Vestiges

In the years both during and following the dredging of the Waterway, the sweeping oxbows of the Duwamish delta were systematically filled, and adjacent neighborhoods acquired land. Vestiges of the river along the Waterway were retained as slips to accept barges and relieve flooding. Portions of the urban grid itself remain as they were at the turn of the 20th Century. Though environmentally and spiritually violent, this alchemy left in its wake clues to what it had taken away, and these remnants allow us to trace the otherwise lost meandering path. Boeing’s runways, Georgetown’s Fidalgo Street, and the appropriately named River Street, directly follow the course that the Duwamish had claimed for millennia.