Matthews Beach Wa.  is a residential neighborhood that abuts Lake Washington and includes  a city park with the largest freshwater swimming beach in the city. It is named after John G. Matthews, who had his homestead on the site in the 1880s.  The Burke-Gilman Trail borders the park on the west and follows the course of the old Northern Pacific Railway line.  The low-lying areas of the park and adjacent neighborhood is a former wetland which surrounded the mouth of Thornton Creek. As with nearby Magnuson Park at Sand Point, most of the wetland disappeared when the Army Corps of Engineers lowered the lake in 1916 by building the Montlake Cut and the Lake Washington Ship Canal. The area south of the main beach was the site of Pan American World Airways' offices and the dock for Pan Am�s Boeing "Clipper Ships"�the world�s first commercial air transports over ocean. The park now boasts a hilly knoll with towering Douglas firs and other trees, picnic tables, a playground, and a swimming beach with lifeguards and a diving platform in summer months. Thornton Creek empties at the southern end of the park, which has been partially rehabilitated to include a wildlife pond, native plants, and bird nesting areas.  The Thornton Creek watershed has hosted at least five indigenous species of Pacific salmon and trout.