Later, levees were built and the channel was dredged. Within a year, construction began on a diversion dam and drift barrier a few miles southwest of Auburn. By 1913, both counties came to an agreement - Pierce County would keep the White River, but King County had to pay 60 percent of flood control. The suit went on for years with no decision. “Nature has transferred the course and it will be simpler to perpetuate it than to change it again,” he concluded. Chittenden noted that the original path of the White River flowed north to the Duwamish valley, but that its new course to Puget Sound was half as long.
Chittenden (1858-1917) was called in for assistance. Meetings were held, and district Army engineer Hiram A. Pierce County sued to restore the White River to its former course. This was a boon to King County farmers, but a bane for Pierce County farmers. A massive flood broke through the thin barrier that separated the White and the Stuck rivers, sending all of the White River water southward. In 1899, an explosion went awry and sent most of the White River into the channel of the Stuck River, originally a little brook that broke off from the White River south of Auburn, and eventually flowed into Commencement Bay.ĭynamiting the landscape was a common ritual for valley farmers, but in 1906 a natural event changed all that. Sometimes, they would dynamite new channels, but this would only shunt the water onto some other farmer’s land. Its reservoir contains water filled with glacier flour, which gives the White River its appearance and name.īeginning in the 1870s, farmers in the White River Valley suffered through floods almost every year. The dam was built to prevent massive flooding in South King County and North Pierce County, which used to occur almost annually. When Mud Mountain Dam was completed in 1948, it was the highest rock- and earth-filled dam in the world.
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