The Battle for the Waterfront

A question of the utmost importance to the state of Washington, to every city bordering upon tide lands adjacent to the navigable waters of Puget Sound, and to scores of applicants for the purchase of tide lands from the state, now awaits the decision of the supreme court. The committee on municipal corporations of the house and senate held a joint meeting to consider a bill authorizing any city of the first class to lay out, improve and maintain streets or alleys over and across tide lands. The bill is of particular interest to Tacoma. The original town site of Tacoma was owned by the Tacoma Land Company, which corporation in laying out the streets did not lay them across the water front and tide lands. City Attorney Wickersham of Tacoma appeared before the committee with a large map and gave an exhaustive history of the case, saying that under the constitution the people on the tide lands were merely there as tenants by sufferance. 'Our principal street is Pacific avenue,' he said, 'and yet the fact is that we are kept thirty feet from the waters of Puget Sound and have no way of reaching them.' He explained that an effort had been made to open Pacific avenue to tide water, and the city was met with a demand which amounted to $40,000. The local board of tide land appraisers had no authority in the matter. The streets of Seattle opened by the board, he said, were merely strips of land owned by the state, and would only become city property by the enactment of the proposed law. The time to act, he said, is the present. If this legislature adjourned without enacting this law, then the Tacoma Land Company would purchase the tide lands in front of their properties and the state would thenceforth be powerless.