David B. Williams's Blog, page 6

Unique Map of Tideland and Ship Canal

My pal Rob Ketcherside recently passed along a link to an amazing map of Seattle. It’s the 1896 Anderson’s Street and Guide Map of the City of Seattle. (At present, as you can see, the map is for sale.) I have seen an earlier Anderson map and found it very useful for its details on city streets. What makes this one unique is that it’s the best map I know of that shows the planned South Canal across Beacon Hill in detail. This was the canal proposed by Eugene Semple. It was not built.

Detail of 1896 map showing canal cutting across Beacon Hill

In addition, the map also includes a fine detail of the filling in of the tideflats, also a project of Eugene Semple.

Detail of 1896 map showing tideflats filling.

I’m number 2!

I am pretty darned stunned to learn how well my new book Seattle Walks is selling. It’s on the bestseller list at University Bookstore, Elliott Bay Bookstore, Eagle Harbor Bookstore, and Third Place Ravenna books. Thanks for everyone’s support.

Two wonderful and thoughtful reviews

I am so honored to have these generous, thoughtful, field-tested reviews. And I am pleased that they got what I was trying to do–to get people outside and discover our amazing city and its natural and human stories.

The Seattle Review of Books – My favorite line: ” Like any good guide, Williams provides everything an amateur flaneur (flanateur?) needs to know.” I do like to think of myself as a kind of flaneur.

Island Books – My favorite line: “If we hadn’t been looking for something to look at we wouldn’t have seen it, wouldn’t have detoured through it, wouldn’t have chatted with one of the residents, and wouldn’t have been offered hand-wrapped packages of quinoa to take home. I know that sounds like something I made up, but it really happened. Didn’t it?” Wow, no one offered me quinoa, either here or on any of my walks. Guess I got to go back and try again.

Seattle Walks on New Day Northwest

Honored to be on New Day Northwest today chatting about my new book. One small error. There are no penguin or pigeon terra cotta or carved animals in downtown Seattle. I was trying to say pelican but a bit tongue tied. Oh well.

Click here to link to the show, or the previous link.

Seattle Times Review

I was honored and pleased by Mary Ann Gwinn’s amazing review of Seattle Walks in the Seattle Times today.

“Seattle Walks” is a guided tour organized into 17 different walks, accompanied by photos and handy maps that cover almost every neighborhood, from downtown to Lake Union to the International District to Green Lake to West Seattle. Each walk is from 1.1 to 7 miles long — you can complete them in a morning, a day, or off and on over several days. Bring your binoculars — some of the sights are several stories up.

Williams sees what others don’t because he doesn’t have a smartphone. He doesn’t even have a cellphone (he does have a slim 21st-century laptop). He’s the son of two historians — one a UW professor, the other a cookbook writer and food historian. He left Seattle for a few years, returned and has documented the city ever since.

Two new books

Wow, in the past week I have picked up copies of two new books of mine. One, I admit is not really new but is the paperback edition of Too High and Too Steep. This is rather exciting because my one previous hardback book, Stories in Stone, never made it from hardback to paper. Not that I am unbiased but I think the PB edition of Too High is rather handsome.

The second book is my newest, Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in Seattle. It’s also quite good looking and just about the right size for anyone who wants to get out and explore the city. And, if you want to get the book signed, I will be doing readings on March 1 (Seattle Public Library, Central branch, 7:00PM) and March 15 (University Book Store, 7:00PM).

Both books are published by the University of Washington Press.

Three essays about the Ship Canal

Because of the work that my pal Jen Ott and I have done on our book about the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Locks, I have been helping to update a few essays on HistoryLink.org. Here are summaries of the ones that were posted today.

Essay 1 – The Lake Washington Ship Canal’s opening was celebrated on July 4, 1917, exactly 63 years after Seattle pioneer Thomas Mercer (1813-1898) first proposed the idea of connecting the saltwater of Puget Sound to the freshwater of Lake Washington via Lake Union. For five decades following Mercer’s suggestion, local citizens, business leaders, government officials, military officers, and entrepreneurs discussed where to build the connection and how to pay for it. Finally, after Hiram M. Chittenden (1858-1917) took charge of the Seattle District of the Army Corps of Engineers in 1906, plans were made and federal funding obtained. The ship canal Chittenden designed consisted of two cuts, the Fremont Cut between Salmon Bay and Lake Union and the Montlake Cut between Lake Union and Lake Washington, and a set of locks at the west end of Salmon Bay. The canal’s construction lowered the water level of Lake Washington by nine feet and raised that of Salmon Bay behind the locks, changing it from a tidal inlet to a freshwater reservoir.

Essay 2 - On July 4, 1917, the SS Roosevelt passed through the Government Locks in Ballard, kicking off celebrations to dedicate the locks and Lake Washington Ship Canal, which had been open since mid-1916. The ship paused at the locks for dignitaries to make speeches that highlighted the importance of the great day. Additional speeches followed at the Fremont Bridge and then the Roosevelt led more than 200 boats on a grand parade through the Montlake Cut and down Lake Washington to Leschi Park in Southeast Seattle. One newspaper estimated that half of Seattle’s population lines the shores for the festivities.

Essay 3 – Sometime in the 1860s, Harvey L. Pike (ca. 1842-1897) began work on cutting a channel between Union Bay on Lake Washington and Portage Bay on Lake Union. Pike did not progress very far and soon abandoned his work but not the idea of canal. In 1869, Pike filed a plat of the isthmus between the two lakes, on which he would include space for a 200-foot-wide canal connecting the lakes. Like his earlier attempted connection, this was little more than a dream as Pike did no work on what he called the Union Canal. However, Pike’s goal was ultimately realized. The Montlake Cut — one segment of Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal linking the freshwater lake to the saltwater of Puget Sound — was dug across the isthmus near where Pike started digging half a century earlier.

Quote 2 – Steamers on the Sound

“That a steamer plying our waters will add more toward the growth and prosperity of our territory, than any other project, is apparent to all.”

September 16, 1854, Pioneer and Democrat

Quote of the Day 1 – A Periodic Series

I have been doing some fun research of late so thought I’d start a little periodic series of quotes that I have found interesting. Here’s the first.

“It is true that the Columbia river, like the principles of civil and religious equality, with wild and unconquerable fury, has burst asunder the Cascade and coast ranges of mountains, and shattered into fragments the basaltic formations…”

From “Memorial of Columbia Lancaster and W.T. Matlock, February 19, 1852″ 32nd Congress, 1st Session, House of Representative, Miscellaneous No. 14. (The full Memorial starts on page 105 of this document and contains other fine thoughts.

Two new book covers

Pleased as punch to show off the covers for my two new books, which will be out in 2016. The first one comes out in March and will be published by the University of Washington Press. The title explains it all. There will be 17 walks around the city, emphasizing many cool locations.

My second book will be co-authored with historian Jennifer Ott and will be published by HistoryLink.org. The book tells the story of the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, which officially opened on July 4, 1917. In the book, we trace the history of the locks and canal and surrounding landscape from geologic time to present time and explore the economic, environmental, and social changes that resulted the complete reengineering of Lake Washington, Lake Union, Salmon Bay, and the Black River.