The Broken Promises of the Tide Flats
Tacoma business leaders turn on the Northern Pacific Railroad after years of waiting for promised infrastructure.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A few evenings since, the Executive Committee of the Chamber of Commerce gathered to discuss the strange attitude of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company toward the city. The committee is composed of General Sprague, I.H. Buckley, W.J. Thompson, O.M. Maulsby, W.C. Tyler, L. Anderson, S.M. Nolan, O.H. Wheeler, and A.C. Mason. They discussed the 'laggard, slow, behind-hand spirit' of the railroad company. A memorial was drafted, setting forth that the citizens of Tacoma invested their money and made their homes under the assurance of the Northern Pacific that it would make this the western terminal, building works, warehouses, and depots. David Lister, who built his iron works on the tide flats, expressed the prevailing frustration: 'When you look at those idle piles stuck around the tide flats for a fence, and then look at the copy of the West Shore of so long ago as January, 1886, containing pictures of the exclusive grain elevators that were to have occupied that place... it is enough to make one smile.' W.J. Fife added, 'We have been waiting year after year living on promises. They do nothing. There is not a platform so far on which they could do business here when the line is completed.' The memorial calls upon the company to make a positive declaration of their intentions, as the city remains in suspense, waiting for the terminal infrastructure that was promised years ago.
“They have been fooling around about a little two-story building for their office long enough to have built it, but the sod is not yet turned.”
This 1887 standoff over the Northern Pacific’s failure to deliver promised industrial infrastructure perfectly echoes modern Seattle’s perennial struggles with developers and mega-corporations who reap the benefits of public investment while stalling on their civic obligations. Tacoma’s 'tide flats' frustration reads like a 19th-century version of today’s ongoing battles over local transit and housing density promises that never quite materialize.
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