The State Draws a Line Along Seattle’s Waterfront

Olympia, July 11.—(Special.)—The maps of the harbor lines and waterways of Seattle and Ballard have been signed and will be filed with the proper officers today.

The accompanying map shows the harbor line and waterways of Seattle, and they will be finally located by filing the maps today. The harbor is the shaded portion along the water front, and the small figures at the angles of this strip show the depth of water in feet at those points at low tide. The straight dotted line running out into the middle of the harbor is the city boundary, beyond which the harbor line runs one mile. The irregular dotted line represents the line of low tide and the wavy line is the line of high tide. The names of the streets are opposite the most prominent points, enabling the reader to see how the harbor strip affects existing property. The Duwamish waterways, as designated by Capt. Symons, and the Salmon Bay and Smith's Cove waterways, planned by Mr. Stroud, are shown, and their relation to the harbor can be easily perceived. The large figures on the land portion are the section numbers.

The law provides that the harbor line shall be not less than fifty nor more than five hundred feet wide, and when once located can never be changed. It is to remain the perpetual property of the state, to be leased for a term of not over thirty years, no one person or corporation to be allowed to lease the harbor strip in front of any one city. When the harbor line has been located, the remaining tide lands are to be platted, appraised and sold to the highest bidder, the party who had improvements on any piece of tide land at the passage of the tide land act in March, 1890, having the preference; the abutting upland owner has the next prior right of purchase at the appraised value. By a subsequent act of the legislature 75 per cent of the proceeds of the tide land sales in any harbor is appropriated for the improvement of that harbor. The appraisement and sale of the tide lands can now proceed without further delay, for the supreme court of the United States has decided that title to them rests in the state; clear title can be given to the purchaser.

The harbor line begins on the west, one mile west of the city boundary, which is at the Terminal Railroad track 1,400 feet west of the West Seattle grain warehouses. The inner corner of the harbor strip is forty feet north of the Terminal Railroad trestle at that point, and from there to a point about opposite Addition street extends 1,800 feet west of Commercial street, 1,500 feet wide, and runs almost parallel with the Terminal road, with slight angles at a few points. The depth of water at the outer line of the strip is generally about forty feet, but at one point it is about seventy, and at another the line touches the low tide line, where a sand spit runs out from the tide flats. On reaching the point described opposite Addition street the strip turns abruptly to the north, narrowing down to 300 feet, and maintains that width along the whole water front of both Seattle and Ballard until after a point hard to determine about opposite the mouth of Salmon Bay, and then runs on 4,200 feet beyond Meadow Point, where the one-mile limit outside the limits of that town ends. The depth of water opposite the Oregon Improvement Company's bunkers is about fifty feet, opposite Yesler avenue fifty feet, opposite Madison street fifty feet, opposite Pike street fifty-five feet, opposite Battery street fifty-five feet, opposite Depot street fifty-three feet, and off the Smith's Cove coal bunkers fifty feet; these salient points give a fair idea of the depth all along the water front. The water is deepest about half way between University and Union streets and opposite Lenora street, where it is sixty-five feet, and it is shallowest opposite Grant street in North Seattle, where it is forty-five feet. Cutting across the mouth of Smith's Cove, off the end of the coal bunkers, the strip goes along at a nearly even depth of forty feet to West Point; here it makes an abrupt turn at about the same depth. It grows shallower as it comes into Shilshole Bay, and opposite the mouth of Salmon Bay the depth is about thirty-five feet. From there it follows on about the same depth to the end, 4,200 feet beyond Meadow Point.

The land commissioners have apparently located the strip with a view to avoiding the inclusion within it of existing improvements as far as possible.

At the edge of the tide flats at the head of the bay there are included within it [an existing] wharf and Campbell's shingle mill. Northward it follows along in the direction of the outside of the improvements. Its outer line cuts off 1,500 feet of the [illegible] wharf, 170 feet of the dry dock wharf, 1,100 feet of the San Francisco Company's wharf and 100 feet of the Oregon Improvement Company's coal bunkers. Then it strikes nothing in the improvements until it reaches [illegible] wharf, from which it takes [illegible]. Following northward it cuts 170 feet off the Arlington wharf, 100 feet off the front of Lough's warehouse and [illegible] off that in front of Cudahy's coal bunker warehouse, seventy feet off the wharf in front of the New [illegible] Company's warehouse, seventy feet off [illegible] wharf at the foot of [illegible] street and fifty feet off the garbage wharf. The Seattle Coal & Iron Company's wharf at Smith's Cove reaches across the whole strip. These constitute the improvements on tide land affected by the location of the strip.

The map also provides for a western entrance to the waterways intersecting the tide flats at the foot of [illegible] by a waterway in Salmon Bay almost dry at low tide, and for a waterway in Smith's Cove. The waterways at the [head] of the bay are designated by Capt. Symons, of the United States army, and those in Smith's Cove by Mr. Stroud.

The east waterway starts at the [illegible], is 1,000 feet wide, and runs due south for 6,700 feet, its head being a short distance north of Kinnear station. The west waterway, also 1,000 feet wide, cuts through the harbor strip about where the Duwamish drawbridge of the Terminal road now is, and is 2,000 feet west of the east waterway, to which it runs parallel for 8,300 feet. From the head of the east waterway the canal waterway, 300 feet wide, runs due east and west to the meander. Its location can be determined on a city map by its running close to the bend in the Grant street bridge in South Seattle.

It is proposed to line these two main waterways with wharves at an angle of 45 degrees, so as to secure the largest practicable amount of frontage for shipping, with the widest possible channel in the middle, and to provide for railroads along the sides with a spur on each wharf. The canal waterway is located with a view to its future extension to Lake Washington.

The Salmon Bay waterway runs from the harbor strip, which crosses that inlet at its mouth, to the meander line in Ross's addition, a total length of about 14,000 feet. From the harbor line its width is [illegible] feet until it reaches the entrance of the bay, where it narrows to 400 feet. It widens again to 900 feet opposite Schweitzer's addition, narrows again to 800 feet, widens to a basin of 1,000 feet in front of Ballard, then narrows to 300 feet at its head.

The Smith's Cove waterway is to be 300 feet wide, and, starting just north of the coal bunkers, runs in a straight line parallel with them to the meander line, 1,000 feet north of the electric railway power house at Interbay; its total length being 5,400 feet.

The waterways are simply located by the land commissioners, and they make no provision as to the depth to which these channels shall be excavated. That will be determined by the state or the private parties which carry out the improvement.