The Day Seattle Built a Railroad

The Transcontinental Railroad shaped the course of many a state’s history. The towns it passed through experienced building booms, population booms, business booms, at least in the short term. The towns it bypassed in some cases shriveled up and died. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Seattle reacted badly when its leaders learned that the Northern Pacific Railway had chosen Tacoma to the south as its terminus on Puget Sound. 

Arthur Denny read the telegram aloud from the city center to an eager crowd expecting good news. When they heard the decision was for Tacoma, cries echoed against the single-story buildings. The newspapers decried such an unfair decision. Seattle had the better harbor. Seattle had the Territorial University. How could the jewel of the Sound have been overlooked? Right then and there, the city fathers vowed they would not suffer silently.

They’d build their own railroad.

The plan was ambitious. They would lay trestle across the bay and out to the coal fields being developed on the other side of Lake Washington. From there, they would push the tracks up into the mountains, crossing what is now Snoqualmie Pass but what was then no more than sparsely traveled trail, to wend across the eastern half of the territory to Walla Walla. Think of it. The timber, salmon, and coal from Seattle heading to the burgeoning agricultural depot of the state, a major supply center for the gold mines in Idaho. Their fortunes were made.

It didn’t matter that they lacked any expertise in laying track or building the structures needed to span bays, rivers, and mountains. Within a week they had elected commissioners for the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad and filed articles of incorporation. It didn’t matter that they lacked funding. They issued $10 million in stock. You could buy it for $100 a share, or you could pay in-kind—by working, lending tools, or splitting wood for railroad. They had vision, they had purpose. They had the will of the approximately 800 people who called Seattle home.

For nearly a year, the papers kept the story alive. On May 1, 1874, canons boomed and the Seattle band played while every man, woman, and child in Seattle marched out to a spot some 3 miles south of the city to begin felling trees and clearing the way for the track that was to be laid. Everyone, from Mayor Henry Yesler to the most common sawmill worker, helped for free. The men did the heavy work; the women brought food and drink for a massive picnic to keep their spirits and energy up. Together, they managed to clear and grade 1 mile that day, and 12 miles by the end of October, when weather made it more difficult to work.

The Seattle railroad never did make it over the mountain, but it did arrive at the coal mines, bringing tons of the black gold to ships waiting in the harbor. You might say it was a labor not of love but of justification.

And speaking of labor, Marissa and I will be off next week and the week after for Labor Day, but come back September 5 to celebrate a new release in the Frontier Bachelors series, in which the Seattle May Day picnic looms large, Mail-Order Marriage Promise.

Move Over Seattle; Make Way for the Railroad

I grew up around Tacoma, Washington, moving back a few years ago. Some people won’t have heard of the town. Whenever anything happens in the entire state of Washington, the news media will claim it’s “near Seattle.” Seattle has the bigger harbor. Seattle has the larger population. Seattle has the sports teams (go, Hawks!) and the concert venues. Seattle is home to the University of Washington. Seattle was the site of the World’s Fair, the location of many popular movies (Sleepless in Seattle, anyone?). Tacoma has always been a poor second cousin to the south.

Except when the railroad came to town.

Seattle was still a hamlet then. Yes, it had scored the Territorial University (which was still more grammar school than university then). Yes, it boasted a steam-powered sawmill. Surely the transcontinental Northern Pacific Railroad would choose Seattle as its terminus on Puget Sound. After all, the city fathers had offered 7,500 lots in town, 3,000 acres along the way, $50,000 in cash, and $200,000 in bonds.

Nope. On July 14, 1873, the mighty railroad notified Seattle that it had chosen the tiny village of Tacoma City located on Commencement Bay instead.

The people of Seattle were aghast, appalled. How could they have been passed over, for Tacoma? They were also a little worried. What would happen to Seattle if all the rail traffic went south? Papers of the time carried ads from merchants, saying “No terminus! And yet alive” and encouraging shoppers to come in for bargains.

Tacoma City was rather puffed up about the whole thing. There was a rush to buy land, position shops where the travelers could access them. Determined to make the most of the opportunity, men chartered another city just to the south along the route, calling it “New Tacoma.” (The two towns were later joined to form Tacoma.) Later, Tacoma would build a grand Union Station, still one of the city’s landmarks.

Supposedly the editor of the paper took great joy in rubbing the matter in Seattle’s face. Indeed, in early April 1875, the Tacoma Tribune even ran a story about the tragic fate of a thespian troop that had left Seattle by ship for Port Madison on the other side of the Sound. The ship sunk, with all hands and passengers gone. The problem? The accident never happened! The actors and their gear made it safely across the Sound.

I thought perhaps the Tacoma editor was trying to sell papers by making up more “interesting” stories. The editor of the Puget Sound Dispatch thought otherwise. He claimed the Tacoma editor was trying to denigrate Seattle.

“Four lies to one truth is far better than an average with the Tribune in mentioning any matter connected with Seattle and its harbor … But then, we have the charity to remember, that the humiliation which Tacoma has suffered in view of its utter and hopeless failure and the success of Seattle, has been an awful strain upon the patience of those who had built their hopes upon Tacoma as a rival town.”

It seems the rivalry I knew growing up is actually more than a century old. And counting.