The Industrial Remaking of Everett's Waterfront
Federal authorities grant permission for a massive engineering project to wall off the Snohomish River delta, transforming a shallow tidal area into a deep-water harbor for industrial commerce.
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.
In response to a resolution by Senator Squire, the Secretary of War has approved plans for the Everett Land Company to construct a large tidal basin at Everett. The project involves building a dike and lock system between the Everett peninsula and the mouth of the Old River. By shutting off tidal sloughs and utilizing locks and tide gates, the company intends to create a deep-water, fresh-water harbor protected from the tide. Captain Thomas W. Symons, the engineer overseeing the report, noted that the current mouth of the river is obstructed by sandbars and has little value for navigation. The new harbor would allow deep-sea shipping to access Everett while potentially improving channel depths through increased tidal velocity near Priest Point. The War Department has imposed conditions, including that the harbor remain under United States jurisdiction and that the project be completed within ten years.
“The withdrawal of the Old river from the Snohomish river system will therefore certainly do no harm to the general navigation interests of the Snohomish river.”
This 1894 report captures the era of 'booster' engineering that defined early Everett, treating natural river deltas as industrial machines to be reconfigured. Today, these same Snohomish river delta areas are the focus of intense environmental restoration efforts to recover the salmon habitat that these very dikes and industrial re-channelings decimated over the last century.
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