Notes
Excerpt from ‘Tukwila—Community at the Crossroads’ chronicling how the City of Tukwila opposed and ultimately defeated the Port Of Seattle’s postwar plan to industrialize the upper Duwamish Valley and Green River Valley as far as Auburn. Covers the Port’s 1938–1957 industrialization scheme to straighten the Duwamish River, displace communities including North Riverton, Duwamish, Allentown, South Riverton, and Renton Junction, and create over 3,500 acres of heavy industrial tracts. Details Mayor Baker’s coalition-building with the Washington Fisheries Department, Washington Highway Commission, and Valley Industrial Planning Council; Tukwila’s annexation strategy in 1957 to remove land from King County Planning Commission jurisdiction; adoption of a December 1957 zoning plan limiting development to commercial and light industrial use; and a Superior Court lawsuit filed October 22, 1957 by seventeen valley residents including Helen Nelsen, John and Louise Strander, and others challenging a two-mill Port property tax levy authorized by the Washington State Legislature. Also references engineering firm Knappen, Tibbetts, Abbett, McCarthy and Stratton hired in 1954, Bonneville Power Administration 1943 industrial survey, Howard Hanson Dam, and Andover Inc. land acquisition.