The Harbor Line Fight
Legislative records clear Governor McGraw of conspiracy charges in a high-stakes battle over Washington’s waterfront control.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Olympia, March 14. There has been much misrepresentation regarding how a harbor line commission was provided for in the bill creating the state land commission. The Spokane Review and other papers intimated that the harbor line section was incorporated through fraud to bypass opponents who blocked a separate harbor line bill. The attack on Governor McGraw has been especially unjust; his goal was simply to promote the commercial interests of the state by establishing harbor lines and waterways in Seattle and Tacoma. Since a standalone bill failed, the legislature included a section in Senate Bill 260 granting the state land board the powers of a harbor line commission. Chief Clerk Nicklin of the house, after examining the records, confirmed that the bill was regularly passed and not tampered with.
“Those who drafted state land commission bill No. 260 expected a harbor line bill to be passed, but that it would provide only for a limited existence of the harbor line commission.”
This reflects the long-standing tension between state control of industrial waterfronts and the development interests of growing cities—a battle that defined Seattle’s early growth and remains a central theme in debates over the Port of Seattle’s public-private land management today.
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