Taming the Skagit Tide Lands
Early farmers in the Skagit Valley share sworn affidavits proving the extreme fertility of reclaimed tide lands, boasting of massive grain harvests.
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.
We republish the following item regarding the Skagit: A considerable steam thresher arrived on Wednesday. It is some twelve or fourteen horse power, purchased of M.G. Huntley & Co. of San Francisco. It is estimated that it will be able to thresh the grain from the stack without stacking, that will be equal to 500 or 1,000 bushels of grain per day. The grain crop of the Skagit will be worth fully $50,000, perhaps more. We recently took a trip with Eldridge Morse across the dikes to his dairy farm at Pleasant Ridge. Upon reaching the top of the ridge, one of the most beautiful sights imaginable of fertile fields in a high state of cultivation presented itself to our vision. For there on either hand was spread out several thousand acres of tide marsh, securely diked, and nearly all in grain, this being of a very dark, rich color. We now present affidavits of the yield of grain on the tide lands of the Skagit. Robert Kennedy deposes and says: I have been a resident of the Skagit bottoms for over five years. I am at present foreman of Mr. Samuel Calhoun’s ranche. Mr. Calhoun this year working a tract of four hundred acres of land, yielding this past year upwards of fourteen thousand bushels of oats. J. Conner deposes and says: I now cultivate upwards of 50 acres of reclaimed tide lands in the vicinity of the town of La Conner. I consider sixty bushels per acre my average yield of barley, and from seventy to eighty-five bushels per acre the average yield of oats on my lands.
“For there on either hand was spread out several thousand acres of tide marsh, securely diked, and nearly all in grain, this being of a very dark, rich color.”
The massive agricultural transformation of the Skagit Valley in the 1870s required enormous capital and labor to dike and drain what was once tidal marshland. Today, these same areas remain some of the most productive farmland in the region, reflecting a century-long struggle to manage water and land-use in Washington's flood-prone river deltas.
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