The Gold Rush at the Swinomish Flats
While miners chased gold in the mountains, early settlers on the Swinomish tide lands found that dyking and ditching the soil offered a far more reliable fortune.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The men who located on the Swinomish flats a few years ago and dyked their lands are now among the wealthiest farmers in this Territory. The lands are unsurpassed in fertility and can be reclaimed by uniting the dykes on adjoining farms very cheaply. Very often the first crop will repay the entire expense of reclaiming the farm. Although the best of the land has already been taken up, there are still hundreds of acres open to settlement, and when the railroad land reverts to the Government, there will be thousands more. The expense of reclaiming the land is small in comparison to that of clearing even the most lightly timbered bottom lands. Dyking and ditching is done for $3 per rod, or about $2,500 for 160 acres; however, by four farmers uniting together and building the dyke around the entire section, the expense would be reduced one-half. The lands already under cultivation are, we believe, the most fertile on the Pacific coast, the yield being simply enormous, while the soil is inexhaustible and of unknown depth. For advantages of transportation, again, they stand unrivalled, the whole country being intersected by a network of small but deep sloughs, nearly all of which are navigable for river steamers and sloops. To sum up, it has more advantages and less drawbacks than any section of farming country in the Territory.
“The lands already under cultivation are, we believe, the most fertile on the Pacific coast, the yield being simply enormous, while the soil is inexhaustible and of unknown depth.”
This 1878 report captures the early agricultural development of the Skagit Valley, where land reclamation through massive engineering projects defined the region's prosperity. Just as those settlers navigated the 'sloughs' and dyke-building costs to secure fertile soil, modern-day Skagit Valley continues to balance the high-stakes management of agricultural infrastructure against regional growth and environmental concerns.
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