O.O. Denny Park

O.O. Denny Park is a 47-acre (19 ha) city park in Kirkland, Washington. It has approximately 0.25 miles (400 m) of Lake Washington shoreline, and some park amenities such as BBQ grills and a covered structure at the shore, with mostly unimproved forest above the lake, surrounding Denny Creek.[1]

Sylvia, the large Douglas fir in O.O. Denny Park

History

Before the park was turned over to Kirkland in 2013, shortly after annexation of the surrounding Finn Hill area in 2011, it was part of Finn Hill Park and Recreation District.[2][3] Before that, it was a Seattle city park that opened to the public in 1922, and before that, it was "Klahanie",[lower-alpha 1] the country property of Orion Denny, son of Mary Ann and Arthur A. Denny, two of Seattle's original founders (see Denny Party).[5][6]

Natural history

The park features an unusual quantity of trees over 150 feet tall, including grand firs, black cottonwoods, western hemlock, and cedars. Many Douglas firs stand over 200 feet tall, and are among the tallest trees in the Seattle area.[7] One of the Douglas firs is "Sylvia", a 600-year-old specimen over 26 feet (7.9 m) in circumference,[8] once the largest fir tree in King County; it was 255 feet (78 m) tall until the 1993 Inauguration Day windstorm topped it.[2][3][9]

The park is one of four designated, protected bald eagle nesting areas in Kirkland, all on the Lake Washington shoreline.[10]

Footnotes
  1. The word "Klahanie" is a Chinook Jargon term for "outside" or "the outdoors",[4] also used by the neighborhood of Klahanie, Washington a few miles away.
gollark: I choose 🥉.
gollark: <:Thonkdown:433149076721238016>++
gollark: +🌵+
gollark: Look, last time AutoBotRobot became sentient I managed to fix it, it's fine.
gollark: 🌵 ++

References
  1. Weber & Stevens 2010, p. 50.
  2. McDonald 2011.
  3. Kunkler 2016.
  4. Bright 2007, p. 228.
  5. Stein 2002.
  6. Stekel 2015, p. 55.
  7. Weber & Stevens 2010, pp. 51-52.
  8. Sylvia's plaque 47°42′38.0″N 122°14′45.7″W
  9. Weber & Stevens 2010, p. 52.
  10. Kirkland IT 2018.

Sources
  • "Finn Hill Park and Recreation District hands over park operation to Kirkland city", Kirkland Reporter, April 3, 2013
  • Alan J. Stein (December 5, 2002), O.O. Denny Park, HistoryLink
  • Stekel, Peter (2015). Best Hikes Near Seattle. Falcon Guides Best Hikes Near Series. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4930-1435-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Cathy McDonald (June 8, 2011), "Meet Sylvia the topless fir in Kirkland's O.O. Denny Park", The Seattle Times
  • Aaron Kunkler (August 25, 2016), "County steps up to make two north Kirkland parks more accessable", Kirkland Reporter
  • Weber, Andrew; Stevens, Bryce (2010), "O.O. Denny County Park Loop", Easy Hikes Close to Home: Seattle, Menasha Ridge Press, pp. 50–53
  • Bright, William (2007), Native American Placenames of the United States, University of Oklahoma Press, p. 228, ISBN 978-0-8061-3598-4, OCLC 53019644, retrieved January 16, 2017 – via Google Books
  • City of Kirkland Department of Information Technology/Geographic Information System with annotation by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (January 30, 2018), "Sensitive areas map" (PDF), City of Kirkland official website, retrieved 2019-01-29

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