The Great Drain Struggle
Farmers from the Duwamish and Sammamish valleys rally to demand an expanded canal to solve recurring, devastating floods.
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 plague of waters which annually damages the farms in the valleys of the White, Green, Duwamish, Black, Cedar and Sammamish rivers is again here. The subject has been taken up by William Patrick Hayes, Henry H. Western, George Kinnear and others, who are moving for immediate relief by the widening and deepening of the Lake Washington outlet. The drainage system is so complicated that experience has proved that four into one won't go. The result is that by the time White river has been swollen by rain, it is bank full. Black river, reinforced by Cedar and the lakes, runs like a millrace and the stronger torrent wins. The weaker is driven back and overflows the rich farms which line its banks. The farmers propose to cut the present canal to a width of fifty feet at the bottom and to deepen it to about the level of Lake Union. They say they want relief now and they propose going the surest way about getting it—by helping themselves.
“Experience has proved that four into one won't go.”
The struggle to manage Lake Washington’s water levels and drainage—which eventually led to the Montlake Cut and the lowering of the lake in 1916—was a defining infrastructural crisis of 19th-century Seattle. Modern residents still deal with the legacy of these massive hydrological re-engineerings.
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