Seattle Bets $7 Million on a Canal Through the Tide Flats
St. Louis capitalists will dredge a waterway from Lake Washington to the Sound and fill the flats with new ground — if the subsidies come through. The paper calls it the making of the city's commercial supremacy.
It is now definitely decided that the St. Louis capitalists who recently visited Seattle will go ahead with the project of filling in the tide flats and constructing a waterway to connect Lake Washington with the Sound. All that now remains to be done in the way of arranging preliminaries is for the waterway company to secure the subsidies that have been agreed upon. As these subsidies are in terms made payable only upon the completion of the entire work, there is every likelihood that they can be secured without delay.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this great enterprise to Seattle. To carry it through to completion will involve an expenditure of about $7,000,000 and will require about six years' time. The work of filling in the tide flats will, of course, proceed gradually, and each year will see a substantial addition to the assessed valuation of the city, brought about by the making of new land in this desirable location.
Anything that the city can do to help along the work should be done without hesitation. Its completion according to the plans agreed upon will make the harbor of Seattle one of the finest in the world, and will establish the commercial supremacy of the city for all time to come.
“Its completion according to the plans agreed upon will make the harbor of Seattle one of the finest in the world, and will establish the commercial supremacy of the city for all time to come.”
This 'south canal' through the Duwamish tide flats was never the ship canal — that was built on the northern Salmon Bay route and opened in 1917 — but the St. Louis money did put a dredge in the flats, and the spoil became Harbor Island, once the largest artificial island on earth. The sales pitch here, public subsidy plus new taxable land plus 'commercial supremacy,' is the same one Seattle still hears for every megaproject from the seawall to the waterfront tunnel.
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