Engineering a Solution for the Fourteenth Street Slide
City Engineer Thomson outlines an expensive plan to halt the recurring, dangerous earth movements in the Beacon Hill district.
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 most important business before the board of public works yesterday was the reading of a report by City Engineer Thomson on the Fourteenth street slide. Some ninety days since, there was referred to me a question of so improving South Fourteenth street, between Lane and Canal streets, as to effectually prevent further slides in this district. As you are aware, this street within that limit was a fill placed upon a stratum of pulverized clay, which overlaid a bed of hard and smooth clay, so that whenever the pulverized clay was dampened by water its tendency was to move upon the smooth surface below. The entire cost of this improvement will be in the neighborhood of $3,000, but I know of no cheaper method which would be of any value. If this plan herein suggested is faithfully carried out, I believe that no water will ever again pass under the street, and that the only slide that can ever be occasioned hereafter will be by reason of the removal of the earth by making brick to the eastward.
“This fill was unfortunately placed upon a stratum of broken and pulverized clay, which overlaid a bed of very hard and smooth clay.”
Seattle’s topography has always battled its own engineering. The mid-1890s struggle to stabilize streets built over unstable clays on Beacon Hill mirrors the city's modern-day efforts to manage massive infrastructure projects against the region's complex geology.
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