For a reason that may have something to do with the vehicles collected at the north end of the Stone Way Bridge, a photographer, probably from the Seattle Public Works Department, recorded this scene about 1914.
The ramp leading from the Stone Way Bridge to the avenue of the same name came down with the bridge in 1917. Both were temporary constructions designed to divert traffic from Fremont during construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. PAUL DORPAT

THIS CURIOUS photograph begs the question: Why are the electric trolley, delivery van and automobile bunched together at the north end of the Stone Way Bridge? Note the man in a dark suit to the right of the passenger car. Why is he standing in the street? And why is the photographer standing in the traffic lane on the bridge?

The man and the photographer's positions suggest something may have gone wrong here. Without the man standing in the street we might interpret this as a mini-traffic jam in which the northbound trolley car — No. 526 turning west on Blewett Street (35th Street) — has held up the drivers behind it. But the man standing in the street suggests all the vehicles may have been involved in some kind of accident.

Developer Corliss P. Stone outlined his Edgewater and Edgemont additions to the east and west of his wide, namesake avenue a quarter century before all these wheels gathered. Stone probably hoped that some day it would become the grand avenue connecting Lake Union with Green Lake, where he also platted a real-estate addition. Although hardly grand, Stone Way is conventionally considered the border between the Fremont and Wallingford neighborhoods. In 1966 the Wallingford Planning Committee, with help from the University of Washington's Community Development Bureau, surveyed a neighborhood they described as reaching west as far as the Aurora Avenue speedway. The surveyors soon learned that residents west of Stone Way described themselves as living in Fremont. Thereafter they were dropped from Wallingford's plans.

Paul Dorpat's two-hour videotape on Seattle's early history, "Seattle Chronicle," is $29.95 from Tartu Publications, P.O. Box 85208, Seattle, WA 98145.