COURTESY OF SEATTLE PUBLIC UTILITIES

Both the first Cedar River pipeline (1900) and the second (1909) were laid beneath 12th Avenue North in their last miles to the Volunteer Park Reservoir. In 1917 the old wooden-stave pipes were replaced with concrete ones along this stretch.

PAUL DORPAT

While some of Seattle's supply from the Cedar River was originally carried along by gravity through trestles, from the beginning most of it was laid in trenches. Standpipes and reservoirs are our noticeable waterworks wonders.

This view of the exposed Cedar Pipelines One and Two was photographed in the spring of 1917, when the city was purchasing land for a third pipeline. The first pipeline completed the more than 22 miles from the Landsburg "outflow" (elevation 536 feet) on the river to the High Reservoir at Volunteer Park (elevation 420 feet) in 1900. The system was pressure-tested on Christmas Eve and performed so well that the waters were let loose into the reservoir on Jan. 10, 1901.

It was already clear then that the booming city of about 100,000 citizens would soon need a second line. When No. 2 was completed 10 years later, the population of Seattle had more than doubled.

Most of the pipelines were built of wood staves bound with threaded steel bands — decidedly cheaper than steel, cast iron or concrete but also quick to decay and uneven, owing to imperfections in the wood. Here, at least, in the last mile of the paralleling lines' route along 12th Avenue to Volunteer Park, the wood is being replaced with reinforced concrete pipe.

When it was completed in 1911, Pipeline Two extended well beyond Volunteer Park to the north city limits then at North 85th Street. Pipeline Three was added to Volunteer Park in 1923 and Pipeline Four to West Seattle in 1948.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.