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From the above link in part "Fishermen's Terminal (Seattle)
Fishermen's Terminal on Seattle's Salmon Bay has served as the home port for the Puget Sound-based fishing fleet since it opened in 1914. The Port of Seattle developed the site soon after King County voters approved the Port's comprehensive development plan. Originally intended as a mixed fishing and cargo facility, the terminal's piers have largely been filled with fishing vessels throughout its history. The Port expanded and improved the terminal several times to increase moorage capacity and upgrade onshore facilities. Over time tourism grew in importance and, in 2002, the Port changed the terminal's regulations to accommodate pleasure boats. While this was a contentious decision, the mix of vessels and uses appears to be successful. The terminal continues to serve several hundred vessels of the North Pacific fishing fleet, providing moorage space, storage facilities, and access to a broad range of related businesses located at the terminal and along the ship canal.
Planning a Home Port for the Fishing Fleet
When the Port of Seattle was formed in 1911, the commissioners set to work developing a comprehensive plan for port facilities, which had to be submitted to voters for approval. They identified a site for a cargo-handling pier on the south side of Salmon Bay, then a saltwater inlet of Puget Sound lying between Ballard on the north and Magnolia, Interbay, and Queen Anne on the south, and included that in their initial plan. The commissioners also saw the terminal as an opportunity to build support for the Lake Washington Ship Canal, then under construction from Salmon Bay to Lake Washington:
"Its early improvement is of especial importance as tending to allay misgivings on the part of lumber manufacturers on the bay as to the effect of the Lake Washington canal work upon their business. With the certainty of a deep-sea dock at their very doors and a commodious channel leading out to the Sound, it would seem that the most incredulous must be convinced of the great possibilities in store for this section of the city" (... Bulletin No. 1, 31).
The commissioners intended to build a wharf and cargo facilities for oceangoing ships on the west side of the planned terminal to serve trade and to supply the U.S. Army's Fort Lawton, located just west of the terminal in Magnolia.
As these plans developed, Miller Freeman (1875-1955), who published Pacific Fisherman magazine and was deeply involved in fisheries issues, suggested that the Port include a "snug harbor" for fishing vessels on Salmon Bay. Later accounts would also credit the Puget Sound Purse Seine Fishermen's Association as an early supporter of that idea.
At the time, fishing vessels did not have a home port on Puget Sound and they laid up for the off-season wherever they could find moorage. Some could only find space on beaches -- a less-than-ideal situation that made it difficult to ready the boats for the next season. The proposed site's proximity to the city offered access to transportation infrastructure, labor, and supplies, and its capacity for mooring a large number of vessels would also allow fishermen to share resources and reduce costs. In turn, Seattle would benefit because the vessel owners would spend money for repairs, maintenance, and supplies in town before heading out to fisheries in Puget Sound, along the West Coast, and in Alaska.
The fishing fleet brought big business to Seattle. A report from 1913 lists 600,000 cases of salmon and about $25 million worth of fish products among the cargo passing through Seattle's harbor. Those products included frozen and fresh halibut, dry-salted herring, salt cod, whale fertilizer and oil, bottom fish, shellfish, pickled herring, salted salmon, halibut fletches (cheeks), black cod, salmon bellies, smoked and deviled fish, candlefish, flounder, smelts, red fish, codfish tongues, roe, caviar, fish bait, and seaweed.
Port commissioners agreed with Freeman's suggestion and made plans for a fishing-vessel terminal, which they called Fishermen's Headquarters in the early years, on Salmon Bay. The location would offer extra benefits once the Lake Washington Ship Canal locks were completed at the outlet of the bay, because then the saltwater inlet would become a freshwater reservoir. This would eliminate tides in the terminal's boat basin, decrease maintenance costs, and help prolong the life of wooden fishing vessels. Once voters approved the Port's comprehensive plan in March 1912, work began immediately to bring it to fruition.
Building Fishermen's Terminal
In June 1912 condemnation proceedings started on shoreline parcels owned by the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company, the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, the Seattle Cedar Lumber Manufacturing Company, the City of Seattle, and King County. In early 1913 the Port traded land it owned on Smith Cove for additional land on Salmon Bay owned by the Great Northern Railway, bringing the total terminal area to 45 acres.
Although at low tide the new terminal would only be accessible by a narrow, 3-foot-deep channel through the tideflats until construction of the locks at the outlet of Salmon Bay was completed in 1916, the Port began construction of the fishing and cargo terminal in February 1913. Much of the land to be used for onshore facilities needed to be filled to raise it above the level to which Salmon Bay would rise when the locks were closed. To that end, a bulkhead was constructed across the site and dredge spoils from the boat basin placed behind the wall. Unfortunately it turned out that the fill material "appears to be moderately firm and stable but after being churned up by the suction dredges and mixed with water, it resembles thin paste, and separates from the water with extreme reluctance" (Third Annual Report ..., 34). In addition the water-laden fill was pushing the bulkhead out of alignment. Work had to halt as the water drained out and better sources of fill material were found. The project was finished with dredge spoils from ship-canal excavation.
Meanwhile, construction of the overwater facilities proceeded. The commissioners planned to build one pier for fishing boats on the east side of the terminal and three for cargo on the west side. Adjacent to the fishing pier, they planned for a net warehouse with lockers for vessel owners to rent. Marine ways, the ramp-like structures used to move vessels between the water and the top of the pier, would be located between piers 2 and 3 to haul vessels out for maintenance and repairs. A large wharf on the west side with a large storage shed would provide space for handling cargo. The 1,000-foot slip alongside it would provide berthing space for oceangoing vessels once the bay was raised by the locks and those larger ships could access the terminal. Spur tracks reaching out to each of the cargo-handling piers from adjacent Great Northern and Northern Pacific main lines are shown on plans. A cold-storage building for fish also appears on early plans for the terminal, along with a "car ferry" slip intended for transporting rail cars across Salmon Bay to industrial sites on the north shore.
Fishermen's Terminal was dedicated on January 10, 1914. Actual construction differed from the plans laid out in 1913. The terminal as built offered moorings, a two-story warehouse for nets and fishermen's gear, 24 storage rooms, offices, a locker room, a fishermen's headquarters, and the marine ways. A large wharf on the west side of the terminal was built for cargo but only ever used as an overflow holding area for the Port's Smith Cove terminals south of Salmon Bay at the far end of Interbay. Railroad connections out to the piers do not appear to have been built, nor was a ferry slip. Instead, the Great Northern bridge west of the locks and the Northern Pacific bridge east of 14th Avenue NW provided options for carrying rail cars across the canal.
The opening of the terminal was greeted enthusiastically by Puget Sound fishing-vessel owners. A parade of about 200 boats formed in Puget Sound and included representatives from Tacoma, Everett, Bellingham, Anacortes, Olympia, other ports on the sound, and Alaska. The Oregonian led the way with a sign that said "Wake up, Tacoma! Give us shelter for our fishing fleet!" ("Fishermen Open ..."). The parade passed through the locks and arrived at the terminal for a day of festivities.
At the dedication ceremony, Frank J. Hemen (d. 1939) read a statement by Port Commission president Hiram Chittenden (1858-1917), who had earlier played a leading role in planning the ship canal. Chittenden acclaimed the ability of the terminal to "organize and solidify the scattered fishing industry of the Northwest, to provide a home for the extensive fishing fleet, to give such aid as the Port rightfully may in protecting the fisherman in marketing his hard-earned product" ("Fishermen Open ..."). Peter David (1874-1944), a former state legislator and businessman from Tacoma, spoke on "The Fishing Industry in the Northwest." Governor Ernest Lister (1870-1919), Seattle Mayor George Cotterill (1865-1958), Port of Seattle commissioners, and others also shared their thoughts on the occasion. A banquet for about 2,000 people followed in a nearby warehouse with entertainment by the United Norwegian Singers.
Rapid Growth
Interest in the fishing-fleet homeport on Salmon Bay grew quickly. In a 1913 report, the commission only expected about 50 boats to overwinter at the terminal. By 1915, in an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission, the Port Commission touted the possibility of accommodating 250 purse seiners, along with gill netters, trollers, cannery tenders, and other vessels. That goal was nearly met, with 226 vessels moored at the terminal by 1917.
The development also attracted other tenants. The Queen City Yacht Club leased a clubhouse built by the Port for the club's use near the Ballard Bridge, although it would be pushed out of the space by encroaching industrial uses within a couple of years. Those new industries included the Meacham & Babcock Shipbuilding Corporation, which established a shipyard at the terminal to build Ferris-type wooden steamships for the Emergency Fleet Corporation during World War I. It could build six ships at a time and was a veritable beehive of activity.
On the east side of the terminal, Adrian Estep (1890-1979) and Fred Kimball leased space from the Port near the marine ways and established Estep & Kimball, a machine shop that employed five men in fishing-vessel maintenance and repair. It would be replaced by the Fishing Vessel Owners Marine Ways in 1919. Several members of the Fishing Vessel Owners' Association, which consisted of the smaller halibut-fishing vessels, frustrated by the lack of capacity at area shipyards, formed the company, which still operated in 2017. The Port almost leased land to a boilermaker company, but decided instead to retain the land and use it for a storage warehouse, hoping to attract an Asian shipping company that could take advantage of the railroad connections adjacent to the terminal.
In addition to the onsite marine businesses, nearby shoreline tracts filled with related businesses over the next few decades. Machine shops, engine-repair shops, shipyards, sailmakers, and others took advantage of the aggregation of several hundred vessels in the terminal's moorage to build their businesses.
The winter of 1917 saw the first full overwintering of the fishing fleet at Fishermen's Terminal. A Seattle Times reporter waxed lyrical about the harbor and the variety of vessels occupying the slips:
"Seaworn of hull, stained of sail, patched of rigging and gear, still drenched of deck from the wild sprays of the North Pacific, two more fishing vessels this morning crept into the forest of masts moored at the Port Commission's big Salmon Bay terminal
...
"The forest [of masts] rises from the deserted decks of Neah Bay trollers, venturesome halibut schooners, a black-hulled and ancient barge, Alaska steam whalers, an Arctic whaler famed in the Far North's annals, sturdy cannery tenders, idle passenger steamboats, spic and span yachts, dilapidated craft of all rigs and makes -- all colors and all ages"("Fishing Vessels Creep ...").
The article went on to note that the terminal was quickly becoming a tourist attraction, with more than 150 visitors viewing the vessels on a recent Sunday.
Abandoned Vessels and Sawtooth Piers
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the terminal struggled somewhat. The area once occupied by the Meacham & Babcock shipyard had been occupied by several tenants, the last of which was the Pacific Wood Products Company, but that firm went into receivership in 1930. The piers deteriorated and at least two ships, the Nehalem and the Gedney, sank while moored and were not removed by their owners. In 1934, the Port considered blowing them up underwater with dynamite, but they had not been formally abandoned, so they were left in place. In late 1934, the Port combined about $15,000 of its own funds with nearly $100,000 from the federal Works Progress Administration to make improvements at the terminal. Workers rebuilt the bulkhead, cleared out the large marine ways, and completed other minor improvements.
World War II limited improvements to public works nationwide as supplies and workers were diverted to the war effort, but one significant project was completed at the terminal. In 1944 George Treadwell (1902-1977), then assistant chief engineer and later longtime chief engineer for the Port, designed a new style of pier to replace four of the existing mooring piers. Called sawtooth piers, they featured angled slips with small sections jutting out from the main pier, like the teeth of a saw. Vessels overlapped each other for much of their length and the "tooth" provided access to each vessel at its bow. This allowed four times the number of vessels to be moored once work was completed around 1945. The Port also built two new net-and-gear-locker buildings to replace a shed that burned down in 1942."