This is the 100th year West Seattle has been part of the city of Seattle.

Even though the community is built on a peninsula, it was the need for a reliable source of potable water that convinced West Seattle residents to join its neighbor across the bay in 1907.

Most West Seattleites back then lived in the area now known as North Admiral. Their water supply was a dammed stream in Fairmount Ravine that was pumped to homes atop the hill.

The community on the Duwamish Peninsula was growing and people realized they'd need more clean water if West Seattle was to prosper. Seattle held water rights to the Cedar River and was building a water delivery network. That convinced West Seattle residents to join the rest of the metropolitan area. The July vote was 185-6 in favor of annexation.

The year West Seattle annexed to Seattle, things were much different from today. Most of the world's great powers were ruled by kings or emporers while Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States.

In 1907, Ziegfeld Follies and the Hershey's chocolate kiss were invented. Ringling Brothers Circus acquired the Barnum and Bailey Circus. And it was the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

Nineteen seven was the year cubism wedged its way into the art world. Ivan Pavlov used an experiment with dogs to demonstrate conditioned response. The first helicopter took brief flight and the first taxi cabs went to business in London and New York. Rudyard Kipling won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Portland held its first Rose Festival in 1907.

In Seattle, construction of St. James Cathedral was completed. United Parcel Service began making deliveries and Pike Place Market opened.

Bears and deer still roamed the woods in much of West Seattle in 1907. Lumberjacks were busy cutting down the native forest. Thousands of board feet of West Seattle lumber was shipped to San Francisco to help rebuild the city after the great earthquake and fire of the previous year.

West Seattle had 7,176 residents when it joined Seattle. Homes were spread between what is now the Admiral business district and the West Seattle ferry landing near Harbor Avenue and Ferry Avenue.

More homes popped up around the then-new steel mill in the Youngstown neighborhood.

Joining a larger city was new to West Seattle, but the community had already been incorporated as a city unto itself in 1902. Even though most of West Seattle was still wilderness, what later became North Admiral had been platted with streets and house lots nearly 20 years before.

With backing from San Francisco investors, the West Seattle Land and Improvement Co. bought much of today's Admiral District in 1888. The former city engineer of San Francisco, Richard Stretch, was hired to design the street layout for West Seattle.

House lots measured 50 feet by 115 feet and sold for $800.

Streets were made 80 feet wide and alleys 20 feet. Originally the streets were named, from north to south, Grant, Maple, Laurel, Madrone, Cedar and Spruce. When West Seattle was annexed in 1907, those streets were renamed Atlantic, Seattle, Massachusetts, Holgate, Hill and Walker. Nevertheless, much of West Seattle's original street grid is still in place today.

A few West Seattle streets kept their original names: California, Edgewood and Sunset avenues.

It wasn't easy for potential customers to get from downtown Seattle to West Seattle. After all, there was no bridge across the wide, swampy mouth of the Duwamish River back then.

So the Land and Improvement Co. ordered a 121-foot steam-powered sidewheeler from a Portland shipbuilder. Christened the City of Seattle, it was Puget Sound's first ferryboat. Vessels for hire occasionally docked at Duwamish Head but there were no scheduled stops until the City of Seattle began regular service from Marion Street downtown to West Seattle the last night of 1888.

Two years after ferry service began, the West Seattle Land and Improvement Co. invested in a four-car cable railway to carry people from the ferry dock up California Way (then called Cascade Avenue) to the top of Duwamish Head. The cable railway turned south on today's 44th Avenue, west for one block on Atlantic Street, and then south on 45th Avenue to about Charlestown Street. The cable cars looped back down to the ferry dock via steep Ferry Avenue.

The cable railway was acquired by West Seattle and is believed to have been the nation's first municipally owned streetcar system.

In the century that West Seattle has been part of the city of Seattle, its population increased elevenfold - from about 7,000 people to more than 79,000, according to estimates from the Puget Sound Regional Council calculated in 2005.

While West Seattle residents today frequently argue with Seattle city government about urban planning, transportation and city policies, one thing that is hardly ever at issue is the quality of West Seattle's water supply.

Tim St. Clair can be reached at timstc@robinsonnews.com or 932-0300.