The Canal That Would Give Seattle the Finest Harbor on the Pacific
An 1895 editorial urges Seattleites to back a half-million-dollar subsidy to fill the tide flats and dig a canal linking Puget Sound with Lake Washington.
A GREAT ENTERPRISE.
It is pleasing to anticipate the appearance and commercial prestige of Seattle when the tide flats have been filled in and the canal connecting the Sound with Lake Washington is dug. When the enterprise is calmly considered it is a matter of some wonder that the old citizens are not even more eager to subscribe to the subsidy of half a million dollars required by the projectors of the enterprise.
The completion of this great improvement will give Seattle the finest harbor facilities on the Pacific coast, and, for that matter, they will compare favorably with those of any harbor in the world. It will give us a frontage reaching from Smith's Cove around the head of the bay to West Seattle, affording space for warehouses and wharves sufficient to care for the commerce of the whole Pacific slope, were it centered here. Under the present system of wharves and docks large vessels sometimes suffer for want of facilities, and valuable time is sometimes wasted, but when the wharfage front is extended, as is contemplated, this will all be avoided.
The Lake Washington Waterway Company's proposition is a great one, and it has the additional advantage of being entirely feasible. It is as good as consummated if the people want it, and the only thing that is asked is a subsidy covering but one-fourteenth of the total cost.
“The completion of this great improvement will give Seattle the finest harbor facilities on the Pacific coast, and, for that matter, they will compare favorably with those of any harbor in the world.”
The tide flats were indeed filled and the Lake Washington Ship Canal eventually opened in 1917, reshaping the city's geography exactly as this editorial imagined. Today's fights over the Seattle waterfront, the Ballard Locks and South Lake Union redevelopment are the descendants of this 1895 subsidy debate. Then as now, the question was who should pay for the infrastructure that makes a city rich.
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