I began my hawkwatching career in the Kent Valley in the mid-sixties and
lived on Frager Road for several years.

Back then, it was all farmland that often flooded, that is until they
turned the Green River into a drainage canal.

In those days it was hawk heaven, you could find goshawks just south of
Renton and gyrs around Kent with fair regularity, along with everything
else. I still vividly remember seeing my first Black Merlin not far from
the Smith Brothers dairy.

Starting with the building of the Southcenter "supermall" and followed by
the invention of rapidly constructed, tilt up concrete warehouses, an
abundance of cheap farmland and eventually the huge Boeing facility, the
valley was essentially destroyed for both wildlife and agriculture over the
next two decades and I was happy to eventually move north to the Skagit.

Ironically, I learned of a study written back in the 1930s, although I have
never seen it, that recommended that the Kent Valley be preserved as
farmland to provide Seattle with fresh produce and dairy to feed the
burgeoning population of King County.

Prophetic.

But industry won that battle.

The last time I returned there a year or so ago, I actually got lost and
disoriented among the multitude of bland, rectilinear industrial concrete
warehouses.

I seldom hear about this massive loss of precious, irreplaceable habitat
any more.

But some of us still remember it as it was, a local treasure to be mourned.
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