History of Seattle Before 1900 - Yesler's Mill

Yesler's Mill

At first, Alki was larger than Seattle. "It was platted into six blocks of eight lots... and most of them had buildings on them that were in use. There weren't eight level, usable blocks in all of Seattle." However, when Henry Yesler brought "financial backing from a Massillon, Ohio capitalist, John E. McLain, to start a steam sawmill once he had isolated the perfect location for such a structure," he chose a Seattle location, on the waterfront where Maynard and Denny's plats met. Thereafter, Seattle would dominate the lumber industry.

Yesler selected this location because of a critical flaw with Alki as a port: "During the winter, the north wind, building up the tides in front of it, comes sweeping down the Sound out of Canada, piling mighty waves on Alki Point. Beginning with Terry... nobody has been able to build anything out in the water at Alki that will withstand those waves."

The road leading down the hill to that mill, later called Mill Street and now known as Yesler Way, was originally known as the Skid Road, the route for skidding logs down to the mill, hence the term "Skid Road" or corrupted as "Skid Row" for a rundown or dilapidated urban area as the mill declined and the area collapsed with the Crash and Great Depression.

Via the bargaining power of his mill, Yesler wrangled about 20,220 square feet (1,900 m²) of prime land from some of the original settlers. Besides his mill, Yesler started a cookhouse that "did more to 'set' the heart of the city in the middle of Yesler's property holdings than anything else Henry did. Henry never did make a lot of money out of his mill. It was the strategic location of his land that made him a millionaire." Like many of Seattle's early entrepreneurs, Yesler was not always the most scrupulous about how he made his money; he borrowed $30,000 at 8% interest to build the mill, and repaid McLain only after McLain took Yesler to court three times.