Union Bay Feature

Harry Wentworth Higman and Earl J. Larrison’s Union Bay, the life of a city marsh chronicles the intense ecological collision and aggressive hydrological subjugation of a fragile wetland ecosystem trapped within the heavily industrialized, expanding urban grid of Seattle. The narrative maps how the severe environmental realities of this contested topography—defined by the massive artificial lowering of Lake Washington and the violent, mechanized dredging of the Montlake Cut—permanently shattered the natural aquatic boundaries of the bay, forcing the surviving flora and fauna into a desperate, hyper-compressed existence. By detailing the striking juxtaposition of resilient marshland wildlife struggling against the relentless encroachment of raw municipal landfills and the heavy maritime traffic of the ship canal, the text illustrates how the localized ecology was strictly dictated by the urgent necessity of radically re-engineering the region's massive hydrological arteries to serve trans-oceanic commerce. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that artificially domesticating these volatile inland waterways and violently carving navigable marine transit corridors through the sheer terrain of the Seattle isthmus were the absolute prerequisites for binding the once-isolated freshwater lake to the tidal anchor of Puget Sound, leaving Union Bay as a captive remnant of a fundamentally conquered landscape.

315 pages illustrations 22 cm