Seattle Raises $500,000 for the South Canal While Ballard Dreams of Steel
In hard times, Seattle subscribers oversubscribe a half-million-dollar canal subsidy, with surveyors on the government route and D. H. Gilman's steel works and car shops said to be materializing across the bay.
The south canal subsidy of $500,000 was completed Thursday in a praiseworthy manner. $506,815 being the total amount in when the books closed, after allowing deduction for poor notes. The total gross subscription amounts to $545,000.
Seattle is to be commended for the spirit of enterprise and push she has displayed in raising such an amount in these hard times. Few cities in the whole country can boast of such an achievement. Now, if the outside capitalists will rustle in the same manner and carry out their part of the agreement, there will be work for a good many hands that are necessarily idle at present, and all lines of business will receive an impetus.
We understand the surveyors are getting along swimmingly with the government canal route, and also that D. H. Gilman's plans for the steel works and car shops across the bay are materializing nicely, and the good citizens of Ballard may before long wake up some fine morning to behold an army of men preparing the ground for the buildings. Things in general look encouraging.
“There will be work for a good many hands that are necessarily idle at present, and all lines of business will receive an impetus.”
The 1895 south canal fight was an early chapter in Seattle's long argument over how to move water, people, and freight—and who pays for it. The same booster logic and promises of jobs still shape debates over the Ballard Bridge, the ship canal, and waterfront infrastructure.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.