The Struggle for a Cedar Valley Road
Legal battles and changing land ownership complicate the quest to connect Seattle to the settlement of Kangley.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Auditor Twitchell has returned from Maple Valley, where he settled a dispute regarding the proposed road to Kangley. A previous attempt to run the road across bottom land belonging to William Johnson failed when the court declared the road law unconstitutional. Johnson has since sold the land to J. D. Lowman, with whom the Auditor has now negotiated a new right-of-way. Construction on the five-mile road is underway. Meanwhile, the county commissioners are considering another petition to connect Cedar Mountain to Maple Valley, which would bridge the gap to create a continuous road from Seattle to Kangley. The project remains complex, requiring multiple river crossings and the acquisition of more legal deeds.
“It would be an expensive work, as it would have to follow Cedar river and cross that stream several times.”
The infrastructure battles for the Cedar River watershed reflect the early, messy process of standardizing Seattle’s regional connectivity. Many of the 'trails' mentioned were the precursors to what are now major suburban arterial routes.
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