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- I think everyone was relieved that it looked like the building
could be restored.
- A fire started by an arsonist gutted the historic lodge at Seattle's Camp Long,
but a passionate restoration crew is determined to save what
the flames couldn't destroy the spirit of this treasured landmark.
- CPR is a lifesaving skill, and Seattle was ahead of the game.
- The City of Seattle has made it easier to save a life.
See how free CPR classes at your nearby community centers help
make our city the best place in the world for staying alive.
- These gnomes make you curious.
You see one and then you want to find another one.
- Did you know there's a place that only gnomes know?
We'll take you to the Valley of the Gnomes.
Think you can find them all?
These stories and more.
Next on City Stream.
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Woo hoo!
(♩♩)
I'm Brian Callanan, and welcome to City Stream.
It might look like I'm in between a rock and a hard place here,
but I'm actually at Camp Long in West Seattle.
Here we go.
- Located right in the middle of West Seattle.
This 68 acre park brings the outdoors to the city.
Dedicated in 1937, it's named after William Long,
a King County Superior Court judge who oversaw juvenile cases.
His goal to build a place where youngsters for the price of a bus token
could camp overnight and learn a love for the great outdoors.
Today you can still hike in the dense forest here.
Camp overnight in rustic cabins.
Rock climb, sit around a large fire pit
and take on a 40ft high ropes course.
More on that later.
When an
arsonist struck the historic lodge here at Camp Long last November,
much of the interior of the building was gutted and its future was questionable.
But the building's bones and the City of Seattle's commitment
to this beloved place have turned out to be pretty darn
Camp Long strong.
Our Feliks Banel has the story.
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- I wish I wasn't here.
I wish we weren't having this conversations.
Unfortunately, Steve Levengood is having this conversation because
he's a capital projects coordinator for Seattle Parks and Recreation.
Right now, we're working on stabilizing the building.
The building was red
tagged it’s yellow tagged now, so we're going in the right direction.
And this is the lodge, at camp long in West Seattle, a beloved building
where countless Seattleites have made infinite memories over the past 80 years.
When the lodge was hit by an arsonist in November 2024, it was almost destroyed.
Dave's been working for months to save it.
(♩♩)
Some of the
windows were damaged, the stairs completely gone.
So you know, the damage, you know, was structural.
And also, you know, the items in there are many of them were lost.
- The senseless act of destruction made a huge and very expensive mess.
- We still need to fix the roof and also the beams and the attic.
So we're working on
getting a permit for that because that's that requires a permit.
- But there's something about this building and what it means to so many people.
That's inspired Seattle Parks and Recreation to step up
and make sure that it will rise again, poetically,
from the ashes.
(♩♩)
- It was just so beautiful.
They didn't really let us in there very often.
You know, we could peek into the windows and stuff and
and we would see the beautiful stone fireplace.
- Martha Russell took part in Seattle Parks and Recreation
programs at Camp Long back in the 1960s.
- So the City of Seattle had this great program at Camp Long,
and I think it was only a dime a day, something like that.
And that included your milk, and you came down
and you were here from 8 to 3, and it was absolutely wonderful.
- I remember the old fireplace that was down there on the rocks
back then seemed so huge because it was just a cool old building.
- Sharon Pettit grew up in West Seattle and spent countless hours
at Camp Long as a Brownie and Girl Scout.
- So to have a 68 acre, a place where you could go
in the middle of a city was really extraordinary.
So it really saddened me to hear about the fire.
- And maybe this something about the building is the fact that, along
with the personal memories, the lodge is a symbol
of a much bigger story from American history.
Nationwide recovery efforts during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
- I pledge myself
to a New deal for the American people.
- The lodge was built with support
from the Works Progress Administration, or WPA.
The WPA was one of the New Deal programs created
by the Franklin Roosevelt administration to help put people back to work
and to build needed infrastructure in communities all over the United States.
- And the world's best hope for a brighter future the American worker.
- So the construction, you know, is is fairly unique in that regard
because I'm not sure
the WPA really followed a lot of standards or anything like that.
So it's, you know, it's kind of a neat, quirky building and people like it.
- Steve's work is clearly cut out for him.
And while the effort to save the lodge may feel like a foregone conclusion now,
Jerry Osborn, the architect assisting with the project, says that when the team
first arrived to inspect the lodge, nobody was sure of anything.
- The question was, could the building be salvaged or not?
An early discussion was that the building would have to be razed.
But once we got inside and saw that, the damage was more localized
than throughout the building, that I think everyone was relieved
that it looked like the building could be restored.
- In the end, the building will actually be better than it was before.
And, hopefully sprinklers will be installed, so this never happens again.
- The restored and improved lodge can't come soon enough
for those with fond memories, but also for the thousands who still count
on using it every year for summer camps and special events.
- You know, kids need this.
You know, especially kids of low income families.
-There are so many adventures and learning experiences here
that you couldn't get anywhere else, restore it and keep it open to the public.
- And when the work is done, a lodge with an incredible amount
of history will have a bright future ahead too.
(♩♩)
There's no timeline on when the restoration of the lodge will be complete.
Folks here say it'll take as long as it takes.
As for the arsonist, there have been few, if any, leads.
There's a $10,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest.
You can leave an anonymous tip at 1-800-55-ARSON.
You may never need it,
but you'll be glad if someone nearby knows it.
Now learning to save a life in Seattle is even easier.
That story is next.
As CityStream continues.
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Seattle Channel 2025
Northwest Regional Emmy recipient for Overall
Excellence.
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If salsa dancing at Alki Beach doesn't get your heart rate up,
well, maybe this will.
I'm on the challenge course here at Camp Long.
The high ropes course, actually, and I'm about 40ft off the ground
and doing my best trying not to look down right now.
I may joke about having a heart attack up here,
but CPR and other lifesaving skills are no laughing matter.
King County actually has one of the highest survival
rates of out of hospital heart attacks in the world.
And as producer Ian Devier shows us, easy access to CPR classes
plays a crucial role in staying alive.
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- King County
actually has one of the highest cardiac arrest survival rates in the entire world.
And a big part of that is because so many bystanders are trained in CPR.
- I've been in situations where I've, you know, wished that I knew more about CPR.
Have you ever come across this situation? Really?
- Yeah, yeah. A couple of months ago.
- CPR is a lifesaving skill, and Seattle was ahead of the game.
- A heart attack.
The easiest way to put it is a circulation problem.
And think about cardiac arrest as an electrical problem.
That's when we do CPR. There's sudden.
They can't.
They're unconscious. They're unresponsive. They're not breathing.
- One of medic two goals is removing as many barriers as possible
for people to learn CPR and have that critical skill and potentially save lives.
- So we don't do pulse checks anymore. But what we do is we call them out.
Hey, are you okay?
They don't respond. I feel safe, I can.
Hey, are you okay?
- We've taught community
CPR classes here at Seattle Fire Department headquarters for years,
but recently we've built this partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation.
- What we want your heart to do is kind of this, like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
That's great.
We call that a normal sinus rhythm.
And we love this.
- Seattle Fire
reached out to us, which was amazing, being proactive and just said, hey,
we have an opportunity to offer free CPR classes to the community.
So it just made sense to do them in the community centers
because these are the the binding hubs for our neighborhoods in Seattle.
- And this is helping us get to more people, to underserved communities,
to people who populations who never were able to
maybe have the find the chance to learn how to get certified to help them.
- It was an easy, like ten minute drive for me, and it looks like they're
put on pretty much like every other week or something like that.
- So my shoulders in line with the chest, my head.
- It was easy, was convenient. And it was free.
- If you would like a CPR certification card for any reason, it does cost $30,
but we also offer that class for free if you don't want to receive
a certification card.
So you just want the skills, you can come and take the class and not pay anything.
- We have a couple ways to find the center of the chest.
One way is if you go on this low point, if everyone can do it as well
with two fingers, you see the soft part right on the
soft part right here of under your chest, two fingers up.
That's where we want to do CPR.
Not on the left side, right side, right in the middle.
- So we have two different options for classes.
We do a hands only CPR class.
So you're
learning basically compression only CPR how to use an AED
and then actually performing CPR.
We also teach an adult child an infant CPR certification class.
So you're learning CPR, how to use an AED
- And now flip
- Choking intervention techniques.
- And then I'm going to stabilize with this hand.
- On adult children and infants
and all of our classes.
You're going to learn about what to look out for.
- Agonal breathing is a reflex of your brain stem, and it's a sign of death.
And so it can sound like a couple of different things,
but mostly what it sounds like is, that sort of sound.
- So if someone goes unconscious, how to tell if they're breathing or not,
and how to tell if their heart is beating or not,
and then when to step in and actually start performing CPR,
- You're going to do
30 compressions, two breaths, just enough to see the chest rise.
- Certification classes also include rescue breaths.
- For infants,
we're going to start with two breaths.
- If sometimes you feel intimidated doing it.
but it seemed to go really well.
- We get people coming in for different reasons.
- I’m a personal trainer.
And so it is a job requirement.
I also work security in Fremont at a venue
and also just for the betterment of humanity.
- Most people would say, I want to learn to save a life.
- Okay, clear a clear.
- No one wants to think about this happening, but it's a possibility.
actually, more than 70% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happen at home.
- Besides wanting to be up to date on everything,
I also take care of an elderly aunt and I have young
children that live next door that I take care of occasionally,
so I felt I needed to know what to do.
- You knowing what to do, to step in, to help that loved one
can be the difference between them living or dying.
- I work in the field like in the wilderness sometimes, and so this person was,
they were choking,
and I had like wilderness first aid, and everybody's kind of freaking out.
You know, if I have to step into a situation
like that in the future, I think I'll be a little bit calmer and a little bit more.
Sure of what's going on.
- We want to save lives.
We want eventually
the idea that I know it's hard, but everyone in Seattle can do CPR.
That would be amazing.
(♩♩)
To learn
more about the next life saving Skills class near you.
Go to seattle.gov/medic two.
- You may zip when you are ready, Brian.
- A big, big thanks to Matt and Zoe for helping me out here at Camp Long.
I am zip lining my way out of here.
Seeya everybody.
Woo hoo!
(♩♩)
Just ahead,
there are anywhere from 40 to 80 of them hiding here.
Think you can find them all?
We're going deep into the Valley of the Gnomes.
Next.
- We always like to balance our shows out here on CityStream
with some different stories. And here's one for you.
A little known spot in Seattle's Madrona neighborhood.
But those who know, know. We're talking about the Valley of the Gnomes.
Producer Matt Peterson met the woman who started it all, and even she admits
she has no idea how many of these little folks are down in that gully.
(♩♩)
- So this is a special place in Seattle.
I think a lot of people come here and they're kind of amazed
that there's this little wooded area and a bridge.
During Covid, walking through Grocery Outlet,
We came upon this about two foot gnome red hat.
He was very basic.
He wasn't sparkly. He's your normal kind of guy.
So it's such became the idea that this man should have a home
and that it should be with us here in the ravine.
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- The gnomes kept increasing.
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People started leaving gnomes at my house.
(♩♩)
They would put gnomes out.
I would just come across.
There's this guy up here.
He looks out.
So this little guy, somebody made him.
So they put together a little piece of wood and they glued him on there.
It's absolutely precious.
And they hang in the trees in different spots.
That might surprise you.
(♩♩)
A lot of people will ask you how many gnomes are there.
And honestly, I can't answer it at one point.
I know people were counting over 100.
(♩♩)
And so it's become really a neighborhood community kind of endeavor.
I guess in some ways.
I try to be the caretaker.
But our whole community really does that.
And they might get covered up or they fall over.
And so I tried to actually give them a new comfortable spot.
(♩♩)
It's been really fun.
I've met people from actually all over the country.
And what I've learned
is that people that gets to new cities, some of them like to find unusual things.
- Yeah.
And there's a couple on that hillside over there, over here.
- And a couple of years ago, somebody told me, did you know
that Valley of the Gnomes is on Google Maps now?
And I said, I had no idea.
- I found out about it yesterday.
(♩♩)
I was trying to plan my
walking route for the day, and I saw that this is right by the beach.
So I decided to walk over and check it out.
- Oh yeah. That's good.
- Seems like folks here appreciate it and are adding to it,
which I think is even cooler.
(♩♩)
I think it's a really great idea to, you know, incorporate
a bit of magic into these more public spaces.
- Oh, there's one on the railing.
It's like a little treasure hunt.
- Curiosity is really important.
And, these gnomes make you curious.
You see one, and then you want to find another one.
And then there's some larger ones
down below.
And then they're all up and down the sides of the of the bridge here.
(♩♩)
- It's really cool.
Beautiful. It's very fun.
I never knew this place existed.
- There's this cute little couple here.
- Something so happy and wholesome,
you know, like it's a great getaway from everything.
- There's just the whimsy of it. We need that.
We need some sparkle. We need some fun in our lives.
And so this provides that.
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- It's great to have something.
So, like, anyone in the city could come and stop by and take it in
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- that little secret place
that people can come and be delighted.
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- I think it's so important to make sure
that shared spaces are inviting and welcoming.
- It's great to have something so, like anyone in the city
could come and stop by and take it in.
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- What a fun activity to come here.
Count gnomes have a moment in the day that's not filled with anything
but just being in the moment.
- Oh, yeah. - And that's really important for our health.
(♩♩)
- There's this little guy.
He's got an umbrella under the tree.
(♩♩)
- Here's another one
hanging on the branch.
He kind of blends in.
(♩♩)
- Oh, look at the one in the tree.
- He's small, so he's a little bit hard to see.
(♩♩)
- Every neighborhood needs Valley of the Gnomes.
So I hope that will happen.
(♩♩)
- Our producer says this area below the walkway
where the Valley of the Gnomes is, it's really overgrown.
It's nearly impossible to see some of the steep drop offs that are happening there.
In short, don't do it.
Here's something you should jump on.
We're talking about something just down the road from the Valley of
the Gnomes on Lake Washington, home to our annual Seafair
Hydro Races.
“engine revving”
(♩♩)
For long time Seattleites, nothing beats the roar
of vintage hydro planes, with their WWII era
piston engines.
Recently, producer Randy Eng followed a dedicated
Group of hydro fans,
for almost a decade, as they brought a legendary thunderboat
back to life.
(♩♩)
- No one ever sets out to build a losing boat.
It's always a winning boat.
And as it's being built, we're going to win races.
And then it becomes a real boat and it runs.
And sometimes it's successful, sometimes it's not.
And that's this boat.
But it did something that was really important.
- Had my friend Brad.
Brad Haskin, he calls me up on the phone one day and says, hey,
I got this crazy idea.
If I can get a couple of us
friends together, we can go buy an old vintage hydroplane.
It's sitting on like Craigslist.
It hasn't raced in years.
And then the guy just wants to sell it, and we can buy it and we can donate it,
and then we can have a little bit of fun along the way.
You know, I said, I think you're a little crazy, Brad, but let me think about it.
- And there's a Squier shop going into the North Turn.
- And I found out it was one of the Norberg boats.
This was Chip Hanauers big break.
He's he's our big star of the sport.
He's the guy who's won 11 Gold Cups.
And this was the first boat that he drove to win a race.
- Here comes the squire.
- If you were here back in the 70s, in the 80s,
the Squire Shop, that's where you went to get your prom clothes.
That's where you went to get
your cool bellbottoms that connected the sport to the people.
- Squire Shop,Chip Hanauer holding onto the lead,
going up into the air.
, - I remember when I was a young kid,
we used to go to the Squire Shop and buy clothes
we used to wear to Stonewashed jeans back in the day. Squire Shop,
That's the boat to bring back.
But it never could catch Atlas Van lines
wait.
It went hard though.
- You run number two.
In a race when you're running around the track, if you're there
and you come up the winning line, if you can hit the throttle hard,
that guy in front of you doesn't know if you got it to beat him.
And that's the way we used to win races.
- Chip Hanauer,
picking them up,
laying them down, rocking and rolling, doing a pretty good job right now.
- The underdog. We still win.
- Good ride for Chip Hanauer.
- I thought about it.
It sounded even more crazier, but over time I was like,
you know what would be such a bad deal?
- You know, I always like why?
And he explained to me which one it was,
and I was like, you know, honey, we have history with this boat.
I was offered the ride in it, and I was so shy,
and I was so nervous, and I just says, no, I can't do it.
And he says, are you sure? And I'm like, I'm sure.
And I think I kind of went and hid behind mom.
Oh, she goes, I got pictures of that.
Really?
- I remember having braids in my hair,
and that's all I really remember about it.
- There it is, her standing there on the dock,
and I said, I know exactly what hull it is.
That's this boat,
you know, said, we gotta get it now.
And I called the guy up
and he goes, oh, I just sold the boat yesterday.
I mean, you're kidding me, right?
He goes, No, I really did.
I said, really? We missed our chance.
Kind of knew who would be in the boat.
And after about a year of asking,
he finally broke down, said, yeah, I'll make a trade.
I want another hydroplane.
I'm like, I don't have another hydroplane.
Well, that's the deal.
So I immediately called the museum and I said,
is there any boats out there at all that meet this criteria?
He goes, I know of only one been on the market a very long time,
that this tarp is flapping in the wind, strings hanging off.
wood literally crumbling in the ground.
It was horrible, but he kept seeing the potential in it.
We set up a meeting for paperwork and we finally got the boat.
To me it was a Chip Hanauer boat.
It's a Squier Shop, man. It had a deck on it.
I mean, I didn't really care.
I'd get it down here.
Day one. Okay, let's remove the deck.
I remember holding up the first sheet,
and I hold up the fiberglass deck, and I'm looking at it and the wood backing
it crumbled into the boat, and I'm like, where's the deck?
It's it's in pieces laying inside.
And I'm like, wow, this is really rough.
- The very first thing I did
in restoring this boat was pick the mushrooms off the bottom of the boat.
- It was so saturated with rain, oil
from the years of racing and then the the damage was done.
I was still hopeful
because as long as I kept the screw, it was the Squire shop boat, right
a ton easier.
It's not all grimy, unrecognizable stuff.
All fresh cut, brand new.
Not a screw put in the wood,
you know, it's completely fresh.
We're trying to preserve, not just create new.
And so it was important to to stay true to the original design.
There's a legacy that we get to leave behind.
It's something that only our families enjoy and been a part of.
But other people get to enjoy it.
- The parts.
Well, it's it's kind of a long trail spans almost the entire country, some of them
literally about a block from my house, which was the cowling in the lake.
Once I heard that story, you wouldn't believe how many times I drive by.
It's out there somewhere.
It was a long time to just find out where it was,
and then to get the amazing amount of volunteers I had to help me get it.
- 30 some odd years at the bottom of Lake Washington.
Perfect condition.
Exciting.
Great job guys.
You guys see, we're working on the project now.
Hey, we got these parts hanging up on the wall in our garage.
Where did you get those?
Oh, boat caught on fire or something
exploded. Engine failure or whatever.
you guys might want to use these.
Absolutely.
- The boats now are all plastic and all composite boats,
but the old method of building them out of wood is getting lost.
So it's kind of cool and help show these guys and teach them how we did it.
- We're building boats and we're teaching people how to build boats,
so we're preserving more than the history we're preserving
t he knowledge.
- It was just
going to have been a museum piece, and I probably wouldn't have gotten involved.
But but to see it run again, that's the really cool part about it.
(♩♩)
- I feel good and nervous at the same time.
First time for a boat going out is always you never know.
You always double check, triple check.
But there's always that little heebie-jeebies you know..
- It was a much larger project.
You start by peeling off all the bad stuff,
and there really was pretty much all bad stuff.
So that was a huge job.
And then getting hit with COVID, right in the middle of it, this one
took a lot longer than it should have, but we're really,
really happy to have it on the water finally.
- Come on Dave.
There we go.
- It's been a nine year
journey for myself since the the day of the idea.
It's one of those pinch me moments.
I can't believe we pulled it off. Did it baby,
- That's the happy sound.
- I haven't decided if I'm going out for a ride yet.
Maybe.
Anything's possible.
- I have no desire to ride in the boat.
I am still just a fan.
And that's all I'll ever be.
Oh, Bob, we did it, man.
Yep, yep.
- Every boat have sort of a spiritual guide, if you will.
And that's that's Gary for this project.
Our guy for the Squire Shop is Gary Laws.
(♩♩)
- I mean, it's probably built better now than it ever was brand new.
It's a piece of art that actually runs now.
- It's not just about the boat, and it's not just about,
you know, getting it back out on the water.
It's about the journey with my family,
seeing my dad and seeing Gary smile and seeing mom smile.
That's an important part to me.
Well, that wraps up
this edition of CityStream from Camp Long in West Seattle.
If you'd like to learn more about Camp Long renting out cabins here
or any of the other great activities,
go to seattle.gov/parks and search for Camp Long.
And if you'd like to catch more of Seattle Channel's outstanding programing,
head to Seattle channel.org and click on Feature shows.
I'm Brian Callanan,
Thanks for watching.
Well, I got a campfire to start.
(♩♩)