The Grand Plan to Reshape Seattle

The presence in the city of the party of St. Louis gentlemen who are interested in the south canal from Puget Sound to Lake Washington has naturally attracted renewed public attention to that enterprise and to the allied work of filling in the tide lands at the head of the bay. The approaching execution of this enterprise, which will involve an aggregate expenditure of $1,000,000, will be the consummation of a work which owes its inception to Ex-Governor Eugene Semple. He perceived that in order to be made useful at reasonable cost, the tide lands must be filled in and that, too, in one block. He then conceived the plan of having this work done by contract from the state, and of securing the necessary earth by excavating a waterway in a direct line across the city to Lake Washington, cutting through Beacon Hill. Gov. Semple secured the passage by the legislature of 1893 of a law empowering the state to make contracts for the filling of tide flats and excavation of waterways. With the inauguration of this great work of harbor improvement, which under the contract is to begin on March 1, a brighter era will dawn for Seattle.