The Dirt Will Fly: Seattle's Tide Flats Get a Date With the Dredge
A company backed by Eastern money says filling the Duwamish tide flats and excavating the waterway will begin within six weeks—if the canal right-of-way can be secured.
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D. K. Durie, secretary of the Seattle & Lake Washington Waterway Company, expects that the work of filling in the tide flats and excavating the Duwamish waterways will begin in a month or six weeks, and that a great demand for tide flat and other land from Eastern investors will soon follow.
In an interview with a Post-Intelligencer reporter yesterday he further explained the financial arrangements made by himself, President Eugene Semple and General Counsel J. F. Hale on behalf of the company, saying:
'All the money necessary to carry out the improvement of the tide flats and the excavation of the canal through the hills to the lake has been secured, and that for the waterways and the filling in of the tide flats is now ready without any conditions laid down by the parties furnishing it, other than those the company has already complied with. As the construction of the canal through the hills and of the necessary lock is not provided for by the contract with the state, and the law makes no provision for right of way through private property, we cannot spend any part of the money on this part of the work until the right of way has been secured, together with a sufficient subsidy to warrant our going ahead with it.
'There is a large amount of preliminary work to do on the tide flats before we can begin moving dirt. In order that we may have a basis for calculations of the actual amount of the fill, the company's engineers will have to make an exact survey of the tide flats, in conjunction with those of the state land commission, which will occupy some time. Meanwhile we shall be assembling the plant ready for actual operations as soon as the survey is far enough advanced. We shall not have to wait till the survey is completed, but shall begin filling the section east of the east waterway, which is the nearest section to the city.
'The interest excited in the East by this enterprise brought out the statement from some moneyed men that as soon as work is commenced and the way clear to get title, a large amount of Eastern capital would be invested in tide lands and other Seattle property. I have no doubt this will be only the beginning of a steady stream of Eastern capital coming here for investment.'
“All the money necessary to carry out the improvement of the tide flats and the excavation of the canal through the hills to the lake has been secured.”
The Duwamish tide flats were eventually filled to create the industrial waterfront that became SoDo and the Georgetown river flats; the canal idea helped set off decades of fights over the Lake Washington Ship Canal and the Duwamish Waterway. The promise of outside capital and the scramble to secure title to made land is an early chapter in Seattle's habit of remaking its shoreline for growth.
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