PAUL DORPAT

IN LATE 1890 or perhaps 1891 David Denny hired Frank LaRoche to record this view of his enlarged Western Mill at the south end of Lake Union. In 1889 this was the largest mill in Seattle. Denny built it with the help of John Brace, his skilled manager, who had descended from a long line of lumbermen. The timing was fortuitous because late that spring the business district of Seattle burned to the ground and, of course, the biggest mill helped rebuild it.

Western Mill opened in 1882, eager to harvest the forests that then still surrounded Lake Union. The mill was also ready to add Lake Washington to its field when the big lake was "opened" the following year with the cutting of the Montlake canal. Denny was one of the investors in the canal. By the time this photograph was recorded, the sides of Lake Union — with the exception of a few withheld patches — were clear-cut, so the logs waiting here in the millpond are most likely from the big lake.

When the Westlake Trestle, from which LaRoche recorded his photograph, was completed to Fremont in the fall of 1890 the little steamers that had been delivering North End residents — many then still farmers — to the shores of Fremont, Edgewater and Latona (there was as yet no Wallingford or University District) suffered a sudden dive in patronage.

As lumber mills often do, the Western Mill burned down in 1909. By then it was called the Brace and Hergert Mill because Frank Hergert and David Denny's former manager, John Brace, had purchased the mill from its receiver after Denny lost it — and practically all else — in the great economic panic of 1893. After the fire, the partners rebuilt their mill on new fill north of Valley Street.

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