The Great Ditch: How Snohomish Settlers Tamed the Marsh

Mention was made last week of the enterprising efforts of settlers back of the marsh opposite town to drain the big marsh, as well as to secure direct water communication from their homes to the river. A visit to their place of work a few days since furnishes the following additional information: This marsh is about eight miles long by one and one-half to two and one-half miles wide. It is screened from the river by a fringe of timber averaging about one-fourth of a mile wide from Lowell to Fiddler’s Bluff. These men began their work some three weeks ago at Little's Slough, situated about one and three-fourths of a mile below town. This ditch is intended to cross about the center of the marsh, draining a large lake and collecting the waters of several streams into a single channel. The men thus far engaged are N.W. Larimer and a relation of his, G.W. Stevenson and his son John Stevenson. Mr. Little hires a man to assist them. Mr. Turner is rendering them assistance, and others are in various ways helping the project; but to Messrs. Larimer and Stevenson the main credit must be attributed. They have had to cut a great amount of timber and grub trees for nearly one-fourth of a mile. They have cut a channel nearly one-third of a mile long, wide enough and deep enough to pull a whitehall boat with oars up it. The current is exceedingly swift, so that now they only take out the bushes, roots and submerged logs, breaking up the earth with a spade, the water carrying it to the river. This ground sluicing diminishes their work greatly. At the edge of the timber where a few weeks ago the water was two feet deep, now one can go with ease.