Two realities exist, concurrently, at Colman Pool. One is the very fact of a swimming pool tucked so deep into the forested depths of Lincoln Park, even neighbors who’ve lived within the space for many years don’t know it’s there.
The opposite entails heat summer season days and an Olympic-size oasis perched on the tip of Level Williams, so near Elliott Bay you may sit in your lounge chair and take within the expanse of water, mountains, and ferries. Fancy resort swimming pools would kill for these views, nevertheless it’s a Seattle Parks and Recreation facility showcasing the Northwest at its superb summer season peak—and there’s even a water slide. Colman Pool is by some means a secret to many, but so packed throughout excessive season individuals line as much as safe one-hour time slots to swim.
Seattle’s oldest public pool can be its solely sea saltwater facility. This summer season will mark 83 years of pulling water in from Puget Sound to be handled (and heated) till it’s prepared for swimmers. Colman Pool’s annual preseason refilling usually occurs in the midst of the night time, when excessive tide submerges the three concrete intakes which can be usually seen down on the seaside throughout decrease tides.
Listening to Maya Sears, who has maintained the pool since 2015, the system sounds difficult: a mixture of pumps, timing, a seawater line, and open sand pits for filtration. “It’s bought a persona,” she says. “There’s nearly a magic to it.” But it surely’s an enormous enchancment from what got here earlier than.
In 1925, the town dug out a close-by lagoon to type a proto–public pool, basically a giant, beachy gap with a sluice gate to regulate the water ranges. Town opened the gate at night time, throughout excessive tide, then shut it when the pool crammed up. Mark Sears, Maya’s father and her predecessor as Colman Pool’s caretaker, remembers an old-timer lifeguard telling him how dogfish would are available with the tides. The subsequent morning, lifeguards needed to chase them round with pitchforks to take away them from the pool.
Enter the descendants of a distinguished pioneer household. Laurence Colman and his son, Kenneth, developed Seattle’s Windermere neighborhood collectively within the Nineteen Twenties. Laurence additionally needed to present youngsters some healthful stuff to rise up to once they weren’t in class—YMCA actions, youth lessons, Sunday college, even summer season camps on the household’s Orcas Island waterfront property (later donated to the YMCA as Camp Orkila).
When Laurence died in 1935, Kenneth and the remainder of the household contacted the town, providing the reward of a pool as a memorial. Kenneth needed it to be in Lincoln Park, near the household’s waterfront property. (This may clarify why the pool is positioned so infernally removed from a parking zone.)
The artwork deco facility that opened July 4, 1941, was a big improve from sluice gates and stray dogfish. Colman Memorial Pool had a clubhouse, locker rooms, and a stunning mural by Ernest Norling stuffed with Laurence Colman Easter eggs.
Colman Pool’s present steward went by the standard metropolis interview course of for the place earlier than she took over from her dad, however the Sears household connection doesn’t finish there. Mark’s father—and Maya’s grandfather—Norman Sears was the pool’s authentic caretaker. Based on Mark, his dad labored beforehand on the Alki Seashore Bathhouse’s steam laundry: “He had a steam engineer’s license,” apparently important for laundry the woolen bathing costumes the parks division rented out again then. When Norman retired in 1973, Mark, already well-versed in operating that saltwater consumption system, took over for greater than 4 many years. He remembers the times when chlorine was used so sparingly his dad would drain the pool midway by the season for upkeep—“all of the lifeguards would get in there with scrub brushes and get all of the algae out.”
Like his dad, Mark raised his youngsters within the caretaker’s condo within the bathhouse, above the pool. A megaphone and an imposing demeanor helped keep at bay vandals and would-be night time swimmers on this remoted nook of a giant, forested park. The pool gave him such a superb vantage level to see southern resident orcas cavorting out within the sound, he even contracted with NOAA to gather information on whale exercise within the space.
Right now Maya is the one filling Colman Pool in the midst of the night time, at excessive tide, for the brand new season. Colman Pool traditionally opens round Memorial Day, although in our present lifeguard scarcity hours stay restricted in early June, till faculty college students come residence for summer season lifeguard jobs.
Wendy Van De Sompele, the pool’s coordinator, has recommendation on find out how to beat crowds: “Decide a day when it’s forecast for 75 or so within the afternoon, nevertheless it’s cloudy within the morning.” Throughout early summer season’s gloomier moments, the wind off the sound can ship lifeguards dashing for parkas, she says. However “when it’s sizzling, all people desires to be at Colman Pool.”
