The Fight for Gray’s Harbor: Local Power vs. The Seattle Canal
An early battle over the Lake Washington ship canal reveals how local leaders viewed state resources and the influence of Seattle-based power.
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.
Watson C. Squire is one of the republican senators from this state. It would be an affront to the term to call him a statesman. He is an animal fond of eating, with unusually strong digestive apparatus, and just sufficient intelligence to realize the personal benefits that will accrue by living up to the doctrine that 'a public office is a private snap.' If you are not willing to take the Herald's word for this, let it refer you to the republican Oregonian. The paper argues that the Washington senators are ready to sacrifice river and harbor appropriations for all parts of the state, the Pacific coast harbors as well as the Columbia river, to the Lake Washington ship canal, which is not in the interest of the navigation and will benefit nobody outside of the town of Seattle. Every hundred thousand dollars swallowed up in the attempt to create an artificial water power for Seattle is so much lost to Gray's Harbor, Olympia, Willapa and the Upper Columbia, which are legitimate harbor and river improvements.
“Every hundred thousand dollars swallowed up in the attempt to create an artificial water power for Seattle is so much lost to Gray's Harbor.”
The tension between Seattle’s massive infrastructure projects and the economic development of smaller Washington ports remains a recurring theme in state politics. Today, questions of how the state budget prioritizes urban hubs versus rural or coastal regions echo this 1892 debate over government-funded 'local jobs.'
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