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SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY
J&M8Wm& CHANGED ITS
FACE
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MAR 15 1979
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A century ago, when the party from the Schooner "Exact"
landed at Alki Point, the waves of Puget Sound washed against the
foot of Beacon Hill and tide flats stretched south of King Street
covered with water and-seaweed at high tide. High tide waters of
Elliott Bay almost reached to 1st Avenue in the vicinity of Madison,
Marion and Columbia Streets, and the area between Yesler Way and Main
Street from Occidental Avenue almost to 5+>h Avenue was a swamp* A
high ridge obstructed eastward growth, and a huge hill known as the
Stewart Hump, or Denny Hill, prevented growth to the north*
In the early days the business district of Seattle was confined
to 1st and 2nd Avenues between Cherry and Jackson Streets, In'188?
work was begun on a large hotel near the top of Denny Hill at what
would now be 3rd Avenue and Stewart Street* First known as Denny
Hotel and later as the Washington Hotel, it commanded a wide panoramic view of the city and harbor and was a favorite stopping place
for the many newcomers to the city after gold was discovered in
Alaska in 1897• Patrons were carried up the steep slope of 3rd
Avenue by an inclined street railway*
By 1897, the year of discovery of gold, Madison Street was the
northern limit of the business district* The booming business
created by the gold rush swelled the demand for commercial building
sites in Seattle. By 1903, Pike Street was the northern boundary of
the business district and northward growth was pushing against Denny
Hill* During the ten years between 1900 and 1910 the population of
the City rocketed from 80,000 to 237,000*
The pressures of this sudden expansion resulted in a series of
60 projects, known as the regrades, extending over k0 years* The
earth from the hills was washed into the tideland areas* making level
lots of hilly ones and reclaiming the mud flats for commercial uses*
The first regrades consisted of cutting the tops off the hills
and dumping the earth into the low areas and onto the beach to form
what are now Western Avenue and Alaskan Way. The first big project
was the regrade of Jackson Hill, begun in 1907 and finished in 1910*
The deepest cut was 85 feet* The earth was used to fill in the tide
flats south of King Street to the foot of Beacon Hill, and 1,810,656
cubic yards of earth were removed* Soon afterward Dearborn Street
was re graded, opening up access to Ftainier Valley. Over a million
cubic yards were moved to fill tidelands and make them suitable for
building sites*
A series of regrades on Pike, Pine, and Olive Streets opened
up access to the upper business district from the eastern section of
the city, and in 1907 Westlake Avenue was graded through, accelerating northward growth.
The biggest regrade of all was the Denny Hill Regrade* This hill -
covered 62 city blocks, was 2^0 feet high and 107 feet above the highest point in the business district. Shortly after the gold rush, 1st
Avenue was cut through from Pike to Cedar Street* In 1909-1911 the
half of the hill nearest the harbor, an area of about 27 city blocks,
between Pine and Cedar Streets from 2nd Avenue to 5th Avenue, was
washed into Elliott Bay* Using placer mining methods, terrific jets
of water sluiced the earth and boulders from the hillside, carrying
it through tunnels and flumes out into the bay* Twenty million
gallons of water a day was pumped from Lake Union in this project.
Later Denny Hill Regrade No. 2, started in February, 1929, removed the
rest of the hill. In this latter project the earth was dug up with
power shovels and dumped onto conveyor belts which carried the earth
to the Sound, where it was dumped onto scows and towed out into deep
water*
In Seattle1 s 60 face lifting projects an estimated 50 million tons
of earth were moved into the low areas, tide flats and Elliott Bay*
&< I**""
City'Eifgineering Department
November 20, 1951
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