The Great Diking Effort of Swinomish
Farmers on the Skagit and Swinomish are transforming thousands of acres of marshland into fertile fields through a massive, coordinated engineering effort.
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.
Last week we traveled from Skagit City to La Conner, crossing the Skagit at Mr. Talbot’s place, then proceeding by trail and wagon road to the house of Mr. Cornelius on Pleasant Ridge. From the end of this ridge, one of the finest views in the Territory may be witnessed. At the foot of the ridge, covering some 20 acres, lies a beautiful, fertile ranch. Looking toward the Skagit, one sees a vast tract of level marshland, mostly above tide level, containing several thousand acres. This land requires diking—not against the tide so much as against the annual overflow of the Skagit, exacerbated by log jams. It is estimated that over 100,000 acres of prime marsh could be reclaimed by a simple dike. A number of local residents have already finished a project enclosing 1,160 acres, involving families such as the Chilbergs, Kennedys, and Chamberlains. Furthermore, an additional 2,732 acres are being enclosed this year on Swinomish and Sullivan’s sloughs, significantly expanding the region's cultivated land.
“It has been estimated that over 100,000 acres of the very best kind of marsh land could easily be reclaimed in a body here by a slight dike.”
This 1876 report documents the aggressive land reclamation that defined the Skagit Valley's agricultural identity. Today, this landscape is a complex, delicate interface of protected floodplains and restoration projects, as we grapple with the long-term ecological consequences of these 19th-century 'improvements.'
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