You never know what you’re going to find when you dig in!
The photos are from Anne Higuera at Ventana Construction (WSB sponsor), who says, “While finishing up the last piece of our large expansion project at West Seattle Nursery (replacing the sidewalk and removing paving from the planting strip in front of both businesses), one of our employees found (this) in the dirt. … The street there has a brick base, so there are many layers of history in that street. The back, with the trees, says “good for one fare” and the front says “Seattle Transit” and the name of the director — looks like Beckett — along the bottom.” The token is smaller and thinner than a penny, she noted:
(Here’s a look at a cleaned-up version of a similar token.) At first they thought it was a token from the trolley days. Online research revealed that Seattle Transit was what the bus system was once known as. Evro M. Becket – who died in 1960 – was on the Seattle Transportation Commission in the ’40s, so the token likely dates back about 70 years. You can find out more about the Seattle Transit System via its annual reports, some of which are available as PDFs through the Municipal Archives. (1940, for example, is hailed as “a year of almost complete changeover from rail to rubber” – as the streetcar system was dismantled. The report features many photos, of buses, streetcars, and examples of streets where the tracks were paved over. And it includes the dates when streetcar runs changed to buses – you’ll see some West Seattle runs listed on page 13. Relevant to the token discovery, page 21 mentions the average Seattle Transit fare was six cents in 1940. The last page, 34, shows the city’s route map.)
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