The Battle for Salmon Bay’s Sand Spit
A multi-year legal feud over a railway right-of-way and a squatter’s claim reaches the courtroom.
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.
The sand spit in Salmon Bay was the cause of contention in A. Maitland's suit against the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railway Company, which was on trial in Judge Langley's court yesterday afternoon. The case was one of squatter rights and was continued until today. Jacob Davidson also appeared as an intervenor in the suit, and claimed the land by right of quiet possession. The sand spit in question extends out into the bay, irregular in shape, and containing at ordinary tide about nineteen and one-half acres, although during heavy spring tides it is almost completely submerged. The company introduced a map filed under the act of congress granting to railway companies land for right-of-way and station purposes. This suit has been in the courts since September 22, 1890, when a temporary injunction was obtained, restraining the company from taking any of the land for terminal purposes. Lewis S. Rice, who had occupied the land since early in the 80s, lived upon it during the last years of his life as watchman for the company. Maitland, the present plaintiff, is an executor and devisee under Rice's will. In June 1890, Rice was killed by falling from a trestle, and in September of the same year this suit was begun. The railway company asserts that the land is only fit for railway or manufacturing purposes, and scouts the plaintiff's claim that it can be used in any way for agricultural purposes.
“The sand spit in question extends out into the bay, irregular in shape, and containing at ordinary tide about nineteen and one-half acres, although during heavy spring tides it is almost completely submerged.”
Conflicts over waterfront access and the encroachment of industrial infrastructure on residential or squatters' use were defining features of Seattle's early growth. This dispute over the Salmon Bay tide lands echoes the century-long struggle to define public vs. private access along the city's shifting shoreline.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.