Imagine: you’re flying a kite over a beautiful hill, with a blue lake all around, kids laughing, and somewhere someone’s grilling barbecue. Pure beauty! But right under your feet, deep in the earth, something far from beautiful is hiding. Something adults have argued about for a long time: should children be told—or not? This is the story of Gas Works Park in Seattle, a park that appeared on the site of one of the dirtiest factories in the city’s history. And it’s a story of why sometimes people turn a toxic place into a beautiful park—not because they want to do a kind deed, but because it’s cheap.
What is a gas works plant, and why the ground became toxic
Long ago, more than a hundred years ago, people didn’t have electricity in every home. To light a lamp or cook food, they needed a special gas—not the kind you buy in cylinders today, but the gas that was made right in the city from coal. It was even called: “town gas,” or coal gas.
It was produced at enormous plants. Coal was heated to a very high temperature in big iron furnaces, and gas came out—then it was carried through pipes into homes. But a lot of “junk” was left behind: a black, sticky sludge like tar, caustic substances that seeped into the ground and settled there for decades.
The plant on the shore of Lake Union in Seattle operated from 1906 to 1956—fifty years! During that time, the soil around it became saturated with those substances, to the point where normal plants stopped growing there. Tests found arsenic in the ground (a poison once used to kill rats), benzene (which causes blood diseases), coal tar, and many other unpleasant things. If you were digging a hole for a playground there, it would be better not to touch that soil with your hands.
When the plant closed, all that remained were rusted towers, pipes, and a vast vacant lot. Unneeded. Uninteresting. Just—poisoned land by the water.
Why the city bought the toxic land—and what it has to do with money
Here’s where it gets really interesting. In 1962, the city of Seattle decided to buy that vacant lot. Why? To make a park!
But let’s be honest: not because officials suddenly became very kind and wanted to gift children a beautiful place. The main reason was much simpler—the land was extremely cheap. Nobody else wanted to buy it! Who would want to build a house or a store on a contaminated site? So the city took it almost for free.
It’s like if at the school fair someone offered you a cake with a strange smell for a single penny. It seems like a bargain… but is it worth it?
The city also didn’t have money for proper cleanup. Completely removing all the toxic soil would have cost a fortune. So they decided to do something simpler: cover it on top with clean soil, like putting a beautiful tablecloth over a dirty table. The dirt didn’t disappear—it just ended up deeper. This approach is called “capping and covering” (“cap and cover”)—“cover it and forget it.”
Landscape architect Richard Haag—someone who designs what the park will look like—proposed something completely unusual. He said, “Let’s not demolish the old factory towers. Let’s keep them and turn them into part of the park.” Everyone was surprised. The towers were rusty, ugly, enormous—why keep them? But Haag insisted. One tower became a picnic shelter, another was turned into a children’s playhouse with slides and climbing features inside. It looked strange, but in its own way, it worked.
The park opened in 1975. People came, were surprised by the rusted towers, but the hill with a view of the lake was what everyone liked. People started flying kites there—and that became a real Seattle tradition.
A tablecloth on a dirty table: what’s left underneath
But here’s the question that kept worrying scientists and parents for a long time: what about that very “tablecloth”? Does it reliably cover the toxic ground?
In the 1980s, scientists took soil samples from the park and found traces of harmful substances. Especially in one spot—where children played the most. That sparked a major scandal. Parents were alarmed. Newspapers ran worrying articles. The city carried out additional cleanup, added another layer of clean soil, and installed special drainage pipes to keep harmful substances from rising to the surface.
Today, the park is considered safe for walking and playing. But full cleanup still never happened—it was too expensive. Under the hill, contaminated layers remain. City authorities regularly test the water and soil, making sure nothing seeps through. For now, everything is fine.
Richard Haag, by the way, was proud of his work until the end of his life. He said people shouldn’t be ashamed of the industrial past—they should remember it. The rusted towers in the park are like a monument: “There used to be a factory here. Remember it.”
It’s a beautiful idea. Though, honestly, it’s a little sad that the “monument” stands directly over the place that still hasn’t been fully cleaned up.
The same story—across different cities around the world
What’s most surprising is that the story of Gas Works Park is not unique. Right now, in cities around the world, something very similar is happening.
In Russia, for example, there are huge numbers of old factories that closed in the 1990s. Their territories are thousands of hectares of land right inside cities. What do you do with them? Build new homes? It’s expensive and difficult, because first you have to check and clean the soil. Sell them? Nobody buys them. And often, cities make the same decision as Seattle did in 1962: make a park. Cheap, fast, beautiful on the outside.
In Moscow, the “Tushino” park appeared on the site of an old airfield. In other cities, abandoned factories are repurposed. A fashionable buzzword for this is “redevelopment”—meaning “new use of an old place.”
This isn’t always a bad thing! Sometimes these parks turn out wonderfully. But it’s important to ask the right questions: was the soil tested? Was all the harmful material removed? Or did they just cover it with a tablecloth?
Children who play in these parks deserve an honest answer.
What remains when you look at the rusted towers
Today, Gas Works Park is one of Seattle’s most recognizable places. Tourists take photos against the backdrop of the rusted towers. Kids ride bikes along the paths. On Independence Day, fireworks light up the shore, and the whole lakefront glows with lights.
It’s beautiful. Truly beautiful.
But it seems to me that the most important thing about this story isn’t the park’s beauty—it’s the questions it raises. Can you make a good place out of a bad past? Yes, you can. But should you be honest about what’s still under the ground? Absolutely. And is it worth making a park just because the land is cheap—or should it be cleaned properly first?
Richard Haag kept the towers so people would remember. Maybe the questions should be kept, too—so each new generation thinks about them again. Because if no one thinks about it, the story of “dirt under the tablecloth” will repeat again and again—in Seattle, in Moscow, in any city in the world where there’s an old factory and not enough money for proper cleanup.
