During the last ten years there has been expended in Seattle more
than fifteen millions of dollars in harbor improvements. By the
operations of the Seattle & Lake Washington Waterway Co. there
have been 1400 acres of land filled, much of it now covered with
buildings of a most substantial character. When this company began
operations these lands were covered twice a day from six to sixteen
feet with tidal water. Through them it dug waterways forty and fifty
feet deep at low tide two and one half miles long, 1000 feet wide,
and two miles additional five hundred feet wide. This has required
the construction of seven miles of bulkheads, all at a cost of a
little more than five millions of dollars, all paid by the owners of
the filled-in lands. Some four hundred additional acres of land, at
times covered by the tides or by high waters of the Duwamish River,
have been reclaimed.
A ship canal between the waters of Puget Sound and Lake Union and
Washington is now nearing completion and is expected to be in use
during the current year. It will admit the passage of ships drawing
thirty feet of water, directly into the lakes.
The locks at the outer entrance have been constructed by the United
States government. The larger is 850 feet long and is the second
in size on the American continent, being exceeded in size by one
of the locks of the Panama Canal. They cost $2,275,000. The state
of Washington, county of King and city of Seattle contributed
$1,250,000 to pay for condemnation of the necessary land and
dredging and digging of the canals. Add to this $6,000,000, raised
by the sale of longtime bonds voted by the people and expended
by the Port Commission of Seattle for docks and warehouses,
refrigerator plants and other facilities for speedy and economical
handling of cargoes of grain, fruit, fish, lumber, coal, etc., and
the above aggregate of $15,000,000 has been passed.
John W. B. Blackman, Esq., City Engineer of New Westminster, B.C.,
has supplied information regarding Victoria, Vancouver, and New
Westminster, British Columbia, as follows: Expenditures in Fraser
River in opening, deepening, straightening, etc., $1,399,645.05;
in Vancouver, mostly in widening the Narrows, $2,174,148.45; at
Victoria in recent years, $750,000 in round numbers, has been
spent in blasting and removing rock from the inner harbor, and a
new break-water is now being constructed at an estimated cost of
$3,000,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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