Metronatural: Inventing and Taming Nature in Seattle - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 100

into a major trading center, with the 1880 population of 3,500 residents
quickly growing to over 240,000 by 1910. 54 Third, an event of large-scale
destruction allowed the city to rebuild from scratch; in June 1889, the
entire downtown burned to the ground. The fi re consumed fi fty blocks
and resulting in property damages estimated at $10 million, although
miraculously no human lives were lost. 55
The 1889 fi re highlighted the need for a consistent water supply that
could provide fi re protection and support the growing urban popula-
tion. Thus, the development of water supply infrastructure had multiple
implications for residents of the city, not only as a means to protect the
past and present city but also to ensure a prosperous future. It would
involve the transformation of natural resource fl ows into capital fl ows,
a common formula for civic improvement across the United States at the
time. 56 From a public works perspective, the fi re was a godsend because
it created a tabula rasa upon which new infrastructure networks could
be built using an emerging rational and systematic planning logic; it also
fueled widespread civic spirit directed at rebuilding the decimated down-
town. 57 Beaton writes, “While the ruins were yet smoldering the people of
the stricken city met in the Armory to plan the rehabilitation of Seattle.” 58
Rehabilitation was completed in a few short years with the rebuilding
of the original wood buildings in brick and stone. More important,
the rebuilding of Seattle would involve several massive engineering proj-
ects that would remake the entire landscape and “improve” nature in
Seattle.
Bringing Water to Seattle
Before the 1889 fi re, residents of Seattle relied on pumps from Lake Wash-
ington for their water supply, but the pumping capacity proved inadequate
for fi re protection. The fi rst inclination by city offi cials after the fi re was to
increase the capacity of the existing system, but this strategy was quickly
abandoned in 1892, when Reginald H. Thomson was appointed as city
engineer (see fi gure 5.2). Thomson, a self-trained engineer from Indiana,
worked as a surveyor before he was hired by the City of Seattle to head
up its nascent engineering department. He argued that Lake Washington
was inadequate for the future growth of the city because of the expense
required to pump the water to the city's residents; he called instead for
a gravity-fed water supply from the Cedar River, a waterway that origi-
nates in the Cascade Mountains and fl ows into the southern end of Lake
Washington.