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447 stories matching flat
- The Shipworm Eating Seattle’s Waterfront
Wharf owners were spending a fortune fighting a saltwater pest. The fix: fill the tide flats, cut freshwater waterways, and make the harbor safe for pilings—and insurance.
- The Dirt Will Fly: Seattle's Tide Flats Get a Date With the Dredge
A company backed by Eastern money says filling the Duwamish tide flats and excavating the waterway will begin within six weeks—if the canal right-of-way can be secured.
- The Town Where Horses Wore Wooden Shoes
La Conner grew slowly on a rocky knoll in the Skagit delta, diked its tidal flats, and shipped out hay by the ton—while its horses clumped through spring mud in wooden moccasins.
- The Judge Who Warned Seattle Not to Sell Its Waterfront to a Canal Company
In 1894, Judge John J. McGilvra urged Congress to build the Lake Washington Ship Canal and warned that a private company's tideflat scheme would put tolls on the water and enrich speculators at public expense.
- Olympia’s Fight for a Deep-Water Harbor
Citizens tell the harbor-line commissioners to claim Budd Inlet’s tide flats for public wharves—not a narrow waterway that would hand the waterfront to private owners.
- The 15,000-Word Plan to Build a Great Harbor on Seattle's Tide Flats
Virgil Bogue's report to King County proposes dredged slips, public docks, a union station and a jointly owned terminal railroad—if Seattle can sort out its tide-land titles.
- Three Thousand Boosters Eat, Cheer, and Rebrand Tacoma
One night in February 1909: 3,000 boosters packed the armory, picked a new city slogan — 'You'll Like Tacoma' — and got sermons on land, liquor, and who should own the tide flats.
- The Tide Flat Grabbers: Seattle’s Fight for Its Own Shoreline
As the statehood deadline looms, a fierce editorial battle erupts over who owns the valuable mudflats of Elliott Bay—speculators or the public?
- Seattle's $100,000 Night: The Armory Meeting That Sold the Ship Canal
Boosters packed the Armory in 1895 and pledged a fortune for locks and bridges on a Lake Washington canal—payable only after a ship made the passage from Elliott Bay.
- The Dredgers Were Coming: Seattle Builds Its Tide Flats
Engineers surveyed bulkheads, plotted fill, and prepared to bring two big dredgers to the Duwamish tide flats—while speculators rushed applications to buy the new land.
- The Blueprint to Bury Seattle’s Railroads and Sell the Tide Flats
The Dearborn interests pitch a grand scheme to replace ram’s-horn tracks with parallel underground lines, raise street grades, and turn the southern tide flats into a manufacturing and freight hub.
- The Battle for the Mud Flats
City Engineer R.H. Thomson warns that the Seattle & Montana Railway’s proposed terminal layout would block the city's future industrial access and sabotage the drainage of the tide flats.
- The Great Mud Flat Land War
An armed confrontation breaks out over disputed tide lands as settlers use cannon and rifles to defend their property claims.
- The Waterfront Turf War
A railroad tycoon and a dry dock company fight for control of Seattle's mud flats as the city transforms.
- The Secret Scheme to Seize the Tide Flats
Prominent Seattle businessmen form an organization to lobby the constitutional convention for control of the waterfront.
- A Section Foreman's Death at Gilman, and the $100 He Sent Home to Ireland
J. G. Caroian, a Lake Shore road foreman, was killed switching cars at Gilman. His Odd Fellows lodge will bury him at Marysville; his aged mother in Ireland will get no more Christmas money.
- A Million Dollars Secured for the Lake Washington Canal
David E. Durie returns from the East with financing for the tide flats waterway and ship canal, contingent on right-of-way and lock guarantees.
- Seattle Bets $7 Million on a Canal Through the Tide Flats
St. Louis capitalists will dredge a waterway from Lake Washington to the Sound and fill the flats with new ground — if the subsidies come through. The paper calls it the making of the city's commercial supremacy.
- The Canal or Bust: Seattle Rallies to Buy Its Own Waterway
A packed crowd cheers a plan to hand St. Louis capitalists a public subsidy to dig the south canal and fill the tide flats of the lake — with a grand mass meeting called for the Armory.
- Seattle Begins Filling Its Tide Flats
Surveyors lay the base line and piledrivers start a brush-and-earth bulkhead along Railroad Avenue, turning watery flats into buildable ground.
- A Railroad and a Tide-Flat Fight: Who Gets to Fill Smith's Cove?
Great Northern objected to a plan by W. F. Hayes and Frank Shay to fill the tide flats between Pike Street and Smith's Cove, setting up a hearing over who controls Seattle's shoreline.
- The Loomis Land Grab
A prospector files a homestead claim on 'Tunnel Flat,' a prime piece of land long overlooked by local mining interests.
- The Great Smokestack Hoax: Seattle’s Mountain Top Mystery
In 1873, local entrepreneur S. W. Peck convinced the city that a legendary 'living rod' lay buried atop American Flat. His desperate drilling operation reveals more about the era's speculative fever than geological truth.
- The Canal That Would Invent South Seattle
At meetings in Georgetown and River Park, property owners pledged land, cash, and labor to a waterway scheme they promised would drain the Duwamish and turn tide flats into gold.
- One Street, Eight Names: The Tide-Land Map That Broke Seattle's Addresses
When the tide-land appraisers published their new plat, they named the filled waterfront after the states and the big cities — ignoring every street already on the ground. City Engineer Thomson's renaming scheme collapsed on the spot.
Also about this, in other words
- Clergyman Declares 'The Flat and Rooming House is a Curse'
Dr. M.A. Matthews criticizes modern housing and argues that a woman's sphere is strictly within the domestic home.
- The Racket on Tacoma Avenue
Local business owners demand the streetcar company silence its noisy, 'flat-wheeled' cars.
- A Domestic Dispute Involving a Flat Iron
A husband and wife near the Walla Walla garrison settle their marital grievances in court after a heated altercation.
- The Town That 'Resorted to Flat-Boats'
A skeptical writer from Walla Walla mocked Olympia’s tide-swept landscape, prompting a sharp, defensive retort from the local editor.
- The New Tide-Flat Plat Put a Foundry in the Street
Seattle shore owners crowded the county auditor's office to see how a new Elliott Bay plat redrew their waterfront—and some found their improvements sitting on paper streets.
- Tacoma Residents Complain of Noisy, Dilapidated Streetcars
Mayor Linck demands action against the Pacific Traction Company as citizens protest the jarring noise of 'triangular' wheels.
- The Bathtub Comedy That Saved the Day
A struggling young couple in a Seattle play find their only salvation in a piece of furniture that isn't quite what it seems.
- Tide Flat Rescue
A local man is rescued after an alcohol-fueled fall into the Tacoma tide flats leaves him trapped in the muck.