Regrading in Seattle

The topography of central Seattle was radically altered by a series of regrades in the city's first century of urban settlement, in what might have been the largest such alteration of urban terrain at the time.

The heart of Seattle, largest city in the state of Washington, is on an isthmus between the city's chief harbor—the saltwater Elliott Bay (an inlet of Puget Sound)—and the fresh water of Lake Washington. Capitol Hill, First Hill, and Beacon Hill collectively constitute a ridge along this isthmus. In addition, at the time the city was founded, the steep Denny Hill stood in the area now known as Belltown or the Denny Regrade.

When white settlers first came to Seattle in the early 1850s, the tides of Elliott Bay lapped at the base of Beacon Hill. The original location of the settlement that became Seattle—today's Pioneer Square—was a low-lying island. A series of regrades leveled paths for roads, demolished Denny Hill, and turned much of Jackson Hill (a remnant of which remains along Main Street in the International District) into a near-canyon between First and Beacon Hills. The roughly 50,000,000 short tons (45,400,000 t) of earth from these 60 regrades provided landfill for the city's waterfront and the industrial/commercial neighborhood now known as SoDo, and built Harbor Island, at the time the largest man-made island in the world.

Seattle's first 58 regrades "consisted largely of cutting the tops off high places and dumping the dirt into low places and onto the beach." The most dramatic result of this was along that former beach, filling the land that constitutes today's Central Waterfront. Today's Western Avenue and Alaskan Way lie on this landfill.

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