History of Seattle Before 1900 - Railroad Rivalry and Encroaching Civilization

Railroad Rivalry and Encroaching Civilization

On July 14, 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway announced that they had chosen the then-small town of Tacoma over Seattle as the Western terminus of their transcontinental railroad. The railroad barons appear to have been gambling on the advantage they could gain from being able to buy up the land around their terminus cheaply instead of bringing the railroad into a more established Pacific port town.

Unwilling to be bypassed, the citizens of Seattle chartered their own railroad, the Seattle & Walla Walla. This project did not get very far, though after later reorganization it did bring coal, fueling industry in Seattle. The later Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railway was only moderately more successful, although it did provide a route for logs to come to the city from as far away as Arlington, Washington, boost development of towns, and help Seattle hit the jackpot with the Northern Pacific. The Great Northern Railway did finally come to Seattle in 1884, winning Seattle a place in competition for freight, though it would be 1906 before Seattle finally acquired a major rail passenger terminal. The Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern was, over the years, incorporated into the Northern Pacific and then the Burlington Northern railways. The line was abandoned as a railroad in 1971 with the general decline in rail, and became in 1978 a foot and bicycle route renamed the Burke-Gilman Trail, then gradually greatly extended.

As has been remarked, Seattle in this era was an "open" and often relatively lawless town. Although it boasted two English-language newspapers (and, for a while, a third in Norwegian), and telephones had arrived in town, lynch law sometimes prevailed (there were at least four lynchings in 1882), schools barely operated, and indoor plumbing was a rare novelty. In the low mud flats where much of the city was built, sewage was almost as likely to come in on the tide as to flow away. Potholes in the street were so bad that legend has it there was at least one fatal drowning.

The 1882 lynchings are well described in Murray Morgan's book Skid Road. The events involved a mob defying an armed sheriff, successfully disarming the sheriff's deputies, and assaulting Judge Roger Sherman Greene, who attempted to slash the ropes by which the lynching victims were to be hanged. Judge Greene, while not doubting the actual guilt of the lynched men, was later to write that "the lynchers were co-criminal with the lynched."

In an era during which the Washington Territory was one of the first parts of the U.S. to (briefly) allow women's suffrage, Seattle women attempted to counter these trends and to be a civilizing influence. On April 4, 1884, 15 Seattle women founded The Ladies Relief Society to address "the number of needy and suffering cases within the limits of the city." This eventually resulted in the founding of the Seattle Children's Home, still in operation today.

Other signs of encroaching civilization were the city's first bathtub with plumbing 1870, and first streetcar in 1884, followed by a cable car from downtown over First Hill to Leschi Park in 1887. In 1885, the city passed an ordinance requiring attached sewer lines for all new residences. In 1886, the city got its first YMCA gymnasium, and in 1888 the exclusive Rainier Club was founded. On December 24, 1888, ferry service was inaugurated, connecting Seattle to West Seattle, near the location of the Denny Party's first attempt at settling at Alki and reviving that settlement. A year later, a bridge was built across Salmon Bay, providing a land route to the nearby town of Ballard, which after 17 years would be annexed to Seattle.

The relative fortunes of Seattle and Tacoma clearly show the nature of Seattle's growth. Though both Seattle and Tacoma grew at a rapid rate from 1880 to 1890, based on the strength of their timber industries, Seattle's growth as an exporter of services and manufactured goods continued for another two decades, while Tacoma's growth dropped almost to zero. The reason for this lies in Tacoma's nature as a company town and Seattle's successful avoidance of that condition.

Both Seattle and Tacoma in the 1880s were essentially lumber towns, built on the resulting export income. All over the Puget Sound there are communities that started with the same assets, timber and a port. However, Seattle's early lead with Yesler's mill and other enterprises meant that its economy was based on manufacturing as well as lumber, and was thus far more diversified than Tacoma's. The Northern Pacific Railway terminus only increased Tacoma's lumber trade instead of diversifying the economy. Meanwhile, Seattle became the hub for the region and the railroad had to come.