The Jackson Street regrade removed the largest single hill ever taken down in Seattle. It was the second-largest such project in the city's history, exceeded only by the series of five Denny Hill regrades. The excavation and fill work of the Jackson Street regrade covered about 56 city blocks and included nearly six miles of city streets. Most of the hill was located in what is today's Seattle's Chinatown-International District, running south from Washington to Lane streets and east from 6th Avenue S to 12th Avenue S. It was washed away by high-pressure water hoses and its dirt channeled to nearby tidelands, where it rebuilt an area from King to Atlantic streets between 4th and 8th avenues S. The hill was gone by December 1909, though cleanup operations and some secondary work continued through the early months of 1910.
Steep and Expensive
As Seattle's population expanded toward the Rainier Valley southeast of the downtown core at the turn of the twentieth century, complaints increased about a large hill located between Washington and Lane streets and 6th and 12th avenues S. Along with Dearborn Hill to its south, the Jackson Street Hill was part of a ridge that connected First Hill and Beacon Hill, but it was an impediment to the development that was spreading southeast. The hill was known as the Jackson Street Hill after the main throughfare which ran through it, and its streets – in some places with grades as steep as 19 percent – could be difficult to navigate. Worse, it was expensive to ship goods up the hill. The horse and wagon were still the primary method of transportation and local shipping, and steeper hills required more horses to haul the same load than were needed for a gentle slope or flat land. This could increase shipping costs on these steep streets by as much as five-fold.
There were various proposals. One included building a tunnel through the hill, while another called for a road from 4th Avenue S and Washington Street that would skirt the western and southern base of the hill and end at 9th and Weller. City Engineer Reginald Thomson (1856-1949) listened to these ideas. He especially liked the tunnel proposal, but given the success of the recent, initial Denny Hill regrades, Thomson advocated for the hill to be be sluiced away by steady blasts of high-pressure water from hydraulic hoses, as had been done on Denny Hill. Jackson Hill was mostly dirt (had it been solid rock, the hoses would have been useless) and there was little doubt the job could be accomplished. Additionally, dirt from the hill could be washed down into tidelands to the south and west and bring them level with the newly graded district. The removal work covered the area of the hill from Washington to Lane Street and reached east from 6th Avenue S almost to 12th Avenue S. The area to be filled ran from 4th Avenue S at King Steet reaching east just past 6th and King, and then expanded southeast before ending just north of Atlantic Street between 4th and 8th avenues S.
Early Delays
A petition from property owners in the proposed work area was submitted to the city council in October 1905, and the council passed an ordinance authorizing the project on February 8, 1906. Optimism ran high, so much so that on that same day The Seattle Times excitedly published a short but inaccurate article that proclaimed work was underway. (It was minor preparatory work that involved tearing out water mains on the western fringe of the proposed work area.) A problem was that part of the project involved private property, which the City of Seattle had no legal rights to. The city took legal action to condemn these properties, and proceedings dragged on into the autumn of 1906. Beginning September 11 and continuing six days a week until October 26, a Seattle jury dealt with 600 condemnation suits and rendered verdicts on each. Many of the verdicts involved simply approving a negotiated settlement between the city and property owner, but some of the cases went to trial and were bitterly contested.
With the condemnations completed, there was optimism that work would soon begin, but there were more delays, with City Engineer Thomson getting a healthy share of the blame. The city finally solicited bids in January 1907, and on March 9 opened the lone proposal for the project. It was from the Seattle firm of Lewis Construction Company, operating under the name Lewis & Wiley. The company's owner, William H. Lewis (1868-1923), was a well-known hydraulic engineer in the city who worked on a number of regrade projects in Seattle. In 1906 he was joined by attorney Charles Wiley (1863-1910), and the men formed a partnership that handled both the Jackson and Dearborn Street regrades as well as a project in Portland. However, their partnership was cut short when Wiley died in a drowning accident in 1910, and the company reverted to its former name of Lewis Construction Company. The contract price of $481,475 was calculated based on the estimated amount of dirt to be excavated and to be filled, which combined exceeded 3 million cubic yards. The contract price was equivalent to $16 million in 2024 dollars. For excavation work, the rate was 10 cents per cubic yard, while fill work was charged at 15 cents per cubic yard. The project was expected to take 30 months to complete, and the completion date was set for October 23, 1909.
The Giants
On May 27, 1907, work began at 8th Avenue S and Lane Street when two high-pressure hydraulic hoses began firing water at the base of the hill. Each set of two hoses, called "giants" because of their size, were operated out of a pit staffed by a team of five men. One man fired the hose, which had a 3-foot-long handle connected to a nozzle that measured between 7 and 10 feet long. The nozzle had an adjustable opening measuring between 3 and 5 inches, which delivered water at a pressure of roughly 90 pounds per square inch. (The water pressure in a house typically averages 60 pounds per square inch.) It required a high degree of skill to operate the hoses, and the job often went to men with prior experience operating similar equipment in Alaska's goldfields nearly 10 years earlier. "To a layman, it would be hard to explain the necessity of skill to 'squirt' water," explained a city report of the operation prepared shortly after it was finished. "To watch an old giant man 'herd' earth and mix water with different types of soils, keep the hill caving by undermining and pipelines open but always carrying to capacity, is a sight of unusual interest" ("The Jackson Street Regrade"). At the height of activity, there were six hoses in operation daily.
A second man in the pit directed the flow of dislodged rocks and mud to a pipe that carried it to the flats to the southwest to be used as fill, while another monitored the entrance to the pipe to ensure that only rocks small enough to fit got through the iron bars at its mouth. The pipe was made of wood, which had proven more practical to use than iron or steel, but there was one drawback – wood was more susceptible to wear and tear from gravel and rocks churning down the pipe. To combat this, the project's superintendent, James Hopkirk, devised a wooden "shoe" in which the grain end of the board was set in the bottom of the pipe to better handle the runoff. "By setting it on end to make the grain take the brunt of the terrible grinding the life of the shoe is made two years. The same block laid on its side last two weeks," explained a 1908 Seattle Times article ("Making the Hills …"). If a pipe clogged, a wooden ball was inserted and floated to the site of the blockage. The water passing through was squeezed underneath the ball at increased pressure because of the restricted space, and this could typically clear a line in 15 minutes.
Water came from the Beacon Hill Reservoir, which soon was supplemented by a supply from a pumping station that had previously been abandoned by the city on the Lake Washington shoreline at Holgate Street. When fully operational, both sources furnished up to 12 million gallons of water daily to the project. This capacity was doubled in May 1908 when another pumping station went into operation. The station, located at the foot of Connecticut Street (now Royal Brougham Way) at Elliott Bay, drew salt water directly from the bay. Another wooden pipe channeled the water to the worksite, but there was an extra step needed to maintain it – it had to be flushed with fresh water when not in use to remove the threat posed by teredos, a voracious wood-eating mollusk found in salt water.
A report prepared by the city says that an average of 111 men were on the job during the project, which increased to a high of 239 during peak periods. Except on Sundays, the crews worked 24 hours a day, in shifts of eight hours each. While the giant crews tended to get the most attention since they manned the hoses, other crews, such as pipe crews, grading crews, and shop crews, worked in tandem on the project to ensure its smooth progression. The men were paid in coin each week.
Hazards and Hassles
The work was hazardous, and it came with casualties. A hose operator died after he dropped his nozzle and it whiplashed and hit him. Another worker drowned in a flume that removed water from the pit. It was occasionally necessary to use dynamite to blast away pockets of rock that the hoses weren't strong enough to dislodge, and this carried its own dangers; in one case a worker was thawing dynamite over an open flame when it exploded and killed a nearby 9-year-old boy. Landslides and falling rocks were a threat, and to add insult to injury, pranksters occasionally threw rocks and pieces of bricks at the men and their equipment in the pit.
The first part of the project took out the southern and western side of the hill, and by the beginning of 1908, significant progress had been made in this area. "Persons not familiar with the progress being made on the Jackson Street regrade will be surprised to view the operations in the vicinity of Maynard Avenue and Weller Street. One is now able to make a good mental picture of the coming changed aspect of the south end, which is proceeding with astonishing rapidity," explained the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that winter ("Market Improving …").
The pace of the work quickened with the addition of the Connecticut Street pumping station that spring, and in September the project passed the halfway point. By this time nearly all the southwestern part of the hill had been removed and the work was moving east. A few of the newly lowered streets had already been graded, and in October streetcars began operation on a new line on Weller Street. "This section of the city has within the last two months undergone such a marked change in the matter of grades as to be hardly recognizable," reported the Post-Intelligencer in September ("Weller Street …").
Work continued through the end of the year. By the beginning of 1909, the project was about 70 percent complete. But on January 10, Lewis & Wiley walked off the job because of a funding issue that caused the city to be temporarily unable to pay the company. When private-property owners had signed the regrade petition three years earlier, they had agreed to pay for a city assessment of $6 per foot for any improvements to their property. When the actual assessment was levied by the city, it was closer to $9 per foot. Various property owners sued, and in November 1908 the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the assessment was invalid. Many property owners believed the city had taken advantage of them and were now unwilling to pay even the $6 per foot that they had originally agreed to. The city had been relying on revenues received from the assessments to help pay for the work, and funding dried up soon after. It took nearly a month, but enough recalcitrant property owners were eventually coaxed into abiding by their original $6-per-foot amount. Work resumed on February 8.
Sluicing to the End
By this time work had reached the steepest part of the hill on its northeastern side, which in places was 100 feet high. To illustrate, at 6th Avenue S and Jackson Street, 11-and-a-half feet of dirt were removed, but this rose to 61 feet at 7th and Jackson, and at the intersection of 9th and Jackson the hill was cut 85 feet. The dirt was funneled south and west and built up the tidelands as planned; in one instance, Seattle Boulevard (now Airport Way S) was raised 30 feet at 6th Avenue S. From 9th S and Jackson, workers moved east along the hill's crest between 9th and 10th avenues S, making cuts as much as 100 feet on private property in the area of 9th and 10th avenues S and Jackson and King streets before proceeding east on a downslope to 12th Avenue S.
There was almost always an audience watching the work above the pits, protected from going over the brink only by a makeshift fence, if that. A bigger problem came from pickpockets who trolled the crowd, looking for (and often finding) easy marks. Nevertheless, the work remained a feature attraction despite the hazards. It had plenty of visitors, especially during the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, but locals were drawn to it too, sometimes in spite of themselves: "You can practically tell how long a man has been in Seattle by the degree of interest he displays in these picturesque regrade operations," wrote the Post-Intelligencer that spring ("Washing Seattle's …"). "That interested questioner sometimes perhaps bores you who have been in Seattle a few years, to whom this has become a daily scene ... then we recollect that we used to be as much interested ourselves – and come to think of it, we haven't seen it at close range in a few weeks, and it's still interesting, isn't it?" ("Washing Seattle's …").
There was another threat of a work stoppage in the spring. Less than half of the private-property owners had committed to paying their share of the assessment in the deal reached earlier in the year. The holdouts were less eager to contribute, and further discussions proved futile. Eventually the city, Lewis & Wiley, and the property owners agreed to table the problem until after work was completed, leaving a quarter-million-dollar deficit that the city was still struggling to deal with long after the job was finished. Work proceeded apace through the rest of the year, and by December it was nearly done. The grade on Jackson Street was reduced from as much as 17 percent to 5 percent, while on King Street it was reduced from a maximum of 19.5 percent to 6 percent. By the end of 1909, the sluicing work was finished and many of the contractors were gone. In the western section of the newly regraded area streetcars were running, and new and attractive buildings were going up. Such was not the case farther east, where a muddy morass remained. Some roads were blocked, some were open but not paved, and some were just mud tracks.
Completion
Though the major operations were completed, ancillary work in the eastern part of the regrade area continued through the winter of 1910. This consisted primarily of finishing streets and cleaning up slides. On February 28, Lewis & Wiley submitted its final estimate (contract price) to the city. At $455,226 – about $15.2 million in 2024 – it came in slightly lower than its original bid. The project was formally declared complete, and it was accepted by the Board of Public Works on March 8, 1910. Approximately 3.35 million cubic yards of dirt were moved in the regrade, making it the largest single enterprise of its kind in the city.
Ironically, the automobile was gaining traction by 1910, and heavy trucks soon followed. By the 1920s, trucks had significantly reduced the problem of high shipping costs on steep hills. But as predicted, the Jackson Street regrade proved to be an economic boon to the city. The area eventually developed into the western part of Seattle's Chinatown neighborhood, and in 1999 became known as the Chinatown-International District.
