Turning Marsh into Gold
Farmers on the Swinomish flats have completed a massive infrastructure project to reclaim thousands of acres of marshland for agriculture.
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A task of diking in a tract of land on the east side of Pleasant Ridge, near the Skagit River, is now just about finished. This project encompasses over 1,100 acres for various farmers, including J. Chilberg, Robert Kennedy, and C.H. Chamberlain. Combined with other ongoing efforts on Swinomish and Sullivan's sloughs, a total of 2,752 acres of tide flats have been enclosed this year, making this land highly productive for grain and agriculture. It has been estimated that 100,000 acres could be reclaimed in this body of land by clearing the river jam and utilizing these dikes.
“The view alone will well repay a visit from Oregon. After viewing for miles field after field of such grain as can only be raised from such land as this, one could not well say that this Territory was not a good agricultural community.”
The historic drive to drain and dike the Skagit and Swinomish tide flats was a hallmark of the 19th-century 'improvement' era. Today, the environmental debate has shifted toward restoring these exact habitats for salmon and flood mitigation, illustrating a complete reversal in how we value these tidal landscapes.
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