The $3 Million Scheme to Turn Seattle's Tide Flats into Dry Land

The work of filling the tide flats of Elliott Bay and excavating the Lake Washington and Duwamish waterways, in which the Lake Washington Waterway Company is engaged, has been undertaken and is about to begin. It will be one of the most extensive pieces of public work ever done by a private corporation in this state, and the first practical step toward making solid land of the tide lands, so that they will have an immediate value to builders and purchasers.

Among the advantages claimed for the undertaking are that the filling of the tide lands and the excavation of the waterways dovetail together — the earth taken from one being useful to the other — and that the Lake Washington waterway will be pushed to completion without any stoppage of work.

The work is done under an act of the legislature passed in 1893, which authorizes any person or corporation to fill in the tide lands in front of any city and gives them a lien on the lands they fill for the actual cost of the work, with 10 per cent added and 8 per cent interest until the lien is satisfied. The liens attach whenever the waterways, or any part capable of use, are finished, and are to be a first mortgage, paid in ten equal annual installments, and in case of default may be foreclosed like any other lien. If the state does not, within one year after the liens attach, sell the lands subject to lien to the parties holding preference rights of purchase, the lien-holders get a six months' option of purchase. The law grants the company right-of-way through any state lands for the waterways, but otherwise applies only to improvements on tide lands.

Waterways running through tide lands are declared public waterways, free to all citizens, but where tide gates or locks are considered necessary the commissioner of public lands may, in his discretion, authorize their construction and let the builders operate them and collect a reasonable toll for vessels passing through.

Acting under this law, Hon. Eugene Semple, in 1890, made the first application for a contract to improve Seattle harbor, and fought a test case through the superior and supreme courts, which confirmed the validity of the law. He then joined with D. B. Ward, Andrew Dietrich, Julius F. Hale, George Fowler, Elisha P. Ferry and others as the Seattle & Lake Washington Waterway Company, with $3,000,000 capital stock, to secure the contract and carry it out.

The company obtained an opinion from Capt. Thomas W. Symons, United States engineer, on the practicability of the work, its extent and the best method of doing it. The waterways were located by the state land commissioners in accordance with his recommendations, with provision for a waterway leading eastward to high-water line near the head of the bay — of which the canal through the highlands to Lake Washington is an extension, carried on as a private enterprise not provided for in the contract with the state. The earth taken from it will be useful in filling the tide lands, so the two undertakings can proceed together. Capt. Symons proposes to dredge the waterways to a depth of twenty-six feet below low tide and fill the tide lands two feet above high water to allow for drainage and sewerage, the dirt being pumped in behind bulkheads.

On October 27, 1890, the contract was awarded at a price not to exceed 25 cents per cubic yard of fill made, to include the cost of bulkheads and restraining walls unless the commissioner of public lands, with the approval of the governor, shall authorize more. The contractor must begin work on or before March 1, 1896, and finish within six years, though four is expected. Bonds of $50,000 were posted for faithful fulfillment, and a few days later Gov. Semple assigned the contract to the company organized to execute it.

Having established the law's constitutionality, secured its feasibility from an engineering standpoint and obtained the contract, the company sent its representatives to St. Louis and opened negotiations for the necessary capital, estimated at $1,500,000. After two such trips, ex-Gov. Semple, D. E. Durie and J. F. Hale returned soon after the new year with the welcome news that they had succeeded in negotiating with the wealthy men of that conservative Southwestern metropolis for the sale of bonds covering the amount of certificates issued by the state for the work on each legal sub-division of the filled land. The party of St. Louis capitalists now on its way here comes to look over the ground before making the first advance of money. Meanwhile the company is assembling its dredgers and hydraulic apparatus and has a large force of engineers and draftsmen preparing the detailed maps and drawings.

When this work is under way it will send a golden, revivifying stream of about $100,000 a month flowing through the channels of trade in the city. A large part will go to the workmen, who will distribute it among the merchants; another part to the lumbermen who furnish lumber for the bulkheads; still another to the quarrymen and stone masons who build the lock walls. The lake waterway, though a private enterprise, fits in well with the tide-land work, as it will furnish abundant earth for the remaining area. The company must furnish right-of-way at its own expense, and to help it asks the owners of property benefited to give a subsidy in land or cash, payable when the canal is officially opened.