At the intersection of Broadway and Meridian streets lies a small plaza in the heart of an urban village known as Bellingham’s Fountain District.
Renovations to Fountain Plaza were completed in 2021, and now, the community members behind the remodel want to introduce people to the historic space.
In 2017, a few community members who shared dissatisfaction for the previous plaza asked the city about a potential renovation that would include a new, noticeable, bubbling fountain. By 2018, community members and local business owners participated in a survey and attended an open house to share their input on the design.
“It was always one of these things that was really odd to me — that it was the Fountain District and the fountain was basically like a pole sticking out of the ground,” said Seana Olberg, a Fountain District Business Association member who has worked in the area for years.
The Fountain District is named for the original fountain at the start of the Guide Meridian, the historic plank road going through Bellingham all the way to the Canadian border. People traveling along the road in the 19th century would stop there for fresh water.
The Guide Meridian was the first surveyed line in Washington, said local surveying historian Denny DeMeyer. It is the baseline that created local counties such as Whatcom County, Skagit County and San Juan County, and was used to establish official land designations and measure plots of land for construction purposes.
“I think surveyors, in general, are underappreciated in how vital they are to society, to culture,” DeMeyer said. “Basically, no towns were platted, no canals were constructed, no streets were constructed, county roads, no irrigation facilities, no mining claims were patented, without surveyors.”
The territories that were created using the Guide Meridian as a baseline were surveyed using the rectangular survey system, a type of land designation developed by Thomas Jefferson in 1785.
One original element that remains in the remodeled plaza is a stone monument that commemorates the 200th anniversary of the surveying method. The monument was installed in 1985 by a collection of surveyors and college students — including DeMeyer — and stands where the Guide Meridian begins in the plaza. Much of DeMeyer’s surveyor research has now found its home in the Lynden Heritage Museum on informational plaques.
Construction of the remodeled plaza moved slowly when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, but was completed in 2021, a year later than originally predicted.
However, the later timing of the finished project had a silver lining: a new outdoor space for community members to safely visit.
“It was really just sitting there realizing, for one, what a cool thing it was in the middle of COVID that it was still one of the few things people could enjoy,” Olberg said.
The new plaza features a circular fountain surrounded by mosaic-style pavement, ample seating and green spaces.
Moving forward, the next step is re-engaging the community with the area, Olberg said. Though nothing has been officially planned, community members have ideas to host events in the plaza and along Broadway Street to attract people to the historic space.
For Olberg, the best part of the renovation was working with the community.
“There’s so many [exciting] parts,” she said. “I think, for one, discovering that there were other prominent business area people that had the same passion, so then suddenly we came together, [and] it became doable.”
