By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The development of Smokey Point began small in the 1940s, when a couple moved in from Minnesota and opened a barbecue restaurant with a smoky outdoor oven at the main crossroads.

The restaurant's name, Smokey Point, stuck to the surrounding area, and for years the center of town consisted of the restaurant, a berry field, and a tavern where nearby residents would dance until dawn.

The restaurant closed the day I-5 opened, and was torn down years later. A gas station now stands in its place; and the crossroads is backed up with strip malls from corner to corner.

Neil Knutson remembers heading off to school one morning and seeing Smokey Point's namesake building coming down.

"I was kind of sad that day," recalls Knutson. "I knew something big had happened, but I wasn't old enough to know what it was."

The freeway transformed Smokey Point into a commuter-friendly region that drew in young families. They're still attracted by the convenience, by housing prices that average 20 percent less than the rest of Snohomish County and by the area's remaining beauty.

"I think that right in here, you can just see the mountains better than from anyplace else," says Darlene Paterson, director of elementary education for the Smokey Point Community Church.

The congregation, about 60 people when Paterson came to the church 20 years ago, drew an overflow crowd of 2,600 to Easter services this year. Hundreds of youngsters fill the newly built church classrooms each week.

"It's been a real stretch to change to such a big church mentality, starting out so small, but it's been fun. It's been really exciting to be a part of it," says Paterson.

A 500-unit apartment complex is in the planning stages, and a big chunk of new families joined the area just last year when the Navy chose Smokey Point as one of two spots nationwide for a pilot housing program. The program created an 184-unit development near the center of town in a public-private partnership, with priority housing for Naval Station Everett.

"It's a nice area, nice and quiet," says Haakon Leiren, who signed up for one of the new units with his wife, Christina, and two young children. "Being sailors, since we spend so much time away from home, a lot of our time (in Smokey Point) is just spent at home with the family and the yard."

Much of the area's commercial growth has come since business owners, tired of waiting for the county to widen the roads, decided to tax themselves to help improve the main arterial through Smokey Point, says business leader Becky Foster.

The move expanded Smokey Point Boulevard from what Foster called "a two-lane, bumpy, rugged little road that was still getting a tremendous amount of traffic" to a thoroughfare.

Supermarkets, interior decorators, dog groomers, doctors and dentists and chiropractors and hair salons abound. A big-box Eagle Hardware was a mixed signal when it opened off I-5 earlier this year, assuring some businesses owners that Smokey Point had hit the big time, and saddening others who accurately predicted the neighborhood Tru-Value store would close its doors.

Debbie Whitaker, who recently moved her plus-sized consignment clothing shop from Everett to Smokey Point, had examined the area's zoning code and found it a promising predictor for future growth. But she knew even without her research that Smokey Point would draw shoppers.

After all, she says, "I shop down here." If Smokey Point is facing a hurricane of development, the Lakewood area is the eye of the storm.

Much of Lakewood's land west of the freeway has marshy soil and lacks sewers, making it far less hospitable for urban growth.

It's a role reversal from earlier times, when train stations rather than freeways determined growth. Lakewood, originally known as "English Crossing," was then the neighborhood hub.

Diary entries from pioneer daughter Alta Misner in 1906 recount dances that lasted until 5 a.m., and constant stories of taking the train from the Lakewood depot to Silvana and Stanwood and other early Snohomish County settlements.

Misner's house is still standing in "downtown" Lakewood, which now consists of a handful of shops: A small grocery and hardware store; a car repair garage; a combination antique store-real estate office run by unofficial historian Phyllis McKenzie, and a dollhouse of a post office.

Letters and crayoned pictures addressed to "Postmaster Pam" decorate the post office walls, and Pam Borso herself stands behind the counter, a familiar curly haired, calm-voiced vision to the Lakewood adults who buy stamps and the grade-schoolers who take field trips to hand-cancel their Valentines each February.

Children also take historical tours of the Wisner home with McKenzie, who lives in the historic home but preserved its antique furniture, photos, Misner's diary, and other artifacts from Lakewood's early days.