The Messy Business of Mapping the Waterfront
A state land commission discovers chaotic record-keeping that effectively clouded the titles to Jefferson County’s prime 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.
At its last two meetings, the state land commission has been engaged in investigating the work of the old board of equalization and appeal in the matter of applications to purchase tide lands of first class in Jefferson County. There appear to be 144 applications on file and in some forty of these exist important errors. This work of checking up such applications in various other counties reveals a complicated state of affairs. Descriptions do not follow the lines of the map and points of the compass are used in an unintelligible and confusing manner. In some cases the courses are too long, in others too short. Certificates of sale were ordered issued to nearly all applicants regardless of the fact that descriptions were defective. Deeds to the same tract have been issued to different parties in some cases and even platted streets have been included in certificates and some are altogether unintelligible. As a result, titles are clouded.
“Descriptions do not follow the lines of the map and points of the compass are used in an unintelligible and confusing manner.”
The competition for waterfront land has defined Seattle’s development for over a century. This bureaucratic nightmare of mismanaged tide lands reflects the era's land-grab mentality and the long-term legal complications that arose when municipal development outpaced professional surveying.
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