The cove was named after Dr. Henry A. Smith of Wooster, Ohio, who, in 1853, was one of the first whites to settle in what is now Seattle. It was briefly a candidate to be the heart of the emerging city. The cove and its tide flats once stretched as far north as what is now the Interbay Athletic Field. James J. Hill bought of these tide flats in 1892 and had them filled in for the western terminal of the Great Northern Railway. At one time, the terminal included a switchyard, roundhouse, grain elevators, and warehouses as well as piers for oceangoing ships. Today, the rail yards of the BNSF Railway remain, as does the aforementioned athletic field. Other present-day features on landfill in what was formerly the cove are the Interbay Golf Center and the Washington Army National Guard Armory.