canoed to Leschi where they took a trail to a village at what is now Pioneer Square.  From the seashore,  they carried things like clams and from the lakeshore they caught salmon and trout.  People along Lake Washington were called the Hahchuahbsh or Lake People, taking their name from where they lived. They burned sections of the forest here every few years to encourage the berries they collected and to attract deer they hunted.