Transcript
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Introduces the region as a place formed and sustained by water, from glaciers and the Salish Sea to the deep cultural meaning of water in Indigenous stories. The speakers connect landscape, origin stories, and the idea that people and place are inseparable.
Heat.Heat.
We are a city that was birthed by water.We were shaped by water and hopefully we will be sustained by water.That's why our story starts and ends with what comes from the sky.The thing that drives and sustains all life in the Northwest.Around 17 to 15,000 years ago, a blink in geological time, much of our region's water took the form of snow and ice, frozen in the massive Vashon Glacier that reached all the way south to Olympia.It was 3,000 ft high, where the Space Needle sits today, and a mile tall, only 90 mi north.Only the taller mountain stood above the massive ice fields.Over time, the ice sheet retreated rapidly, and the Pacific Ocean flooded in, leaving inlets, bays, islands, and fjords, what the natives called the Walsh or the Salish Sea.The southern end of the Salish Sea is today called Puget Sound.
As this ice melted, people settled the area.They had their own creation stories and myths for this fantastic landscape.
In the timeline of house, the great changer, our human lives are the blink of an eye, a snowflake falling on a blue glacier, wispy breath of cloud in an azure sky, particle of mist lifting a rainbow from awaterfall's dramatic cascade.And though our lives are but a flake of snow, drop of rain, sparkle on a cresting wave, together we are also the glacier, the salmon stream, the endless turning tides, ebbing and flowing.We are the changer in us.The spirit of water resides.We have been here for a very long time holding sacred knowledge that water is life.
I grew up listening to my grandmother talking about creation stories or origination stories.Mhm.Stories of origin.Mhm.Grandma used to talk about the the story of how we came to be, how the humans first began to make an appearance here in the Pacific Northwest.There's a site on the north end of Lake Washington.This site being around 14,500 years ago simply verifies these stories, what we call uh teaching stories about who we are and where we come from.Mhm.There are a lot of those stories in our in our communities, in our native nations.And what strikes me is that many of them are family stories.We've got all these different stories.How do we start to piece these together?But that was actually the wrong question because these are family histories.And so, of course, our families have come from many different places over time.
I guess I just think of them as long ago times, you know, stories from long ago times which reflect the long history that our nations have had uh here in the Salish Sea.And I'll take that term uh our history just a one step further and actually call it a relationship y with uh with the landscape.Yeah.A relationship with the first foods, a relationship with the water systems.Mhm.Right.all of these, you know, the mountains and all of these natural resources that exist within these areas that might help a lot of our non-native neighbors understand a little bit better about who we are and where we comefrom.And once they understand that there's this unique and very special relationship with these natural resources, then I think we're off on the right foot and in the right direction.
Describes thriving Indigenous communities in Western Washington, including food systems, fishing practices, longhouses, and potlatches. It emphasizes sustainable relationships with salmon, land, and water before non-native arrival.
Prior to the arrival of non-natives, the indigenous peoples of Western Washington lived in thriving communities numbering over 30,000 people.They hunted deer, elk, and bear, and gathered wild plants and berries.In owned fields maintained by fire, women cultivated camas, a bulb that tastes like an onion and a sweet potato when roasted.Native families relied on seafood that was gathered and caught from rivers, saltwater, and beaches.Villages had access to specific locations where they had harvesting rights.Macaus also pursued whales and seals, often going far out to sea to hunt.The most abundant and dependable fish was salmon.Native peoples took salmon and steel head in regular and dependable runs.Communities exchanged dried salmon for other goods across vast trade networks.Their fishing methods both maximized catches and conserved fish because indigenous peoples saw salmon, whales, and other fish as nonhuman kin who gave themselves to humans.
All communities observed some form of a first salmon ceremony.After catching the first salmon, they suspended fishing for a time and shared that first salmon with everyone.They then floated its bones down river where it could tell other salmon of the respect it had received.Lasting for days, these ceremonies allowed many fish to return to their spawning grounds.The region's original peoples lived in cedarplank longouses in winter villages.The largest long houses could be over 500 ft long.Extended families slept, cooked, repaired fishing gear, and shared oral histories in their long houses.High-ranking individuals owned property like long houses and fishing sites.They earned and kept their status by caring for the community.Villages along a watershed often shared similar practices, languages, and identities and worked together.Community leaders, the ones settlers later called chiefs, redistributed wealth through pot latches.These large feasts commemorated important events, affirmed the status of chiefs, and could last for weeks.
A potlatch host accumulated a great wealth over many years before giving it away to the hundreds of guests who came from nearby villages.Before the arrival of non-natives, Western Washington was populated by many different indigenous communities and languages.These peoples had thrived for thousands of years along the shoreline of Walsh, the body of water we now call Puet Sound, and in the nearby river valleys.They created and maintained and still maintain close relationships with their homelands and waters.
Covers European exploration of the region and the competing claims of Spanish, British, and American explorers. It contrasts colonial naming and ownership with Indigenous place names rooted in respect and relationship.
Since North America's discovery, merchants and sailors had sought a shortcut between Asia and the New World.The mythical Northwest Passage, if it existed, would cut months off a treacherous sea journey around the tip of South America.In 1596, a Greek known as Wanda Fuca claimed he had sailed almost 3,000 m north from Mexico and located the strait, which now bears his name, but returned home before mapping or exploring the area.When Britain's great maritime explorer, James Cook, arrived in 1778, he missed the straight because of poor weather.We saw nothing like it, nor is there the least probability that ever any such thing existed.In 1790, Spaniard Manuel Quimper explored the strait, leaving a legacy of names such as Lopez Island, Harrow Strait, and Rosario.Many of Quimper's names and claims were soon replaced when British Captain George Vancouver arrived in 1792.Vancouver and his crews became the first Europeans to sail south into what he named Admiral Ty Inlet and Puget Sound.
The name honored his lieutenant Peter Puget.Like most explorers of the time, Vancouver created new place names to establish ownership.In contrast, native place names reflected relationships based on generations of habitation.Names were not about ownership.They were about respect.For the land was a member of the community.As Captain Vancouver sailed through the region, he was impressed by the landscape.to describe the beauties of this region will on some future occasion be a very grateful task to the pen of a skillful panagyist.His appreciation did not extend to the native people.He labeled one village the most lowly and meanest of its kind.Clearly not a fair assessment of people who had thrived for thousands of years.Soon it would be altered forever.Within decades, the indigenous people were decimated by contact with the explorers.When Vancouver arrived, he found a great many deserted villages capable of holding many hundred inhabitants.
The cause, smallpox.Native people had no resistance, no immunity to smallox.So, it wiped out an estimated 30% of their population, making them far more susceptible to colonial takeover.With the arrival of the first Americans in 1841, the relatively good relationship between native and non-native began to change.When Charles Wilks and the United States Exploring Expedition sailed into the sound in 1841, they left behind more than 260 place names such as Elliot Bay and Bainbridge Island.The goal was to establish a framework for future ownership by non-native settlers.54 years had passed since George Vancouver sailed into Puet Sound.The dream of a Northwest Passage was long forgotten.In that time, people's relationship to the land had changed in contrast to the native viewpoint of sustainability and respect.The newcomers saw the land and water as products to be owned and sold.Salmon, timber, fur, coal, it was all fair game for personal profit and exploitation.
The repercussions would echo down through the
Follows the rise of the Hudson's Bay Company, the fur trade, and the first major non-native economic footholds in the region. It shows how trade posts, farming operations, and resource extraction reshaped the land and set the stage for Seattle's beginnings.
ages.My name is William Harrick.I'm a sailor on a Majesty's ship Discovery, captained by George Vancouver.It is the 30th of April, 1792, and we have been more than a year at sea.We've left the sandwiches months ago, seeking the Northwest Passage.With the trade winds now quartering behind us, there's less work aboard.I pass the hours with my paint box.I've used up all my bright colors and the tropics.But now, as we cross latitude 47, it seems as if the very color is draining from the world.Our first sight of land is black cliffs.Behind them, a forest of the very darkest green.Now I must use my dark colors.We enter the great channel and spike dwellings with smoke rising from them.Dark figures gather on the beach to watch us pass.Two skiffs are ready to ferry men ashore as we are eager to meet the inhabitants and trade for fresh food.
The rats have gotten into our hard attack.Our cheese is bad and the flower has weevils.
The rain does not cease and I have come to the last of my dark colors.Soon I will have no more paint.I have nothing left but black and the white of the paper.I need to find a thing to paint that is black and white only.Ah, there it is.
Moving west of the Rocky Mountains, England's mighty Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Vancouver in 1824.The Oregon Country had become its Colombia department.Hudson's Bay was North America's largest trading company, and pretty much all of North America's furs passed through the company's warehouses.Its leader was Dr.John Mclofflin.But he was not smiling.Foreign traders were getting furs right under his nose.So he built forts from southern Puget Sound to Russian Alaska and chased the foreigners out using fast canoes and sailing ships.Starting in 1833, Fort Nquali, located near present day Dupont, was a small trading post, but by the 1840s, it had become the company's main farming operation called the Puget Sound Agricultural Company.Most of today's Pierce County had thousands of grazing sheep, pigs, cattle, and horses.Coast Salish natives, British, French Canadian, and Hawaiian men, women, and children were hired to work the herds and fields.
They harvested tons of produce, wool, furs, and hides, all of which were shipped to distant ports.The company even sent a canoe full of potatoes to the hungry settlers on Alkai Point, the beginnings of Seattle.Even by 1845, very few Americans lived north of the Columbia River.The arriving settlers with dreams of land and fortune wanted the Hudson's Bay Company and Coast Salish natives gone.The trading post took center stage in a clash of cultures.Company land and property were stolen, animals killed, and its people harassed by the settlers.The Treaty of 1846 set the international boundary at the 49th parallel, putting all of Hudson's Bay's holdings south on US soil.Business declined and the company's leaders decided to leave, selling its land and buildings to the United States for $650,000 in 1870.Today, Hudson's Bay Company still exists, but only in Canada.In Washington state, it survives in history books and at places like Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Vancouver and Fort Nquali Living History Museum in
Tacoma.You see them at the aquarium, all cuddly and cute and playful.But 200 years ago, sea otterters played a key role in the discovery and settling of the Puet Sound region.In those days, sea otterters could be found from Alaska to Mexico in great abundance.Their fur, thick and soft and gorgeous, fetched incredible prices in China, and people combed the Pacific Northwest coast in search of this soft gold.Hundreds of thousands of otter were taken until by the 1820s, they were almost extinct.While the search for otter was confined to saltwater, trappers continued moving west from the Rocky Mountains in search of beaver, a pelt prized in Europe and Asia.Tens of thousands of beaver and other fur animals were trapped, skinned, and exported.Fur trading companies such as the Hudson's Bay Company built outposts and battled each other over access to the best trapping areas.
Settlements were established and fortunes were made.Early Seattle was built on an empire of fur.
Recounts the Denny Party's arrival at Alki, early cooperation with Duwamish and other Indigenous people, and the first businesses in Seattle. It then shifts to the rivalry among Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia over railroads, capital status, and the university.
Today, at Alkai Point, the west Seattle beach that draws thousands of Seattleites and tourists each summer day, there's a monument marking the city's birthplace.This Seattle hot spot was very different in 1851 when members of the Denny party, a group of settlers from Illinois who came west on the Oregon Trail, landed at Alkai on the schooner Exact on a dark, rainy Novemberday.The cabin built by one of their advanced men was still without a roof.Once off the boat, women in the party sat on the driftwood and cried.It was a rough way to start.When the Denny's arrived, Seattle was still in the Oregon territory, and Washington was another 36 years away from becoming the 42nd state.People say that settlers who came to Seattle had a relentless entrepreneurial spirit.That was certainly the case for the 24 members of the Denny party.
They called their new home New York Alky and the Dwamish people helped them survive their first winter and kept the youngest 6-week old Rolland Denny fed with clam nectar.Within a few months, several from the Denny party moved to a more favorable spot on Elliot Bay.The area looked much different then with steep hills and immense tide flats where today we have glittering sports stadiums.The city's namesake, Chief Seattle, was welcoming, providing food and trade to help the hapless settlers gain a foothold.Around that same time, March of 1852, Dr.David Doc Maynard landed at the New York Alkai settlement, arriving in a canoe paddled by Chief Seattle and other Dwamish tribal members.Almost immediately, he launched new business ventures, catching and salting salmon, cutting cordwood with help from the Dwamish people, and opening the Seattle Exchange General Store.The same month that Washington became a territory, Henry Yesler opened Puet Sound's first sawmill on the eastern shore of Elliot Bay.
It was lumber from the vast local forests that created the city's first major export industry and built many of Seattle's first formal structures.Yeser also employed many of the area's indigenous people and had a reputation for treating them well, knowing that without their labor and welcoming attitudes, the mill and the pioneers would not likely have survived.Roughly a decade later, Asa Mercer, the first University of Washington president, brought groups of Mercer girls here from the east coast, in part to work local teaching jobs, but also to be available as potential brides in a citypacked with bachelors.
His effort was best remembered by Here Come the Brides, a two season fictional TV series that debuted on ABC in 1968, inspired by the Seattle story.While the mills and those early businesses are long gone, these early pioneers carved a city out of the forest, in a way they are with us still, and we are reminded of them daily by the local street signs,Yler Way, Maynard Avenue, and the streets named for those in the original Denny party, Denny Way, Terry Avenue, Borne Avenue, and Bell Street.
It was April 1852, a year after the Denny party's founding of Seattle, that Nicholas Delan started building a water powered sawmill on commencement Bay.The mill jumpst started development in what became Tacoma, and it fueled a battle between Tacoma, Seattle, and Olympia.Each had big dreams of becoming a prestigious and profitable international port city.The cities battled for the railroad terminus, the state capital, and the territorial university.Decisions that would reverberate for generations.In 1868, Morton Matthew Macccarver founded Tacoma, believing it would secure the railroad terminus.Tacoma aggressively advocated that it was the natural choice given its superior location on Commencement Bay.But the competition was fierce.Northern Pacific Railroad surveyors visited Seattle in 1870, and a buying frenzy erupted.One Seattle lot that had sold for $300 only two years prior was resold for 10,000 bucks.The city even offered more than $700,000 in incentives to locate the railroad in Seattle.
Despite the incentives, Seattle was snubbed.In 1873, Northern Pacific announced Tacoma would get the railroad terminus.Seattle business leaders were furious and responded by building the Seattle and Walaw Wala Railroad and later another line that connected Seattle to the Canadian border.They continued to push Seattle's commercial advantages, slowly winning over Northern Pacific by the late 1880s.The historian John Caldick wrote, "Although Tacoma won the first transcontinental link, it would be Seattle that would have the first Grand Railroad depot in western Washington.King Street Station was completed in 1906 with Great Northern and Northern Pacific trains arriving from the north and the south.Landing the railroad service was a huge economic advantage for Seattle, positioning the city as a premier port and a transportation center for the entire region.Though the capital remained in Olympia, the big prize was the territorial university and that was established in Seattle in 1861 thanks to the efforts of pioneer Arthur Denny.
Washington's second governor, former Seattle police chief and businessman John McGrath, led the effort to purchase the land when the campus moved to its present location in 1895.Today, thousands make their first impressions of the Northwest at the University of Washington, one of the world's top universities, thanks to the visionary efforts of Seattle's early leaders.It was all part of a fierce competition between cities over 100 years ago.
Presents Chief Seattle's perspective on the city and the Point Elliott Treaty, including his efforts to protect his people through diplomacy. It also explains how the city's street layout reflects the differing visions of early founders.
When I was a little girl, the first home that I remember was the little house on 1st Avenue and Marian Street.At the foot of the bank, Indians camped and their canoes lined the beach.Sometimes I would scurry down the bank to watch the Indians about their campfires.We traded apples to them for bows and arrows.A large Indian camp was built on the shoreline of Lake Union near West Lake.The village held several families and its long houses were made of cedar slabs and bark to withstand the weather.An opening in the long house roof allowed the smoke to escape.Poles were laid across up near the roof and on these fish and clams were strung to dry over the fire.The woman would be weaving mats and baskets, cleaning fish and drying berries.We children like to go to the camp for there were so many interesting things going on.
We tried to speak shinook and everyone laughed at us in good fun.Even as a child, I realized the beauty of Indian life and I have a memory of a young Indian woman silhouetted against the sky with uplifted arms.
Seattle is named after my great great great grandfather.He was born about the year 1780.The city still carries his name today.It is the largest city in the world named after our Native American.People all over the world say Seattle, but in the local language is pronounced more like Seattle.This is the indigenous language of the region, the Shutzene.My grandfather was wise and resourceful.He requested a provision of unencumbered access to our tribal burial grounds in signing the Point Elliot Treaty of 1855.Access to our burial grounds is significant in our tribal beliefs.He recognized the strength of these strangers and the need to join forces with them to ensure the welfare and longevity of his people.Seattle represented both the Dwamish and the Suwamish tribes in signing the Point Elliot Treaty of 1855.A treaty giving away all the land known today as Seattle.
He recognized that resisting the coming change brought forth by these more powerful people would only result in death and destruction of his people.He chose to make friends with these strangers and in doing so influence any future decisions that might come.These friendships were not always popular.Seattle was a foreteller of things to come.Recognizing the impact these new people would have upon the region, people, and place, my grandfather, Chief Seattle, chose the path of subtle influence and friendship.
When settlers arrived west in the mid- 19th century, they came to claim land, to seize it from native tribes who' called it home for centuries, to transform it into cities and towns of their own making.Two of those settlers, Arthur Denny and David Doc Maynard, were architects of what would become Seattle.And they were two very different characters.Maynard, a drinker, Denny, a tea totler.Maynard was full of endless ideas for change.Denny was a cautious and careful business investor.Maynard lived with a native woman.Denny was a strict Christian.The most visible symbol of that history of these two different city founders came early as they laid out street plans for the property they claimed.The tangle their disagreements made of downtown streets still define our city.Denny's decision to run streets parallel to the waterfront made downtown Seattle angle away from the shoreline all the way from James Street to what we now call Belltown.
Maynard though chose a traditional north south east west pattern.The streets on his land followed the compass, not the waterfront.It's most visible now two centuries on at the intersection of James Street and Yeser Way.The one angling up the hillside, the other true to the compass heading due east.A perennial legacy of that 19th century quarrel.
Explores the central role of salmon in Indigenous life and how industrial fishing disrupted that balance. The chapter also covers treaty tensions, the Puget Sound War, and the long-term consequences for Native communities.
The story of Pacific Northwest salmon is one of abundance and balance that lasted thousands of years.Tens of millions of salmon arrived every summer and fall, feeding whole villages for the entire year.We're salmon people.Salmon has always been culture and culture as salmon.Everything points back to salmon for us.Salmon was as predictable as the rain and tides.They were part of an ecosystem that fed the local people and enriched the land.Our societies were built around salmon and uh the runs and our village locations and long houses and winter villages and summer villages were places where five generations of family could be at one time.Everything was in sync and there was just abundance and life and really living.The newcomers changed all that.To them, the salmon were like liquid silver.Soon there were fleets of fishermen, nets across rivermouths and hundreds of caneries up and down Puget Sound.
It was easy money.Everyone rushed to exploit this bounty of the sea.And still the salmon kept returning for a while until one day the nets didn't splash with silver.Salmon, the iconic fish of the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years.The desire of sportsmen and chefs worldwide was in big trouble.Its demise was sudden and predictable.We're in a place called the Evergreen State.And every time I read that, it makes me giggle.Or the apple state.Makes me giggle a little bit louder because for us it's the salmon state.You look at the abundance of rivers and the sea and Puget Sound.It's the salmon state.It's fed the inhabitants and the occupants since the beginning of time.And so we wonder, are we committed enough to save the salmon?If we save them, do we save ourselves?
In the mid 1880s, the population of Seattle was growing quickly as settlers began claiming land where our villages were located and where we hunted, fished, and gathered food.While many Indians and settlers worked and lived peacefully, there were culture clashes, skirmishes, and occasional outbreaks of violence as land was claimed by outsiders.Earlier in 1853, Washington territory Governor Isaac Stevens had held a rapid series of treaty talks with the local Indian nations.Stevens aim was to squeeze as many different Indian nations into the smallest territories possible to make room for the incoming settlers.The treaty of Point Elliot signed by Chief Seattle in 1855 accepted a reservation for both the Squamish and Dwamish.He believed that the settlement of vast numbers of outsiders was inevitable.Upset by the treaties and the taking of Indian lands, in January 1856, tribal warriors attacked the newcomers living in the Seattle settlement.
US Marines and a Navy sleep of war.The Decar fought back.The battle which lasted a single day was part of a larger Puget Sound war that included Yakama Indians as well as the Squali, Mlesshoot, Puallup, and Clickat tribal warriors.Governor Stevens tried to declare martial law.War shall be prosecuted until the last hostile Indian is exterminated, he said.Judge Francis Chennowith pushed back on his power grab.Chief Seattle was convinced that a peaceful path could be found.He believed the settlers needed the Indian people's labor and superior knowledge of the local natural resources.At the same time, Chief Seattle recognized the settlers brought technologies, weapons, and metalware, for example, and medicine that could help counter the diseases brought by outsiders.So, he stayed out of the violent conflicts.Tragically, the exclusion of Indian people from Seattle, the over fishing of the region salmon runs, and the failure to adhere to the treaties impoverished Indian people throughout the region.
Chief Seattle died waiting for the fulfillment of the treaty's promises.Still, those treaties became the foundation for later legal opinions that restored some of the rights guaranteed by the United States and practiced by our people today.
Tells the story of a young boy working in a logging camp, showing the labor, danger, and scale of timber extraction. The narrative ends with the forest being cut away and the loss of the boy's woodland home.
My name is Caleb.I'm 12 years old and I work at Simpson Camp 7 where the cold river comes down from Mount Toma.My father was a fell cutting trees until a barber chair broke his ribs.That's an accident when the tree spins around and just doesn't fall right.Father says he worked in the camps too when he was young.They took all the good trees first.So now I work to make money.I'll work in the camp kitchen for old Harper, boiling the beans and making the biscuits.When he isn't looking, I steal a spoon of molasses.He smells like tobacco and wet wool.The men are rough, and when I want to get away from them, I go into the forest.I go to where the big tree is.It's Douglas fur that's too big to cut.I have a friend who lives there.
I bring him crusts of red, which he likes.The trees we fell are fur, hemlock, cedar, and spruce.Nicholas Nickerson is the crew chief.He calls me little brother.He says that the spruce is for the masts of ships, the hemlock for bad houses, and the fur for good houses, the cedar for shakes.He says that we are building the city of San Francisco, a park called the western edition.Someday I want to go there.The men stand on springboards to fell the trees.Then they limb them.Nicholas says they will become beautiful homes.But aren't they already beautiful homes?We couldn't do it without horses.They like molasses, too.The horses pull the logs down the hill into the Black River.We make rafts of them.This is dangerous, too.Everything is dangerous.A steamboat pulls our load to the Yeser mill.There they load up ships with thousands of board feet and shingles.
Nick says the railroad will soon come all the way to the Yeser mill and take our wood over the mountains.The whole American West is building up cities, barns, schools, and churches.One day, I come back to camp 7 and they're taking it apart.We have cut all the trees.We must start a new camp.I help Harper load up the mules.It's time to go, but I want to say goodbye to my chipmunk.I go to the big tree, but they've taken it, too.It's gone.Just a giant stump.I don't see my chipmunk anywhere.This was his home.I hope he finds a new
Explains how railroads transformed Seattle from an isolated settlement into a regional hub. It also describes coal mining as a dangerous but powerful engine of growth before the industry declined.
one.Seattle had a big problem.Their infant settlement on the sailor Sea Puget Sound was isolated and accessible only by sailing ship or wagon.Hazardous journeys that took months to survive and grow.Seattle had to have a railroad, steam trains, iron horses that could carry household goods, building materials, farm produce, and people across the country in as few as 5 days.Seattle built its first railroads in the 1870s to carry local coal to Elliot Bay, giving the struggling young city a substantial economic base.In 1884, the main rail line to the outside world opened and Seattle boomed.The convenience of train travel boosted Seattle's population from 3,000 in 1880 to 43,000 in 1890.Trains brought consumer goods from the east coast and returned with lumber, canned salmon, and livestock from Puet Sound.Railroad exports built this town.Wealth grew.Many people lived better.But the impact of the railroad also ended Native American civilization as it had been for thousands of years.
Today, Amtrak Cascades and Sound Transit carry growing numbers of passengers, while Union Pacific and BNSF haul millions of tons of freight in all directions.Seattle is a portal to the world.The railroads helped convert an isolated rainy city in the Northwest into an interconnected transportation hub thanks to generations of diverse, hardworking people.All intertwined in Seattle's progression from a pioneer settlement to a modern metropolis.It wouldn't have been possible without the
railroads.In the 1800s, coal was society's oil and gas, heating homes, powering ships and sawmills, stoking railroad engines.It was the energy that powered the economy.Luckily, the Seattle area had lots of it.Settlers opened coal seams in 1865 along Coal Creek and the Newcastle area, and soon coal towns thrived throughout King and Pierce counties such as Black Diamond, Franklin, and Reton.Much of the coal was headed to California to power the ever growing demands of the railroads.It became one of Seattle's major exports.Coal mining was dirty, dangerous work, and the mines were owned by ruthless, hard-headed companies.Newcastle was a company town, and every man in town was employed by the company, from engineers to miners.They were paid in script to be spent in the company store at prices set by the company.According to the Atlantic Monthly, the miners lived in a grimy huddle of huts.
The work was brutal.Miners excavated hundreds of feet into the earth, lining the shafts with timber.The mines were mostly manned by recent immigrants.Welsh, Swedes, Scots, Finns, Italians, and Serbs, some as young as 16.Fire, cave-ins, and explosions were ever present.Fear stoked horrible violence and reckless behavior.Racism was prevalent with immigrants battling Chinese and black miners.There were strikes and horrible deaths as everyone fought for their fair share.In 1880, Newcastle produced 200,000 tons of coal alone, fueling the growth of the West.Coal production continued to rise, and by 1910, over 3.5 million tons was mined.But as society converted to oil and gas, coal lost its favor in the Northwest, and the mines faded away, closing a chapter on one of Seattle's most colorful and dangerous exports.
Describes Chinese immigration, their essential role in railroad and mill work, and the rise of anti-Chinese violence and exclusion. The chapter highlights both persecution and the resilience of Chinese communities in the Northwest.
The first Chinese immigrants to come to the US arrived in 1845.Lured by the promise of gold, Washington had mining and other natural resources and needed workers.Chinese came here looking for work.They they were instrumental in building railroads.The big one was Northern Pacific, which uh hired some 15,000 Chinese.Chin Jihi came to Fort Gamble in 1862, where he worked in the mill that shipped Puet Sound Lumber worldwide.Here he learned English and Samish and befriended Henry Yler, the head of one of Seattle's pioneering families.He came here and he's joined with Shin Chungh at the W Chong Company.They had a general store, sold Chinese and American goods.More important, they were labor contractors.The labor boom didn't last long.In 1883, a last spike ceremony commemorated the joining of the Pacific Northwest Leg with the transcontinental railroad.Upon completion, the industry had a huge surplus of laborers.
They were mad at Chinese, but even Chinese at that time didn't have jobs.There were anti-Chinese stuff in Olympia, Spokane, a little bit in wallala.Competition grew for the scarce work and already brewing anti-Chinese sentiments began to coalesce into unrest and policy action.They wanted Chinese out of America.That led to a number of riots.They took the Chinese from their headquarters and forced them onto wagons down to the waterfront to get shipped out.Those who could not board the steamer because they had no money were marched back to their quarters when shots rang out, causing casualties and injuries.Washington territory Governor Watson Squire declared martial law on February 10th.By the end of February 1886, only a few Chinese remained, including Chin Jihi.Two years after the riots, economic conditions raised the demand for labor, and Chin Jihi established his own business, the Kuangtuk Company.
The Chinese survived targeted violence and racist laws aimed to drive them out of the Pacific Northwest.It wouldn't be the only time Seattle struggled with its Asian population.Still, their perseverance was critical for the early development of the region.They established a strong community that grew, flourished, and continues to contribute over many generations.Seattle would be a much different city without them.
Covers the 1889 Seattle fire, the destruction of the business district, and the city's rapid rebuilding with brick and better infrastructure. It closes with Washington's admission to the Union and the excitement of statehood.
The spring of 1889 was warm and dry with very little rain that made Seattle famous.up and down its dusty street.Seattle was booming.People were pouring into town.Seattle grew from about 3,500 in 1880 to more than 42,000 10 years later.And by 1889, many of the buildings in Seattle were almost 40 years old.Most made of wood, now old and dried, seasoned like kindling.Ironically, in a region surrounded by water, Seattle didn't have much of a water system.The city tried to build one, but the people voted against spending the money.So when a clumsy carpenter at the corner of First in Madison accidentally set fire to a group on June 6th, 1889, it's no surprise the woods scraps and sawdust ignited.When Seattle firefighters arrived to douse the flames, Seattle's almost non-existent water system produced only a trickle.The fire spread quickly, overwhelming the volunteer firefighters.
The fire chief was out of town, so nobody was in charge.It was a raging ferno.Flames left high.Smoke filled the sky.People ran.Horses stamped.Chaos.The man who started the fire was John Back.They were going to lynch him if they ever found him.John Bach was never heard from again.
In the end, 30 square blocks burn.
Most of the business district, the heart of booming Seattle, was destroyed in just a few terrifying
hours.It was a complete loss.But Seattleites were tough.By the next day, the sound of tent stakes being hammered into the ground filled the air as a temporary town sprung
up.The old wooden city was replaced by brick buildings and a new fireproof city emerged in the area we today call Pioneer Square.Under Robert Moran's leadership, the fire became Urban Renewal.That volunteer fire department was replaced with full-time employees.Part of the new plan called for a more robust, reliable water supply.Everyone voted in favor of it.Breaking news.This just in.At 5:27 this afternoon, President Benjamin Harrison signed a proclamation declaring Washington to be the 42nd State of the Union.The penny was made from Washington gold.Celebrations broke out statewide.Eliza Ferry was elected the state's first governor.
Shows how the arrival of gold rush news transformed Seattle into a supply center and gateway to Alaska. It also notes the economic surge, the influx of travelers, and the gap between promise and reality.
In the early summer of 1897, astonishing rumors were flying around Seattle.Could it be true?When the steamship Portland chugged into Elliot Bay on July 6th, carrying 68 lucky men with more than a million dollars in gold dust and nuggets from Alaska's Yukon River, the city erupted.By that evening, everybody had gold fever.This is the richest thing ever known.Everybody here in Seattle is crazy.Gold gave people hope for a better tomorrow.The mid1 1890s had been tough with falling prices for lumber, coal, and fish causing hardship and unemployment.After the 1849 California gold rush, prospectors even combed the Northwest streams looking for nuggets of instant wealth.But even a hint of good fortune fanned the flames for locals willing to perform the backbreaking work of panning for gold.The rewards were huge.1 ounce of gold was worth $16.About 3 weeks pay for the average logger.
Nobody was immune from gold fever.Firemen, cops, fishermen, bankers, bakers, teachers, everyone raced north to seek their fortunes.Even the Seattle mayor caught gold fever and resigned, heading to Alaska.Local outfitters offered eager miners supplies and assistance.tents, gold pans, hats, gloves, maps, blankets, boots, pickaxes, anything you need.While the local bars sold hope and good luck in glasses of whiskey and beer, mining the miners was the retail boom of the century, it was said the merchants made a lot more money in their stores than theminers made in the cold, hard scrabble Klondike.The gold rush changed Seattle from a remote muddy backwater into what the Seattle Chamber of Commerce called the gateway to the Klondike.Step right up and get your gear and in North
the reality never lived up to the hype.Perhaps 10% of those who headed to the Yukon were successful with wide openen gambling and prostitution.One local observer remarked, "Cincinnat is a very wicked city just now."The gold rush began in 1897 and continued for 10 years.In just 4 years, $200 million in Klondike gold landed in Seattle and much of it remained in local banks for business loans and mortgages.Seattle flourished as the closest major port and supply depot on the Pacific coast.More than 70,000 Yukonbound travelers streamed through Seattle during the decade, spending $500 to $1,000 each to chase their dreams.The Klondike Gold Rush started as a rumor, but ended up being a gamecher for the whole
Introduces Emma Ray and her work among Seattle's poor, addicted, and marginalized residents after the gold rush era. Her story highlights faith-based reform and early social work in a growing city.
region.Emma Ray walked unafraid in the meanest streets of Seattle because she believed she was a child of God.She was born in Missouri in 1859, the daughter of an enslaved woman.She arrived in Seattle 30 years later, weeks after the great fire had leveled downtown.Emma Ray began to attend Seattle's African Methodist Episcopal Church and found salvation there.She was overcome with compassion for the lost and the drunkard, as she put it.But determined to make a difference, the Rays, husband and wife, grew into their work as evangelists among the poor.Addicted and imprisoned in Seattle.During and after the gold rush, Seattle's poor included hundreds of homeless, jobless men who'd failed in the Yukon and the broken women of the sex trade.Emma would visit the city's toughest brothel, bringing a message of redemption.As one of Seattle's first social workers, she celebrated her family's freedom from slavery by helping to liberate those shackled by addiction and
prostitution.Though Seattle had a massive growth spurt after the turn of the century, many still viewed it as a backwater frontier town.Seattle wanted to be somebody, a town with class and culture that attracted businesses and visionary leaders.To help change the perspective, in 1903, the city hired the renowned Olmstead Brothers landscape architecture firm, designers of New York's Central Park, Stanford University, Duke University, and many others for a master plan for a 20-mile linked park system.The Olmstead Brothers designs included Woodland Park and Volunteer Park, and they capitalized on shorelines to highlight the natural beauty.In 1906, Olmstead was also hired to design the grounds for the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, and it is arguably still the best part of the university's spectacular 700 acre
Describes Seattle's effort to become a more beautiful and modern city through the Olmsted Brothers' park system. The chapter emphasizes parks, boulevards, and public spaces as part of a larger civic transformation.
campus for the city.Olmsteads envisioned a series of interconnected parks and boulevards, starting at Seward Park and following Lake Washington clear across to Puget Sound.It was dynamic and innovative, capturing amazing views of the lakes, mountains, and waterways throughout the city.In addition to Olmstead's master plan, Seattle pushed ahead with other city enhancements.The Pike Place Market, new theaters and museums, schools and playgrounds, electric street cars, a long needed makeover.Through vision, determination, and creative genius, Seattle built amazing parks and public spaces that transformed a muddy frontier town into a modern, forwardthinking
city.On his first day in Seattle in 1903, landscape architect John Olmstead took city planners to the grand lookout at top the King County Courthouse.I do not know of any place where the natural advantages for parks are better than here.He said Olmstead's work included redesigns of volunteer and woodland parks, lowering and landscaping Green Lake, and developing Ravena and Lake Washington Boulevards.Within a decade, he created a Seattle park system that other cities envied.Olmstead was celebrated for capturing the most spectacular views from the natural environment.When people walk the UDub campus to the Drumheller fountain and rave about the Mount Reineer backdrop, that too was an Mstead vision.The centerpiece of his Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition design in 1909.Olmstead's goal was a park within a half mile of every home and a playfield within every mile.Today, with Seattle's 227 parks, that vision is largely realized.
Explains how annexation expanded Seattle's boundaries and brought in diverse neighborhoods and institutions. It also covers rapid population growth, new businesses, utilities, and the planning of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.
In early Seattle history, perhaps no year was as city changing as 1907.Prior to 1907, Seattle was a town more than a city with outlying communities scattered in all directions.On January 7th, 1907, all that changed when the city annexed the neighborhoods of Seward Park, Mount Baker, Beacon Hill, and a portion of Rainer Valley.Eight days later, Ravena was annexed to the north.Columbia City, South Park, and Ballard joined in May, and West Seattle came on board in July.In less than a year, the city tripled in size.These annexations added to Seattle's diversity in many ways.Communities like Ballard brought in Scandinavian workers who labored in shaken lumber mills.Rineer Valley and South Park had large numbers of Italian and Japanese farmers.Beacon Hill was home to many Asians and African-Americans lived throughout southeast Seattle.These communities had grown and prospered thanks to a robust trolley system that moved people to all the distant communities.
The trolley system was just one of the visionary accomplishments at that time.Others included the opening of the Pike Place Market, the Seattle Public Library, the founding of the Mountaineers Club, plus numerous theaters and organizations for music and the arts, the founding of Children's Orthopedic Hospital, and the Carolyn Klein GallenEndowment to help the sick and elderly.Visitors who saw the before and after were amazed by the transformation.But Seattle was only getting started.The best was yet to come.
As the 20th century began, Seattle was changing quickly.It wouldn't be until 100 years later in the 2010s before Seattle would see this type of growth thanks to the tech boom.From 1900 to 1910, the city's population soared from 80,000 to nearly a/4 million people.Boomtown was booming.Timber, railroads, salmon, and coal still drove the economy, but Seattle's economic base began to diversify.Ship building and trade took off, as did manufacturing jobs.A tiny shipping company named UPS started in 1907 and grew into a giant.A small shoe store called Wallin and Nordstrom opened downtown at Pike.Voters approved the formation of Seattle City Light in 1902 and the first hydroelectric plant on the Cedar River opened two years later.The Cedar River wershed also supplied the city's drinking water.To celebrate this success, Seattle Boosters determined that hosting a World's Fair would be the best way to showcase the region's wealth, resources, and advantages.
A 260 acre portion of the University of Washington campus was chosen for the site due to its proximity to downtown and its breathtaking views of the Cascades, the Olympics, and Lake Washington.Beginning in 1907, land was cleared and millions of trees and flowering plants were cultivated to beautify the landscape.The plan for the World's Fair was developed by the Olmstead brothers and it transformed the forested campus into an international destination.This set the stage for the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition of 1909.Seattle's introduction to the world and the beginning of one of the most amazing transformations in history.
Concludes by reflecting on Seattle's transformation from a forested settlement into a major city. The closing lines celebrate the city's resilience, ambition, and continued growth.
In just over 50 years, Seattle had evolved from an isolated rainswept settlement into a real city.It was ready to claim its place on the world stage.Through booms and busts, gold rushes and fires, sparkling summer days and gloomy gray winters, the innovative and visionary citizens had prevailed and with luck and courage created a city out of the forest.As you will see, Seattle was just getting started.
Hallelujah.
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