Thursday, April 16, 2015

A Woodinville mystery: What happened to 200th Avenue NE?

Calling all Woodinville historians -- or wanna-be Woodinville historians! I have a mystery that needs solving!

200th Avenue NE is gone!

It's on the map...


...but in actuality, it's nowhere to be found!

In an effort to walk each day, and to cover a bit more ground with each walk, I decided to try this route with the dogs today:


A few years ago I read that 200th Ave NE was one of Woodinville's original roads, dating back to the 1800's and, if I remember correctly, it was even considered a stage coach road. (Though now that I think about it... why?!)  Back then I had done a bit of exploring of the road as approached from Mink Road. What I found was a gravel road that narrowed to more of a trail - at which point I turned around because, to be honest, it was kinda creeping me out - and I can give you no clue as to why! (Unfortunately, I took no pictures that day. Google to the rescue!)

Today I decided to explore the mystery road from the other end.

There's a trail from the end of 165th to 202nd, which the dogs and I take often. 

At the bottom of the trail, 200th Ane NE should be seen on our right. Instead, this is what we saw:

Hmmmm. It doesn't look much like a road... but it doesn't really look like private property, either! Trailblazers that we are (pfffft!), Quinn, Shasta, and I decided to head down the...um, road.


At this point I didn't really feel like we were trespassing. The row of trees on the left seem to clearly delineate a property line, so we kept walking. I even noticed what looked like the remnants of a road.

 As we kept walking, I began to feel more and more like we were trespassing. After all, we were definitely walking in, or at least along the edges of people's property. At this point I decided to open Google Maps on my phone so I could be sure to follow the "road."


According to Google, we were on a road, but this is what we saw in front of us:


Aaaaand, this is where we turned around. This wasn't even a trail anymore!

As we headed back, I noticed that people had definitely made this "road" their own...



and I definitely felt at that point like we were trespassing!


So after multiple attempts now, I have never walked the full length of 200th Avenue NE - because the dang road doesn't seem to exist! 

Can anyone provide any clues here?  Is there a story waiting to be told? Or is this just the road that never was?

ADDENDUM:

Mystery solved, thanks to a guy in our neighborhood Facebook group!! Mike posted a map showing 200th Ave NE from Mink Road ends at his driveway, where there's a dirt road that goes right back into our immediate neighborhood. 

Further up 200th, the road ends - which is why I was essentially walking into bushes last week. So today, we headed right up 200th from Mink (which, unlike last time, wasn't the least bit creepy) and turned up the dirt road at Mike's house:


At the top of the dirt road, we found ourselves on someone else's driveway (yes, I kinda still felt like we were trespassing) and that driveway dropped us right onto 160th! Pretty cool!
Oh yeah! New walking route! (Yes, I am easily pleased...)




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2 comments:

Lorrene said...

That is downright strange. I wonder if the peoples property has been surveyed recently.

Goofball said...

that still doesn't explain why the road on the map doesn't exist in reality?

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