Talk:List of structures on Elliott Bay

Book
You might find Seattle Waterfront by Dorpat useful. King County Library System has it, or you can request it via Interlibrary Loan if you're not in King County. I have it checked out right now, researching Pacific Coast Company, and as I was going through it, your article idea came to mind as there's tons of possibly useful history in it (271 pages worth). Schazjmd  (talk)  17:27, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Using it from the online copy, have cited it quite a bit. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 04:10, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Sadly, the online PDF I linked is no longer there. The content is all available from https://pauldorpat.com/seattle-now-then-archive/the-seattle-waterfront-an-illustrated-history/, but in a different format. I'll try to update the citations some time to use either that or (if I can find it) an archive of the PDF. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 22:35, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Legal case of possible interest
PIONEER SAND AND GRAVEL COMPANY, Respondent, v. SEATTLE CONSTRUCTION & DRY DOCK COMPANY (1918) http://courts.mrsc.org/washreports/102WashReport/102WashReport0608.htm

Prior to March 25, 1890, an attempt was made to lay out and plat an addition to the city of Seattle known as Dearborn's second addition, which plat designated a strip of said tide lands as Charles street, which so-called street extended westerly from Commercial street, now First avenue south, to the deep water of Elliott bay, the center line thereof being approximately coincident with the north line of the strip thirty-three feet wide owned by the appellant, and upon which respondent claims an easement by virtue of the agreement hereinafter set forth.

On February 11, 1895, the plat of the Seattle tide lands, including the lands involved in this action, made by the tide land appraisers of King county, was filed in the office of the auditor of King county. And on the 15th day of March, 1895, the official plat of said tide lands was filed in the office of the board of state land commissioners at Olympia.

The respondent's claim is based upon a written agreement entered into on March 13, 1895, and recorded in the office of the county auditor of King county, Washington, on May 29, 1895. At the time said agreement was made, neither of the parties thereto had any title to the lands involved, except that they were in possession, had made valuable improvements, and claimed to have, and had, a preference right of purchase as given by the statute.

Etc.

- Jmabel &#124; Talk 06:41, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

1918 map
Another good source: File:Port of Seattle map, 1918.jpg. I actually uploaded this 10 years ago, but had forgotten it. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 06:20, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Done. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 23:33, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Trying to sort out the Flyer Dock
There were apparently two successive Flyer Docks, or it was expanded, or some such; as of this writing I still need to work this into the list.

According to, the 1901 dock was an "extension and enlargement" of the prior dock. Some possibly relevant passages: "The new dock will be 60x200 feet, extending out on the same general plans as the other new docks, but having some differences, to facilitate the landing and sailing of the well known fast passenger steamer. The outer face of the dock will be considerably more oblique, so that the Flyer can more readily clear adjoining dock property when departing, that steamer always backing out and making a circuit to get upon her course." "A temporary dock is being arranged for the use of the Flyer pending the construction of the new dock. This is just north of the old dock and adjoins the fire boat headquarters. This is the work that was started this morning. The property of which the Flyer dock formed a part originally belonged to the old Commercial Mill Company, and is still the property of the Commercial Company, successor&hellip; Mr. Dobson was originally a manager of the old Commercial Mill Company, whose saw mill stood not far from where the union depot now stands."

- Jmabel &#124; Talk 07:14, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Maps possibly of interest
I haven't "mined" these. They look of some interest; some probably would be useful only if you actually could get hold of the original work.
 * Real property survey, Seattle, Washington, 1939-40, Volume 2. Identification map [no. 1 ]
 * Real property survey, Seattle, Washington, 1939-40, Volume 2. Identification map [no. 2 ]
 * Real property survey, Seattle, Washington, 1939-40, Volume 2. Converted structures

Undoubtedly a lot could be done with the many nautical charts for Elliott Bay over the years, available at https://historicalcharts.noaa.gov. These would be particularly good for determining exactly when certain structures were built and destroyed, what was filled when, etc. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 02:00, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Also some highly relevant photos in https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/1/3/18167234/seattle-waterfront-before-viaduct-photos that may help sort out some confusions. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 04:05, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

1889 dates from a January 1, 1890 article
I've cited a few things from ; there is a lot more presumably relevant information there for someone more expert than me to glean. Very few of the piers/wharves retained the names given in the list here, some of which reflect names of pre-Fire wharves, where the eventual names of the new wharves were different (e.g. "Harrington & Smith", "Badere's Wharf") and some of which I don't know even that much about (e.g. "Carkeek & Nicholas' Wharf", or one attributed to Guy C. Phinney). - Jmabel &#124; Talk 04:53, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

1899 Polk's
This morning Seattle historian Rob Ketcherside passed to me, and I uploaded to Commons, a listing of wharves and docks from the 1899 Polk's Seattle City Directory. Unfortunately it's in alphabetical rather than geographical order so (for example) if several facilities are listed as "foot [of] Washington [Street]" it's no help in sorting their sequence along the waterfront. I've been able to digest a good bit of it into the notes, especially confirming longer lives than we'd previously been able to document for some wharves built in the 1880s on the northern part of the Central Waterfront. However, there is a good deal of content here that I can't make use of at this time. I wanted to identify it for anyone who may want to follow up. I've rearranged these to run south-to-north based on the locations given:

Jmabel &#124; Talk 00:12, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Piers A, B, and C
(updated January 2007) states on page 18, "South of the central waterfront and Yesler Way, the Ocean Dock, located roughly between Main and Washington Streets, consisted of two piers, Pier A and Pier B (later Pier 48), adjoined to the south by Pier C, known as the City Dock. Previously Pier A had been located between Main and Washington Streets and Pier B between Jackson and Main Streets. Completed in 1901, the new piers were owned by the Pacific Coast Company, the successor firm to the Oregon Improvement Company, which had gone bankrupt in 1895." ''[See for Oregon Improvement Company and Pacific Coast Company. - JM]'' As I've examined photos, I've come to doubt that there were new Piers A and B constructed around 1901. [Looks like I was at least partly wrong, though.] This section will be my effort to work this through in public. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 21:41, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Let's start with the configuration of the piers in 1888, before the of 1889 (right). We can see that the (successor to the Seattle and Walla Walla) owned two possibly relevant piers, "O.R. and N. Co's Ocean Dock" between Main and Washington, also known as Pier "A", and "O.R. and N. Co's City Dock" between Jackson and Main, also known as Pier "B". "O.R. and N. Co." would be. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 21:59, 3 January 2023 (UTC)



In contrast to that, this 1893 configuration (left) shows Oregon Improvement Company Pier "A" between Main and Washington Streets (corresponding to what Thomas Street describes as "previously") and Oregon Improvement Company Pier "B" between Jackson and Main Streets (ditto). So far, nothing to argue with. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 22:11, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

OK. Thomas Street is looking pretty good (though not necessarily on the specific date of 1901, I'll follow that up further). Here (at right) is a snapshot I took a few years back of part of Plate 1 in Baist's Real Estate Maps of Surveys of Seattle (1905). This shows three piers between Jackson and Washington Streets (not two as in the 1893 map). Collectively, they are labeled "Pacific Coast Company" and from north to south they are labeled "Pier A", "Pier B", and "Pier C". On the "land" side of Pier C (presumably mainly planking and perhaps rubble at this time) is a label "Pacific Coast Company's Mills & Warehouses".

So: the basic picture is as Thomas Street said. The open questions: Jmabel &#124; Talk 22:33, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
 * When between 1893 and 1905 did things change? Did they change just once, or more times?
 * Were the "new" Piers A and B collectively the "Ocean Dock" and Pier C the "City Dock"? Was that consistent over time?

For what it's worth, my doubts have been driven by photos. Unfortunately, a lot of these photos are dated vaguely, at best, and many have been mis-dated. As an adjunct to my work for Commons, I've been working with several Seattle GLAMs to try to improve the accuracy of their metadata for images from this era. At first it was pretty jarring when I'd see an image dated 1908 showing an open space where I know a building was built in 1904, or an image dated "circa 1890" showing something that was not built until 1894. At this point, I've gotten used to it; I send them an email, and usually they make the correction.

The following gallery is by Jmabel &#124; Talk.

In short, we've shed some light on our questions but haven't closed them:
 * We have photographic evidence that the post-Fire Oregon Improvement Co. was at least sometimes known as "City Dock". We don't so far have photographic evidence for the post-Fire Pier A carrying over the name "Ocean Dock"
 * Some time in the Klondike Gold Rush era, probably no earlier than 1898 and certainly no later that 1900, the name "Oregon Improvement Co." was removed at least from Pier B and we may reasonably presume from Pier A (the company had been reorganized in 1897 as the Pacific Coast Company, see Pacific Coast Steamship Company).
 * Some time, presumably after that but certainly no later that 1900, the name "The Pacific Coast Co." (and "City Dock") was added at least to Pier B and we may reasonably presume to Pier A. Again, we don't have any photographic evidence for "Ocean Dock" being added in parallel to "City Dock".
 * Some time, certainly after 1900, probably before 1904, and almost certainly by 1905 (the 1905 Baist map could show an "expected future" but that is unlikely), the post-Fire piers A & B were torn down, replaced by new Piers A, B, and C. It would seem that from their inception these were designated as "The Pacific Coast Co.", with Pier C associated from the outset with Lilly Bogardus.
 * Pier D was added either then or shortly after. A 1909 Report of the commissioner of corporations on transportation by water in the United States includes it in a list of "piers, docks, and wharves at Seattle in 1907."
 * We don't have any photographic evidence so far that this last set of Piers A and B were known collectively the "Ocean Dock" and Pier C the "City Dock". For the latter, we have Plate 1 of the 1912 Baist Seattle map as contemporary evidence. For the former, we really only have Thomas Street, a secondary source.

Jmabel &#124; Talk 05:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Another dock at Alki, or maybe the same one as the Manchester Ferry
https://www.facebook.com/groups/775630784532067?multi_permalinks=796755019086310

To be followed up. Jmabel &#124; Talk 02:30, 16 April 2024 (UTC)