The Farmers' Valley Canal
A coalition of valley landowners and city officials meet to debate the funding and construction of a massive drainage canal.
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.
A well-attended meeting of farmers and other property owners of the valley lands was held at the council chamber yesterday. Messrs. Carkeek, Kelso, Langston, Van Asselt, Wealey and others were met by Mayor Phelps, Comptroller Parry, Aldermen Clise, Compton, Miller and Lovejoy and delegates James, Little and Hardy. A very full discussion was had of all the legal and other obstacles in the way of the city assuming the cost of constructing a drainage ditch, and of the difficulties encountered by the farmers in every attempt they made to secure united action. Henry Van Asselt, the white-haired pioneer, responded in a vigorous speech: 'When I came to this spot there were no cities—there was no city. I took up a claim on land that was useless except to afford a living earned by toil. Then the people began to come, the city started to grow. My worthless land became valuable, not by my toil, but by the aggregation of individuals. The farmers, it is said, built the city, but the city enriched the land. County and city are bound together by the ties of a common interest.'
“My worthless land became valuable, not by my toil, but by the aggregation of individuals.”
This meeting highlights the late 19th-century struggle to manage Seattle's lowlands through large-scale civil engineering. The tension between farmers and the growing urban center over infrastructure funding echoes current debates in the Duwamish Valley regarding flood mitigation, environmental equity, and who bears the cost of protecting land that has seen a century of industrial development.
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