Everett Archives: What’s Behind Everett Street Names?
Header image courtesy of Northwest Room at Everett Public Library.
What’s in a name? Some of our street names are pretty obvious: Pacific and California, for example. Everett, after all, is a West Coast city.
Other street names take a little digging and/or historical knowledge. Let’s take a look at how our city’s streets came to be called what they’re called.
Let’s start with the big ones. The major routes in North Everett -- Colby, Hewitt, Wetmore, Hoyt -- are all named after industrialists who originally invested in Everett. These were the men who wanted to build a utopia they billed as “The Pittsburgh of the West” or “the City of Smokestacks.” And, candidly, a lot of these investors were seeking to win the favor of Rockefeller, the wealthiest man of his era. Rockefeller Avenue, of course, is named after him, even though he only came to Everett once.
McDougall Street, which runs north-south on the east side of Broadway, was named after a shipbuilder. Scottish Captain Alexander McDougall set out to revolutionize the shipping industry with his “whaleback” ships. As fate would have it, only one whaleback ship was ever built in Everett.
Venturing into Riverside, we find Cleveland and Harrison Avenues. These streets were named by locals during the 1888 United States presidential election in an effort to get the candidates to visit town. The candidates never did. The Glacier View neighborhood also gets presidential with their Adams, Monroe, and Jackson Streets.
Many of the other streets in Riverside and Delta neighborhoods are named after trees: Pine, Cedar, Chestnut, and Walnut. Fitting enough names for a PNW mill town.
The E-W meridians in the north side of town are almost strictly numerical. The numbers get bigger as you make your way southward from Alverson Boulevard and Legion Memorial Park. This logical grid system makes it pretty easy to navigate or at least estimate where a given location is in Everett.
There are, however, some very non-intuitive streets. Take Commercial Street. It runs in a meandering path through a residential section of the city. The route starts to make sense when you understand the historical context of the street: it parallels the old Interurban rail line that ran from Everett to Seattle. The area was slated to become a big commercial district and offer access to the commercial downtown, but the trolley line was nixed before this civic vision could come true.
Also, the observant pedestrian will notice anomalies stamped right into our streets. For example, on the corner of Virginia and 24th, at the intersection, the pavement says “Virgenia.” A harmless enough typo, only now it’s indelibly stamped into the concrete infrastructure for the ages.
This is a small sampling of the stories behind Everett streets. For what it’s worth, here are a few of my favorite streets and street names that I’ve collected over the years.
“The Yellow Ribbon Highway” or, as it’s more commonly known, Highway 529. It runs along the Everett Waterfront, over the bridge, and across “The Flats” to Marysville (“The Flats” is a locals-only term. Try it on an out-of-towner and they’ll be confused).
Victor Place and Leonard Drive in Riverside run perpendicular to the other streets in the area instead of parallel. They are anomalies, making foot navigation in the area a little Twilight Zone-y, like, where am I?
And, finally, hats off to Ttereve Drive. That seemingly superfluous extra letter at the beginning used to get me every time. Only recently did someone much smarter than me point out that “Ttereve” is “Everett” spelled backward. Classic.
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay up to date with community news and real estate tips.
You can head back to the main Lamoureux Real Estate website here.
