It was 29 years ago Friday that the Olympic torch passed through Seattle.
The 1984 Summer Olympics were in Los Angeles. On July 6 that year, more than three weeks before the July 28 opening ceremonies, the torch passed through Washington. Roughly 10,000 people lined downtown Seattle streets.
“We’re proud of the Olympics, but we’re also proud of the fact that the torch will run through Seattle dry,” Mayor Charles Royer said. “It won’t be put out by the rain.”
Royer and an honor guard of former Olympic athletes met the torch outside Seattle’s federal courthouse.
It was ignited in Lake City about 8 a.m. July 5.
“Horns honked, flags waved and bystanders shouted as the torch was handed to the day’s first runner, Jim Crutcher of Seattle,” The Seattle Times reported. “Morning traffic along Lake City Way Northeast was jammed by spectators, some of whom had gathered hours before the day’s torch rally began.”
The torch was accompanied by 37 vehicles and passed through the University District, the University of Washington campus, near Boeing’s old Plant 2, to South Seattle, Sea-Tac, Federal Way, Bothell’s Main Street, and Centralia, among other stops.
It was greeted by Gov. John Spellman in Olympia.
“Several hundred spectators trailed the caravan into the Carl North Country’s Lake City mobile home lot for autographs from the runners and a chance to touch the torches which are making history,” the Times reported.
“It’s pretty neat holding a torch that’s been across the whole country,” 22-year-old Jeanne Einfield of Seattle told the newspaper.
We found footage of the torch in Lake City in the KIRO 7 archives. Watch that short clip in the video player above.
KIRO
