The cities of the Pacific Northwest competed energetically with one another to gain dominance in the region. As discussed earlier (Lesson 13), Portland enjoyed advantages, related largely to its ability to command the largest hinterland, that gave it an early and enduring lead over prospective rivals. Seattle, by contrast, had to play catch-up. In 1880, its population was about 3500 people fewer than Walla Walla possessed and about one-fifth the size of Portland. Many predicted that Tacoma, assured of becoming the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad, would shortly surpass Seattle and live up to its (Tacoma's) slogan, The City of Destiny. Yet by 1920, in spite of its apparent handicaps, Seattle had passed its rivals to become the dominant city of the Pacific Northwest. Its population had leapt to 315,312 by 1920, while Portland's stood at 258,288 and Tacoma's at 96,965.

Right: Seattle from the waterfront, 1878. ( Special Collections Division, UW, neg. 23270; copy by Asahel Curtis. Orig. neg., Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma.)

Left: Nature Literally Harnessed: Postcard advertising the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition held in Seattle in 1909. (Courtesy, Museum of History and Industry, Seattle.)

One key to Seattle's success was the ability of its residents and promoters to master nature. Railroads permitted this mastery in one sense. They linked Seattle to the coal mines east and south of Lake Washington and to farms in eastern Washington. Railroads also ensured that when gold was found in the Yukon and Alaska during the 1890s and 1900s, Seattle would become the metropolis for those hinterlands—although its connections to the north were made by sea rather than by land. At the same time that Seattle rose to greater prominence by mastering nature at some distance, it undertook concerted efforts to master nature more locally. In order to grow and flourish as a city, it developed a network of streetcars that dispersed residents; acquired a water supply and an electric system by harnessing the Cedar and Skagit Rivers; leveled the hills surrounding downtown in order to facilitate real-estate development; straightened the channel of the Duwamish River and created a man-made harbor; built a new ship canal and locks that tied Lake Washington more directly to Puget Sound; and laid out a large-scale urban park system. In sum, the city flourished by harnessing to its own ends the many forms of nature that surrounded it.

This treatment of nature began early on in the town's history. The city was begun in 1851 at Alki Point, in what now is West Seattle. Some if the founding party, after one winter there, decided that Alki Point's windy and cold weather, coupled with a relatively poor harbor, made it an unpromising place to lay out a town. The next year some of the settlers moved to a more sheltered site, on the eastern shore of Elliott Bay, where the modern city of Seattle was begun. This site was not perfect, either; the steep hills rising from the water would complicate the process of building a city. But it was more sheltered from the wind and had deeper water for a harbor; and loggers could cut the trees on the hillside and easily slide them down to mills on the waterfront.

The town had its start, but it was hardly a respectable one. One observer in the 1850s summarized Seattle:

"Cut out a clearing from a dense forest on a side hill, one mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, put about fifty houses in this clearing; divide the settlement into two streets filled with sawdust; give the place three hotels, five boarding houses, and seventeen grog shops, and you have a clear idea of Seattle."

As the proportion of grog shops suggests, life was crude and heavily male. Men outnumbered women by a ratio of 5 or 10 to one. Indeed, this gender imbalance lasted a long time; as late as 1920, Seattle's ratio of men to women was 1.14 (while Portland's was 1.05 and Spokane's 1.00). In contrast to early Portland and Walla Walla, early Seattle was not much affected by the presence of missionaries.

Right: Mayor Hiram C. Gill sanctioned and approved the construction of the "largest house of prostitution in the world" on 10th Ave. S. in Seattle. (Special Collections, UW, Social Issues Files Ha, neg. 8235)

A town was laid out with the help of Arthur Denny, formerly a surveyor in Illinois. He chose the gridiron plan that was the simplest and most familiar format and the one best suited to the buying and selling of property. Nobody cared in the 1850s or 1860s about laying out streets that allowed residences to take advantage of the views from Seattle's hillsides. Rather, people cared about attracting immigrants and investors, and selling land. By 1876 the lands along the 4-mile path from Lake Union to the Duwamish Valley had been platted, ready for sale. However, people resided only within one half-mile of the city center. The town's corps of land speculators had to await the arrival of buyers. Meanwhile, like most other towns on Puget Sound, Seattle got along by cutting and milling lumber and shipping it to markets around the Pacific Rim. Townspeople blamed the "Indian war" of 1855-56 for a slump in growth, but the collapse of the Californian economy—to which Seattle had sent most of its wood—may have been more problematic. In any case, Seattle's growth was too slow to satisfy its boosters.

Seattle had some advantages to help it along. People found coal deposits on the eastern and southern sides of Lake Washington, and by 1871 the city was shipping about 100 tons of coal daily to San Francisco. This gave Seattle a second staple to go along with timber. Still, the city had no more substantial hinterland that it could tap, as Portland was tapping the Willamette Valley and the Columbia and Snake River watersheds. Without access to a "natural" hinterland (i.e. one connected to it by river travel), Seattle hoped for a railroad to connect it to other places. Thus, during the early 1870s when the Northern Pacific Railroad was shopping for a terminus site on Puget Sound (choosing between Mukilteo, Seattle, and Tacoma), Seattleites regarded the matter as urgent and critical. "If we win [the terminus] our property will be quadrupled in value," one newspaper editor explained. "If we lose, it will be depreciated one half to two-thirds. Our destiny must now be settled for years to come." Notice that nobody spoke about developing a satisfactory sense of community, or valuing the natural scenery, or managing growth, or building fine schools, or protecting the neighborhoods, or having just the right kind of coffee merchant on the street corner. The founders thought of Seattle as a gold mine of sorts—not a place to make a life but rather one to make a living, preferably through an increase in property values. This mentality, emphasizing growth at virtually any cost, prevailed in the city well into the 20th century. Seattle was a real estate venture, first and foremost, for its founders. The keys to its success were developing some form of control over the natural wealth of the hinterlands (railroads), and asserting greater control over the landed wealth within the city limits (through efforts to increase property values, commerce, and industry). The city devoted itself to attracting new residents and investors who, it was sure, would help it realize its dreams of greatness.

Seattle business leaders had thought that their city might wither if it did not become the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Yet when the transcontinental line was finally completed to Tacoma, Seattle benefited along with its rival to the south. The population grew from 3,500 in 1880 to 42,800 in 1890, and by the early 1890s the city was substantial enough to attract its own transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, which was finished in 1893. This railroad gave the city a tool with which to reach out and secure more of a hinterland for itself. But the biggest windfall came because the railroad enabled Seattle to claim a new hinterland to the north—Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Prior to the 1890s, the city of San Francisco had controlled American trade with and industry in Alaska, but in the early 1890s Seattle began taking this hinterland away from San Francisco. It was cheaper and quicker to ship goods from Alaska to Seattle than to San Francisco, and after 1893 the Great Northern line permitted Seattle to ship those goods as easily to the East as San Francisco had been shipping them. One San Francisco firm moved its Alaska operations north to Seattle, while other new companies, including the Alaska Steamship Company, organized locally to take advantage of the new opportunities. For decades Seattle had been a hinterland of San Francisco, shipping lumber and coal to the City by the Bay. Now Seattle gained a sort of independence by "colonizing" Alaska as its own hinterland. In other words, Seattle did to Alaska what San Francisco had done to Seattle—mastering nature in such a way that it could direct its hinterland's natural wealth (in Alaska's case, fish and minerals) through its port and commercial houses.

At the same time, the market created by miners and others headed north stimulated additional enterprises closer to Seattle. Throughout western Washington, farmers and ranchers produced more crops, livestock, and dairy products to sell to the miners and to the ballooning population of Seattle. In other words, Seattle captured not only the rather distant hinterlands of Alaska and the Yukon but also the closer rural hinterlands within its own state. Through the technology of transportation and the workings of the market, it harnessed nature's wealth far more successfully than ever before. The growth that accompanied the Klondike and Alaska gold rushes increased Seattle's population and affluence to new heights.

As the city matured, it sought to make further refinements to itself, thus launching a campaign of civic improvement devoted to mastering nature locally as well. One set of improvements revolved around leveling the steep hills that encircled the downtown. Between 1900 and 1930 the city re-engineered its natural setting by regrading the slopes around the central business district. The hills were seen as an impediment to real estate development; city officials assumed that by lowering the hills they would facilitate the outward growth of the central business district and accelerate the rise in property values. As workmen washed and shoveled and hauled the hills away, they also straightened the lower Duwamish River in order to facilitate shipping on that stream; created Harbor Island, which added to the city's waterfront; and filled in some of the tideflats in the area just south of Pioneer Square (the spot occupied by the Kingdome between 1976 and 1999).