Seattle Bet Big on a Canal and Sold the Country on Its Nerve
A reprint from the New York Post celebrated Seattle's $500,000 harbor subsidy and ship-canal plan as proof the city could boom straight through a depression.
The city of Seattle has again come to the front in the procession of enterprise and progress by raising, in these hard times, a subsidy of $500,000 for a great water-front improvement in its harbor, and for the construction of a canal connecting Puget Sound with the adjacent Lake Washington. This great enterprise is expected to cost several million dollars, and most of the capital will be furnished in St. Louis. The Seattle spirit, which never knows defeat, has been wonderfully aggressive in these latter days of business depression, and has just achieved a memorable victory by securing a great improvement which will boom the city everywhere.—New York Post.
The above refers to the south canal and the filling of the tide flats, over 1,500 acres, at the harbor, affording greatly increased commercial advantages, and by the connection with Lake Washington about the finest fresh-water harbor in the world. Preliminary work has commenced. Besides, a survey is also making for right-of-way for the north ship canal, in the north part of the city, connecting Lake Union and Lake Washington with Puget Sound, for which Congress has already made an appropriation.
“The Seattle spirit, which never knows defeat, has been wonderfully aggressive in these latter days of business depression, and has just achieved a memorable victory by securing a great improvement which will boom the city everywhere.”
The tide flats were eventually filled and the Lake Washington Ship Canal opened in 1917, remaking the city's geography. The 1895 booster language—public money, private capital, and a grand engineering fix—could be lifted almost verbatim from a modern waterfront or transit debate.
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