The Fight for Washington’s Tide Lands
A high-stakes political battle in the state legislature over the future of Washington's valuable waterfront property.
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 House spent a brilliant and animated evening session debating a tide-land bill, with the lobby crowded and visitors watching from the galleries. It was like the first night of an opera. Speaker Feighan attempted to amend sections of the bill to protect the state's interest, aiming to ensure that the board of appraisers would be composed of disinterested freeholders and that land would not be sold below its appraised value. Speaker Feighan also argued that tide lands should be sold at their proper value, suggesting it would render local taxes unnecessary for a hundred years to come—a statement that drew cries of 'Oh!' from his colleagues. Despite fierce debate and multiple proposed amendments, the bill ultimately passed the house with a vote of thirty-seven ayes to twenty-six noes, though it failed the required two-thirds majority for an emergency clause.
“Speaker Feighan said that if the tide lands were sold at their proper value, it would not be necessary to levy anything but a local tax for a hundred years to come.”
This 1890 legislative struggle captures the moment Washington began liquidating its public tidelands, an era that shaped the privatized waterfronts we see in cities like Bellingham and Seattle today. The argument over whether to favor upland owners versus the public interest remains a central theme in Washington's ongoing debates over public access to shorelines.
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