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31-558: The history of the line dates back to 1871, where a narrow-gauge line named the Washington, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railroad was chartered in 1871 as to connect Washington, D.C. to the Midwest at Cincinnati, Ohio. Little was done with this, but in 1892 a version of the railroad was revived when several businessman chartered it with the intentions of constructing a trunk line. Nothing was done with these proposals other grading some land. The name

62-418: A company town, by 1901. In 1933 the line was cut back to Bridgewater due to timber around the area drying up, and later to Dayton, Virginia . To the east the line reached Elkton by 1896, where the line's main yard and shops were constructed. The line was experiencing a downturn in the 1930s, but was revived when bought by Donald W. Thomas on September 1,1938, who was able to purchase more modern equipment. By

93-531: A controlled manner. They were symmetrical top-to-bottom and side to side; a seacock could be opened to fill one side with water. In three minutes it would capsize, dump its load, bob up, empty the tank, and right itself. One of the buildings demolished in Denny Regrade No. 2 was the Denny School on Battery Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. Opened in 1884, it had been described as "an architectural jewel...

124-446: A finished grade to the design of the project, or have CUT/FILL marks which specify how much dirt is to be added or subtracted. All grade marks are relative to site benchmarks that have been established. The regrading work is then often done using heavy machinery like bulldozers and excavators to roughly prepare an area, then a grader is used for a finer finish. In the environmental design professions, grading and regrading are

155-589: A lack of freight traffic. The Norfolk & Western purchased the Chesapeake Western in 1954, ending its status as an independent railroad. The Chesapeake Western survived as a separate entity from Norfolk & Western for a several years until the merger of the Norfolk & Western Railway and the Southern Railway in the 1980s, becoming part of Norfolk Southern. Norfolk Southern upgraded the route after buying

186-590: A low-lying island. A series of regrades leveled paths for roads, demolished Denny Hill, and turned much of Jackson Hill (a remnant of which remains along Main Street in the International District ) into a near-canyon between First and Beacon Hills. The roughly 50,000,000 short tons (45,400,000 t) of earth from these 60 regrades provided landfill for the city's waterfront and the industrial/commercial neighborhood now known as SoDo , and built Harbor Island , at

217-466: A ridge along this isthmus (see Seven hills of Seattle ). In addition, at the time the city was founded, the steep Denny Hill stood in the area now known as Belltown or the Denny Regrade . When European settlers first came to Seattle in the early 1850s, the tides of Elliott Bay lapped at the base of Beacon Hill. The original location of the settlement that became Seattle—today's Pioneer Square —was

248-575: A specifications and construction component in landscape design , landscape architecture , and architecture projects. It is used for buildings or outdoor amenities regarding foundations and footings , slope terracing and stabilizing, aesthetic contouring, and directing surface runoff drainage of stormwater and domestic/irrigation runoff flows. Reasons for regrading include: Potential problems and consequences from regrading include: Regrading in Seattle The topography of central Seattle

279-511: Is displayed at the Virginia Museum of Transportation . In addition, the old Chesapeake Western Station remains standing in downtown Harrisonburg. The Chesapeake Western Railway is currently a subsidiary of Norfolk Southern Railway and operates three rail lines under their ownership - Elkton to Dayton, Harrisonburg to Pleasant Valley, and Harrisonburg to Bowman. The railway is mainly used as an extension of Norfolk Southern and locomotives used on

310-414: Is the work of ensuring a level base, or one with a specified slope , for a construction work such as a foundation , the base course for a road or a railway , or landscape and garden improvements, or surface drainage. The earthworks created for such a purpose are often called the sub-grade or finished contouring (see diagram). Regrading is the process of grading for raising and/or lowering

341-545: The Jackson Regrade, the Dearborn Street Regrade made an even deeper cut through the ridge. In one place, the level of the land was lowered by 108 feet (32.9 m); 1.6 million cubic yards (1,223,288 m ) of earth were moved. As with Semple's abandoned canal, there were several landslides, and many homes were destroyed that were not originally planned to be removed. The resulting gap at Dearborn Street

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372-513: The city with ample fresh water by running a pipeline from the Cedar River . He then undertook to level the extreme hills that rose south and north of the bustling city center. A central concern of Thomson's work in Seattle was to connect disparate parts of the city together, allowing easier movement. Thomson was quoted as saying that the city had developed the land "with but little regard as to whether

403-482: The consequence of making other nearby slopes steeper, and potentially unstable or prone to erosion. In the case of gravel roads and earthworks for certain purposes, grading forms not just the base but the cover and surface of the finished construction, and is often called finished grade . After the existing conditions of the limit of work has been surveyed, surveyors will set stakes in places that are to be regraded. These stakes have marks on them that either give

434-569: The finest schoolhouse on the West Coast". While the 38 blocks were being regraded, the country entered the Great Depression , radically reducing the demand for land. Most of the new lots sat vacant into the 1940s; the area (especially east of Sixth Avenue) remained a gray zone into the early 21st century, when it finally began to gain an urban or suburban identity as the west edge of the new growth of South Lake Union . Thomas Burke questioned

465-413: The hill as jets of water, then run through tunnels to Elliott Bay. Much of the motivation for the regrade had been to increase land values, but the area opened up—the heart of today's Belltown—was left as a strip cut off from much of the rest of the city by the remaining eastern half of the hill, whose western face offered no route of approach. Meanwhile, property-owners and investors hesitated to build on

496-464: The hill, along with numerous residential buildings. The two-storey high Denny School was found on Battery Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and was considered "handsome in the extreme." City engineer R.H. Thomson considered Denny Hill to be the biggest impediment to traveling to other places in the city. Although in retrospect it is referred to as the Denny Regrade (and the name has become

527-541: The hill, requiring the demolition of the public South School and the original Holy Names Academy but providing fill for the tide flats below Beacon Hill that stretched south from King Street, filling in today's SoDo. Jackson Street became a slow slope upward from Elliott Bay in the west to the Central District east of the Capitol Hill ;– First Hill – Beacon Hill ridge. Shortly afterward, just south of

558-467: The levels of land. Such a project can also be referred to as a regrade . Regrading may be done on a small scale (as in preparation of a house site) or on quite a large scale (as in major reconfiguration of the terrain of a city, such as the Denny Regrade in Seattle ). Regrading is typically performed to make land more level (flatter), in which case it is sometimes called levelling . ) Levelling can have

589-471: The lines are from Norfolk Southern. Traffic is mainly agricultural products, paper, and other manufactured items. A portion of the line south of Harrisonburg between Pleasant Valley, Virginia and continuing to Staunton, Virginia is now owned and operated by the Shenandoah Valley Railroad . Grading (earthworks) Grading in civil engineering and landscape architectural construction

620-509: The mid-1940s, the Chesapeake Western operated a total of 53.5 miles in the Shenandoah Valley and interchanges with the C&;O , N&W , and Southern Railways . On January 1, 1943 the railway purchased some of the former Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's tracksfrom Harrisonburg, Virginia to Lexington, Virginia but abandoned the route from Staunton, Virginia , to Lexington, Virginia , due to

651-451: The name of a neighborhood), there were, in fact, several separate regrades of the former Denny Hill, beginning with private-sector efforts. Around 1900, property owners along relatively low-lying First Avenue took it upon themselves to cut through from Pike Street to Cedar Street. A similar cut (but initiated by the City) lowered Second Avenue in 1904; around the same time, the south part of the hill

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682-456: The railway, installing continuous welded rail over much of the route and replacing the bridge at Elkton which was destroyed by a flood in 1985. The shops at Elkton were razed in 1989. A historical marker was placed near the location of Stokesville at Stokesville Community Church to commemorate the history of the town, although most of it was destroyed by natural disasters in 1949. At least one Chesepeake Western locomotive has been preserved and

713-574: The remaining portion of the hill, because they considered it likely that their buildings would eventually be destroyed in the next phase of the regrading process, which was now well under way. The result was Denny Regrade No. 2, begun in February 1929 and lasting 22 months. This time, the technology was power shovels rather than sluicing, with earth carried to the waterfront by conveyor belts , then placed on specially designed scows and dumped in deep water. The scows were intentionally designed to capsize in

744-550: The route north of downtown favored by Burke, utilizing existing lakes and bays. Semple left behind a canyon that is now used by the Spokane Street interchange on Interstate 5 . Thomson resumed the work of cutting through Beacon Hill to connect central Seattle to the Rainier Valley , the first of his major regrades, but he made his cut farther north. The Jackson Regrade between 1907 and 1910 slashed 85 feet (25.9 m) from

775-409: The streets could ever be used or not, the main idea being, apparently, to sell the lots." The first, unsuccessful, attempt to pierce the Capitol Hill – First Hill – Beacon Hill ridge came at the end of this era of informal regrades. In 1895, former territorial governor Eugene Semple (1840–1908) proposed several ambitious plans to reengineer Seattle. One of these, which he undertook in 1901,

806-621: The time the largest man-made island in the world. Seattle's first 58 regrades "consisted largely of cutting the tops off high places and dumping the dirt into low places and onto the beach". The most dramatic result of this was along that former beach, filling the land that constitutes today's Central Waterfront . Today's Western Avenue and Alaskan Way lie on this landfill. These informal regrades came to an end around 1900; later regrades typically required changes to areas that had already undergone some development. City engineer R.H. Thomson established his prestige in 1900. He successfully provided

837-531: Was changed to Chesapeake & Western Railroad when actual construction on the line began in 1895. The line officially opened on March 23, 1896 in Harrisonburg , and went both east and west. In 1901, a businessman named W.E.D. Stokes bought the line and renamed it to the Chesapeake Western Railway. To the west, Bridgewater, Virginia was the original terminus, but the line was extended to Stokesville,

868-591: Was deep enough to require a bridge running roughly north-south. Originally known as the 12th Avenue South Bridge and now known as the Jose P. Rizal Bridge, it is now on the National Register of Historic Places . The Denny Regrade began before the Jackson and Dearborn Regrades, but the last stage was not completed until decades later. Before regrading, the much-admired Denny School and the upmarket Washington Hotel stood atop

899-467: Was radically altered by a series of regrades in the city's first century of urban settlement, in what might have been the largest such alteration of urban terrain at the time. The heart of Seattle, largest city in the state of Washington , is on an isthmus between the city's chief harbor—the saltwater Elliott Bay (an inlet of Puget Sound )—and the fresh water of Lake Washington . Capitol Hill , First Hill , and Beacon Hill collectively constitute

930-406: Was shaved off as Pike and Pine Streets were regraded between Second and Fifth Avenues. The more dramatic Denny Regrade No. 1 (1908–1911) sluiced away the entire half of the hill closest to the waterfront, about 27 city blocks extending from Pine Street to Cedar Street and from Second to Fifth Avenues. 20,000,000 US gallons (75,708 m ) of water a day were pumped from Lake Union , to be aimed at

961-476: Was to dig a canal from Elliott Bay to Lake Washington by cutting through Beacon Hill in roughly the area of Spokane Street, sluicing earth into the tide flats . His effort was defeated by unstable soils, which caused several cave-ins, and by the legal and political maneuvering of Judge Thomas Burke and others aligned with the Great Northern Railway . The Lake Washington Ship Canal ultimately followed

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