The Dream of a Northern Bosphorus: Seattle in 1872
A period travelogue captures the raw, rugged ambition of a frontier Seattle, where coal, timber, and dreams of a transcontinental railroad promised to transform a small sound-side village into a global commercial power.
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.
On the clearing away of the mists of early morning we find the air on the Sound very bright and bracing. A slight breeze just ripples the waters of this Mediterranean sea; the summer sky is delicately mottled with flecks of foam-white clouds; seals sport below; birds flit from shore to shore above; a golden silence, only broken by the paddle wheels of our steamer, wraps all together in a dreamy unreality very charming to the tourist. Occasionally a white sail, gleaming in mid distance, adds an interest to the scene; while it at the same time, suggests what these waters will in time resemble, when palaces shall be reflected in their margins, and the winged messengers of commerce shall glide continually from point to point of these now fir-clad slopes, laden with the precious cargoes of the Orient, making this northern sea a second Bosphorus for beauty and magnificence.
Seventy-two miles from Olympia, by steamer, we come to Seattle, the most important commercial town of the Sound. It is situated upon an inlet six and a half miles long by two wide, known as Duwamish, or Elliott Bay. Seattle is built upon the face of a rather steep slope; is pleasant and cheerful looking, and contains about 2,000 to 2,500 inhabitants. The Territorial University is located here, and is a fine structure—so situated that it can be seen for a long distance up and down the Sound. Seattle has a great extent of wharfage, which impresses us with the conviction of its business capacities. And, indeed, the harbor swarms with every description of water-craft, from the handsome steamer Olympia and the tall three-masted lumber ships, to the little wheezy tug and graceful plunger.
“The winged messengers of commerce shall glide continually from point to point of these now fir-clad slopes, laden with the precious cargoes of the Orient, making this northern sea a second Bosphorus.”
This 1872 snapshot captures Seattle just as it was beginning its frantic climb toward regional dominance. The author’s vision of Seattle as a 'Northern Bosphorus' serves as an early echo of the city's perpetual identity crisis—balancing the charm of its natural geography with a relentless, sometimes breathless, pursuit of industrial and global-trade relevance.
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