Longfellow Creek is a stream in the Delridge district of West Seattle, in Seattle, Washington. It runs about 3.38 miles (5.4 km) from Roxhill Park north to the Duwamish West Waterway at Elliott Bay. The Duwamish called the creek "Smelt" (Lushootseed: t7áWee), denoting smelt fish (Hypomesus pretiosus). The creek was a traditional fishery dating back to the 14th century.
Longfellow Creek is one of the four largest in urban Seattle, 2,685 acres (1,087 ha). It flows north from the Roxhill Park neighborhood for several miles along the valley of the Delridge neighborhoods of West Seattle, turning east to reach the Duwamish Waterway via a 3,300 ft (1006 m) pipe beneath the Nucor plant (formerly Bethlehem Steel).
Salmon, absent for 60 years, began returning without intervention as soon as toxic input was ended and barriers were removed. Construction of a fish ladder at the north end of the West Seattle Golf Course will allow spawning salmon up along the fairways. Farther upstream the city has been enlarging and building more storm-detention ponds, recreation areas, and an outdoor-education center at Camp Long .
The creek emerges at the 10,000-year-old Roxhill Bog, south of the Westwood Village shopping center. Three acres of open upland, wetland and wooded space just east of Chief Sealth High School in Westwood is the first daylight of Longfellow Creek.
It has seen some plant and tree restoration since 1997. After more than a decade of preparation by hundreds of neighborhood volunteers, a restoration and 4.2-mile (6.7-km) trail was completed in 2004. Invasive vegetation are decreasing as native species retake hold. Blue heron and coyote can be seen.
Famous quotes containing the words longfellow and/or creek:
“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)