Uncle Sam Sells a Fort: Fort Townsend Is Set Adrift as Seattle Angles for the Garrison
President Cleveland approves transferring the old military reservation to the Interior Department for sale, clearing the way for a new post at Magnolia Bluff.
A Reserve Land.
Site of Fort Townsend Military Post to Be Sold.
A Move for the Seattle Post.
The decisive step towards the abandonment of the military post at Fort Townsend, which is the preliminary to the establishment of the post at Magnolia Bluff near this city, has been taken. President Cleveland has approved the transfer of the Fort Townsend reservation from the War to the Interior Department, which will probably sell it.
The news came yesterday in the form of a letter from Land Commissioner [name unclear] to Register O'Toole, notifying him that the recommendation of the Secretary of War to place the military reservation at Fort Townsend under control of the Secretary of the Interior, for disposition under the act of Congress approved July 1884, had been approved by President Cleveland.
March 18 last Joseph B. Doe, acting Secretary of War, addressed a letter to the president setting forth that the reservation at Fort Townsend had become useless for military purposes, and that the Secretary of the Interior should take charge of the land.
The act of Congress relative to this matter provides that whenever in the opinion of the president of the United States the lands, or any portion of them included within the limits of any military reservation heretofore or hereafter declared, have become or shall become useless for military purposes, he shall cause the same, or so much thereof as he may designate, to be placed under control of the Secretary of the Interior for disposition, as thereinafter provided, and shall cause to be filed with the Secretary of the Interior a notice thereof.
April 1, President Cleveland wrote on the back of the letter: "The within recommendation is approved. The Secretary of the Interior will cause the same to be noted on the records of the General Land Office."
The matter of platting the reservation and selling it is discretionary with the Secretary of the Interior. The reservation covers 622 acres, including portions of sections 21, 22, 27, 28 and 33, township 30 north of range 1 west.
“The decisive step towards the abandonment of the military post at Fort Townsend ... has been taken.”
Fort Townsend is now a state park, while the Seattle post it anticipated became Fort Lawton—today Discovery Park. The 1895 decision shows how military spending and public land were used to reshape Puget Sound, a story that still runs through base closures and waterfront redevelopment.
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