Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle Topography

*Forthcoming September 2015*
Residents and visitors in today’s Seattle would barely recognize the landscape that its founding settlers first encountered. As the city grew, its leaders and inhabitants dramatically altered its topography to accommodate their changing visions. In Too High and Too Steep, David B. Williams uses his deep knowledge of Seattle, scientific background, and extensive research and interviews to illuminate the physical challenges and sometimes startling hubris of these large-scale transformations, from the filling in of the Duwamish tideflats to the massive regrading project that pared down Denny Hill. 

In the course of telling this fascinating story, Williams helps readers find visible traces of the city’s former landscape and better understand Seattle as a place that has been radically reshaped.

[SJR_Media_Group]

It's one thing to remove millions of cubic yards of earth in mining operations, but massive grading projects back then were very labor intensive. Today we have gigantic and powerful machines and technology. Even today, this would be considered massive and risk prone. I love the old history of Seattle. Hard to look at the present without knowing it's past.

[d.martin]

For years I worked in the Terminal Annex building at 4th and Lander. It would have been where the tide flats were. It was built in 1954/55. The maintenance people there judge that the huge cement building is slowly sinking at an imperceptible rate. There is water at the bottom of the elevator shafts. It became a headquarters for Seattle Schools in the nineties.

[noelleelizabeth]

That guy's vest with the map of Seattle is awesome 😂

[SenatorBlutarsky]

It's all good until the 9.0 Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami...