Okay, Okay, so we cribbed basically this entire entry from Historylink --but only because it is such a great site. However, so that we don't feel too plagiarific, Seattlest has run the original essay through the the value-adding machinery in the back of the office (right near the alley where we all go out to smoke). Needless to say, we cribbed all of the following photos from UW Special Collections Division's assortment of awesome digitized archival photographs.

On October 31, 1911, the second phase of the Denny Regrade is completed. The regrade of Denny Hill is one of several projects designed to make more level the steep hills of Seattle.

The massive regrade established a uniform grade not to exceed 5 percent (no more than a 5 foot rise every 100 feet) to allow horse-drawn wagons [ and other conveyances ] to travel the streets more expeditiously. It incorporated an area from 2nd Avenue to 5th Avenue and from Pike Street to Cedar Street. It took eight years to sluice more than 5,000,000 cubic yards of dirt, mostly into Elliott Bay.

The greatest excavations of Denny Hill were along Blanchard Street, which was lowered 107 feet at 4th Avenue and 93 feet at 5th Avenue. The contract for the excavation of the hill was originally awarded to C. J. Erickson (1852-1937) in 1903, but in 1907 was transferred to Rainier Development Company. A high embankment remained along 5th Avenue until December 10, 1930, when the third and final phase of the Denny Regrade was completed.

To celebrate, dear reader, your goal is to better incorporate the excellent word sluice into your vocabulary. Also, on your next walk about town, be more observant of our tremendous sluicing legacy and the overwhelming influence of sluicing to this very day!

Incidentally, the mastermind behind much of this greasy sluicery? None other than hill-hater, Reginald Heber Thomson. We almost built a freeway in his honor before coming to our senses. Still, though, despite our transit-phillic, auto-skeptical, metronaturality (sorry, it was too lame to resist) which conventional leftist dogma would dictate that we should spit on the guy's grave, we greatly admire his work. We do like sewers, electricity, and an economically viable port, after all. And given this town's current inability to overcome our stifling civic process, we wonder how old R.H. would weigh in on current issues like The Viaduct, the floaters, and our lame new tourist slogan.