Seattle Planned to Grow Three Square Miles Out of the Tide Flats

It is not so easy now to surprise anyone with stories about Seattle, Wash., as it was a few years ago, when a place that had scarcely been heard of at all only a few years before went through a big fire and within six years thereafter actually increased in assessed valuation and in business. This was in 1889. The population of Seattle was 1,198 in 1870, when it was really little more than a trading station, and it was 3,533 in 1880. Nine years later it had a population of about 40,000, miles on miles of electric and other street roads, a number of banks, a state college and most of the other things that do or may belong to a very active and thriving city at the terminus of a transcontinental railroad. Now this place of yesterday, half burned down six years ago, is preparing to fill in the tidewater flats in the harbor, reclaim between three and four square miles of land, pierce this new land with two waterways 1,000 feet broad, both connecting on the landward side with the Duwamish River, to build piers all along the front of the made land, to build a great sea wall about two miles long, and in general to make arrangements for railroad, shipping and transfer facilities as perfect as can be had by the aid of thorough skill and plenty of money. The plans have been approved by the War Department, and though the work may not be done at once, it is expected to begin shortly, and to be finished without great delay.