The $4-an-Acre Shoreline Fight
Olympia’s Tribune rebuts a Spokane paper’s claim that Washington tide lands were being handed away for a pittance—and asks whether Governor Ferry must share the blame.
The Spokane Review is unfair with reference to the tide lands of this state and apparently delights in falsification. It says: “The tide lands in front of the new boom town of Port Gardner have recently been appraised at $4 per acre, probably a hundredth part of their real value, and under the infamous tide land law the land will probably be sold for that absurd price, since the law voted pre-emptive rights to the upland owner and permits him to take land at $4 an acre which another man might be eager to bid in at $200 or $300 per acre.” The Review knows very well that the lands mentioned will not be sold for that absurd price, and it knows, or ought to know, if it keeps posted on current events, that all the work of the tide land commission has been suspended until the work of the harbor line commission is completed in the various counties. No tide lands have been sold yet. The Review ought to get a correspondent at the state capital and not depend upon an uncertain Oregon newspaper for its reports.
The Spokane Review has gone daft again. In referring to the tide land law, over which it gets looney at every change of the moon, it says: “The time will yet come when every man who voted for that outrageous grab will be buried beneath the infamy of his record.” How about Governor Ferry, who signed the law? Must he be buried in the same way?
“The time will yet come when every man who voted for that outrageous grab will be buried beneath the infamy of his record.”
In 1891 the fight was over whether prime tide lands near a new port town would be handed cheaply to adjacent owners or sold at something closer to their real value. The same questions—public shoreline, port development, and who captures the upside—still shape Washington waterfront fights today. The Tribune’s complaint that a rival was relying on an “uncertain Oregon newspaper” also sounds familiar in an age of recycled and misattributed reporting.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.