Bridges of Seattle by Elenga Maureen R.;

Author:Elenga, Maureen R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: unknown
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The engineering efforts involved in reshaping early-20th-century Seattle also forever altered the landscape south of downtown. By 1909, Harbor Island, then the world’s largest man-made island, was being constructed at the Duwamish River delta, and the river’s tidal flats were being filled to create buildable land. In this c. 1900 photograph, the Grant Street plank trestle is shown over the tidelands with West Seattle in the distance. (Washington State Digital Archives.)

The 1909 construction of Harbor Island divided the mouth of the Duwamish River into two channels called the East and West Waterways. That same year, the city formed the Duwamish Waterway Commission to sell bonds to fund rechanneling the river in effort to alleviate flooding and open the area for industrial and commercial use. The river’s natural path was a series of oxbows meandering toward Elliott Bay. Work to straighten and dredge the Duwamish River began in 1913. By 1920, twenty million cubic feet of earth had been dredged from the river. The circuitous, 9-mile-long river was transformed into a straight, 50-foot-deep, 5-mile-long waterway capable of handling oceangoing vessels. This 1915 image shows the East Waterway and looks north toward Elliott Bay. The Smith Tower, completed one year before the photograph was taken, is visible poking above the horizon at far right. (SMA, item 739.)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.