Document 39: Duwamish River
“Delta of Duwamish: A Bit of Unexplored Country at Seattle’s Doors,” Seattle Telegraph, 12 August 1894.
Western Arcadia is that bit of country contiguous to the deltas of the Duwamish River, so near yet so far from the busy scenes of the Queen City. From any of the doorways of the city residences west of Ninth and Tenth Streets it’s just like looking down into the lawn to take a peep across the shallow tide flats to the head of the bay, where, once there, is to be found one of the loveliest corners of rural scenery in all the country round about. But it is safe to say that not one person in every 1000 of the city’s inhabitants ever took a driver or a stroll or a sail in that direction…
Every farm has its meadows and truck patches and fruit gardens, grazing lands, etc., and teems with green and growing things almost the year round, for even in winter everything persists in growing, so vigorous is the soil and so mild the climate. Even at this time of year, with dusty roads, scorching sun, and no rain, there is an endless array of blossoms over meadow and common, which reminds one of an eastern prairie in May. Buttercups, crowfeet, bishop’s cap, the purple of the roadside thistle, with the deeper color of the willow herb, give a variety and phase to the pretty view far beyond the power of ordinary English to depict. Wild rose bushes by the tens of thousands border clumps of undergrowth, and in late May and early June there is a perfect ocean of bloom…
Down across the meadows and farm lands course tow or more considerable brooks that have left the hillsides long distances up the river valley. They are the laziest streams in their meanderings imaginable. They turn and twist and chase about over enough meadow land to make a farm as big as a Dakota wheat farm. They are as sluggish as an overgrown schoolboy…At every rising tide the waters back up till the streams are bank full. The brooks are full of thousands of small trout, as vicious after a fly or a salmon egg as ever trout could be. In the late spring time, especially, they will bite without the least regard for safety, and often as many as 300 of the diminutive beauties will adorn a basket in an afternoon’s fishing…
Two or three miles beyond the boundary of the city limits on the south the old Duwamish assumes the half appearance of a salt water bay. All the valley lands are diked and even then they must be looked after carefully at least every other year to preserve them from being beaten down by the overflow and constantly recurring tides. The principal dikes follow the river banks and are build some six or eight feet above the adjacent meadow lands. The river at all times of year is almost on a level with the low banks and diking is absolutely necessary on the deltas to protect from the tides, which are felt for a distance of several miles above. Once at least very other year the farmers go over their dikes and add to its height by throwing up the embankment. The pesky muskrat has got to be looked after and thinned out or he would be a constant menace to the dike…
Continuing down the river, which, by the way, runs north, we find it running in close under the base of the bluffs and soon, it begins to divide and subdivide, forming a network of islands at the mouth. Signs of salt water and the bay are now everywhere apparent in the shape of little mounds along the banks and the flaked and powdered grass roots, where the tides alternately flood it, and then leaves it, to bake in the August sun. Small floats, with fishermen’s huts, reels, seines and boats, appear and bedeck the river’s edge in fantastic style. Antonio and Maszarato and the nameless other sons of Sunny Italy have usurped the banks and pick up a vicarious existence by taking the jack salmon and, in their season, the pretty silversides that come up out of the bay to sport in the quieter waters of the old Duwamish. There are any number of squaw men hereabouts who follow most any calling, and their dusky helpmates can been see at all times pre-empting space in the dirty door-yards or clambering about the green hillsides on the hunt for ripe gooseberries, salmonberries, and blackberries. It’s a very lazy existence these people live in, an idle, shiftless Arcadian life, fully in contrast with the nineteenth century progress just across the bay…