Celebrating Green Lake: How an Ancient Lake Survives in the Heart of an American City

This is the story of a lake and its people. Born at the close of the last ice age, it lay undisturbed in a Pacific Northwest forest until a modern city began to grow around it. Today, encircled by a path with lawns and plantings, little Green Lake is the focus of one of Seattle's most beloved, and heavily frequented, parks. But it took a frustrated East Coast landscape designer, an evolving park department, and an increasingly thoughtful citizenry to redeem it from the past century's ecological tampering, entrepreneurial assault, and recreational abuse. Today, mounting urban pressures call for steadfast citizen stewardship as a second urban century dawns over the lake's increasingly vulnerable waters. It is a story with a happy ending. So far.