Jim Hill’s Tideflat Tactic
How a railroad magnate manipulated the City Council into a lopsided depot deal by trading away public bridge obligations for private land gains.
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.
Jim Hill is slated to get what he wants from the city council on the depot question tonight. He has juggled the city councilmen off their feet and they are willing now to give him what he wants. The manipulation is one of the cleverest pieces of business Hill has ever done in Tacoma, brought about by injecting the Great Northern into the controversy and coupling the tideland proposition with the depot matter. When he could not bluff the council on the depot matter alone, he pretended to accede to their demands by giving waterfront on the middle waterway, but slyly put a 'sleeper' in the agreement by which he gets several acres of property on the tideflats worth several hundred thousand dollars and is exempted from building the Twenty-first street bridge. Another trick was played regarding the triangle at Dock and Fifteenth streets; while Manager Nutt agreed to deed the ground, Hill kept the right to lay tracks over it, rendering it useless to the city. The settlement is slated to go through tonight as planned.
“He has juggled the city councilmen off their feet and they are willing now, it appears, to give him what he wants.”
This 1909 report captures the era of 'Railroad Rule' in Tacoma, where industrial titans dictated city planning at the expense of public infrastructure. The 'tideflats' remain a site of intense struggle today, as environmental advocates, labor groups, and port corporations continue to debate who holds the right to shape this industrial waterfront.
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