Seattle Begins Filling Its Tide Flats
Surveyors lay the base line and piledrivers start a brush-and-earth bulkhead along Railroad Avenue, turning watery flats into buildable ground.
Work on the filling of the tide flats has actually begun, and today a piledriver will begin driving piles on the bulkhead on the east line of Railroad avenue. Operations will be extended from day to day until the waterway company has them in full swing.
By direction of Chief Engineer Symons, County Surveyor Albro Gardner and Mr. [—] are running a base line from the city [station?] on Pioneer Place down Commercial street. From this line as an official base all future survey lines required in the work of filling and excavating will be measured. The work of the engineers will be far enough advanced for Kasan & Howard, the piledrivers, to begin work on the bulkhead this afternoon. The first work in this line will be done on the east side of Railroad avenue, between Charles and Dearborn streets, and will be extended from that point to the corner of Railroad avenue and King street to under the coal bunkers. The first line of piles will be driven on the east boundary of Railroad avenue, and from there the bulkhead will be extended westward about twenty feet into the avenue.
The exact nature of the bulkhead has not yet been decided upon, but will be so very soon by agreement between the commissioner of public lands and the waterway company. It will probably consist of two lines of piles in some places and three lines in others, at intervals of six feet in the row and ten feet between the rows. This will be filled with brush fascines tied with wire and laid with the butts toward deep water. The fascines will be held in place by longitudinal and transverse timbers. The face of the bulkhead will slope backward from deep water at an angle of [—] degrees. Behind these fascines the earth will be pumped in to fill up the interstices. The brush and earth together form as compact a mass as plaster bound together with hair, and the crevices are so small that the teredo cannot work in it with any success. In some of the old channels through the flats and in some of the soft places it may be necessary to make a foundation of brush mattresses.
This system of bulkhead construction has been pronounced by government engineers to be most effective for a moderate outlay of money.
“Work on the filling of the tide flats has actually begun, and today a piledriver will begin driving piles on the bulkhead on the east line of Railroad avenue.”
The tide flats this crew began filling are now the heart of Seattle’s working waterfront and SoDo; Railroad Avenue became Alaskan Way. The same tension—public tide lands, private fill, and who profits from the shoreline—still shapes Seattle’s seawall and waterfront redevelopment fights.
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