Life and Times in Leschi

Landslides in Leschi, Part 2

Early 20th century slides and the city’s prevention efforts

In late November 1909, residents from 32nd and Dearborn to 33rd and Judkins petitioned the City Council to “take some action at once with a view to restraining the slide which is mucking our homes – such slide being caused by the recent grading of streets in that district.” In response, a month later, the council passed an emergency bill to authorize “the driving of piles and the construction of bulkheads to stop the slides on 31st Avenue South between Lane Street and Judkins Street.”

That didn’t solve all the landslide problems, however. In April 1912, the council directed the Board of Public Works to remove slides on 31st from Dearborn to Norman and elsewhere in the area, and to construct rock drains in the same area.

Sometime before 1926, the city built a drainage tunnel in the divided portion of Lake Washington Boulevard South (also known then as 34th Avenue South), between Charles and Judkins streets, from the top of South Parkland Place (then called Parkland Way) to the southwest and south for a total of 517 feet. In the fall of 1926, a slide happened near the northern end of the tunnel.

That winter, a cave-in occurred nearby, near the median of the street. In the spring of 1933, a city engineer reported cleaning debris out of the collapsed tunnel. He inspected the tunnel to a distance of 289 feet but could not go further because it had caved in as far beyond as he could see. The tunnel had originally been built with lumber bracing, which by this time was badly decayed. The engineer was concerned that continued caving would damage the private properties above. He called for repairs and backfilling.

Much of the repair work was funded by the state’s Washington Emergency Relief Administration, created in 1933 as the state’s response to the Depression, and used laborers consigned to such work in consideration of their relief benefits. The federal Works Progress Administration later joined the effort. To control subsurface water, the project, and others like it, used interceptor trenches, finger drains, tunnels, footing drains, and horizontal drains.

The working conditions were described as miserable: “Working approximately 150 men who are inexperienced, underfed and unwilling, in trenches from 15 to 25 feet in depth where the saturated ground is moving and under unfavorable weather conditions, is a difficult construction project to handle. These crews are changing continuously, as the men are working off their relief payments. The work is done on a basis of six hours a day and five days a week.”

Later documents refer to another slide, along the Norman Street stairway from 33rd to 34th near the tunnel described above. In response, the city drilled numerous test wells and created gravel-filled trench drains in 1935 and 1936.

Seattle, though, has sometimes sabotaged its own efforts. In 2019, when well-known local jazz musician Ruby Bishop died, her property on 32nd near Norman, right in the middle of the 1898 slide area, was sold to developers. To build two new houses on the property, they illegally cut down a massive old cedar tree that had been sucking up the hillside drainage for decades; the destruction may well contribute to future flooding or earth movement. The city cited the perpetrators and issued a fine of over $90,000, but later reduced it to $20,000, as if to say that it wasn’t really that important. Meanwhile, the two houses sold for about $7 million, on land acquired for just over $1 million. In Leschi, this is what affordable housing looks like.

Next month: landslides on Lake Dell

~Roger Lippman

The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 49 years in the neighborhood.