The Duwamish River's Unexpected Log-Clearing Service
A winter flood on the Duwamish River brought chaos to local farmland, but farmers found a silver lining in the disaster.
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 Otter came down from the Duwamish landing yesterday with very little coal, and the mate informs us that there will be no more coal brought down this week on account of the high water. The flood is even greater than the first, and came down quite as suddenly. The bottom lands along the Duwamish are all inundated, and yesterday many of the farmers were out over their fields in canoes, picking up the old logs and loose stumps which had been floated by the water and were drifting about. This is rather a novel but expeditious method of clearing off the old logs, which are otherwise as hard to get into the river as if they were set in concrete. The flood has damaged quite an amount of hay in stacks and in some instances washed it away completely. It has also come up about the farm houses in some instances and completely filled the cellars, damaging potatoes and other roots stored there. The water fell an inch or two yesterday afternoon, but heavy rain of last night will generally augment the volume of the river and cause another rise.
“This is rather a novel but expeditious method of clearing off the old logs, which are otherwise as hard to get into the river as if they were set in concrete.”
Long before the Duwamish was industrialized and straightened, settlers viewed its seasonal flooding as an unpredictable environmental tax. Today, as Seattle grapples with climate change and rising sea levels, the struggle to manage the river's path remains a defining feature of the region's relationship with its landscape.
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