The Buried Forest Beneath Denny Hill
Excavations for a new industrial facility in Seattle reveal a startling subterranean history: an ancient, preserved forest resting 22 feet beneath the city's surface.
The new factory of Denny & Co., in the course of erection at Seattle, is located on a hill 250 feet above tidewater. In excavating for the foundations to a depth of 22 feet, a strata developed as follows: three feet of beach gravel and loam; fifteen feet of hardpan or yellow clay; three feet of blue clay; and a strata of about eight feet of decayed trees, resembling partially developed bituminous coal in the secondary stage of formation. In lumps of from one to two feet, as exposed to the air, checks opened in a manner corresponding to the strata found in coal, but which could readily be distinguished as the grains or growths of the timber. Mingled with the semi-coal formation were roots an inch in diameter, as sound as when they were growing, to one of which was attached a piece of perfectly formed coal, as large as a man's fist. What countless ages must have passed since this primeval forest was in its full vigor, and by what mysterious process was there an inundation to bring it twenty-two feet beneath clay and the sands of a sea beach, to be again in later ages lifted 250 feet above the sea level? Let scientists answer.
“What countless ages must have passed since this primeval forest was in its full vigor, and by what mysterious process was there an inundation to bring it twenty-two feet beneath clay and the sands of a sea beach?”
This 1889 account describes the literal physical erasure of the landscape that once defined Seattle. Denny Hill was famously regraded and sluiced away by hydraulic hoses in the early 20th century to expand the business district, turning this 'primeval forest' site into the flat, urban sprawl of the modern Belltown and Denny Triangle neighborhoods.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.