Faulk County Courthouse National Register of Historic Places Listing

For fifty years, the Seattle Gas Light Company plant choked Lake Union. It opened in 1906. By baking coal and crude oil, it powered Seattle's lights and stoves. But then, natural gas lines arrived in 1956. The plant shut down overnight. Most cities would have bulldozed the oily, toxic mess immediately. Richard Haag had other plans. This local designer fought to keep the rusted towers standing. A wild, controversial choice for the 1970s. People wanted manicured lawns. Instead, Haag offered them oil-soaked steel.

Haag didn't just leave the dirt dirty. The soil held massive levels of cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Instead of hauling tons of toxic dirt to a landfill, Haag tried bio-remediation. He mixed truckloads of sewage sludge, sawdust, and fertilizer into the ground. He tilled it constantly. This let natural bacteria eat the hydrocarbons. Today, kids climb inside the former exhauster-compressor building, now painted bright red and blue as a play barn. The giant boiler house is a picnic shelter. It became a historic place in 2002 because it is the only remaining coal gasification plant in the nation. It proved that we can reuse our dirty industrial ruins. A brilliant, gritty triumph.