The Unseen Agriculture of the Duwamish Valley
A survey of the productive farmland, nascent dairy industry, and pioneering spirit of the families turning the Duwamish and White River riverbanks into a breadbasket for Seattle.
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.
In last week’s Star, an account was given of the Slaughter and White River settlements. This description now continues to the Sound, known as the Duwamish. The Duwamish is not over one mile in average width by ten miles long. The land cleared or reclaimed by settlers totals about 1,600 acres. While the valley is narrow, the land is exceptionally fertile. Mr. Burr, who settled in the valley in 1859, found a prairie that was once a sand flat just covered by the tide, now fifteen feet above the level of the bottom land. J. E. Clark and John Martin lead the market gardening business, supplying Seattle. There is significant potential for dairy; with a collective herd of hundreds of cattle, the farmers are perfectly positioned to establish a cheese factory, provided they can overcome the inertia of the market. Beyond the river bottoms, there is a tract of high land extending from Alki Point to New Tacoma where a new agricultural settlement is forming around what we have dubbed 'Steele’s Creek.'
“It is very strange, with the excellent stock of cows found in the Duwamish and White River settlements, that none have gone into the cheese making business.”
This 1878 account captures the Duwamish Valley before it was industrialized and straightened for shipping, painting it as a verdant agricultural hub for a growing Seattle. Today, the struggle to reclaim the environmental health of the Duwamish River for both community use and ecological restoration echoes this early transition from a wild, tidal landscape to a managed, productive space.
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