The Dream of a Waterway: Seattle's 1892 Vision
Before the Panama Canal, Washington's Senator John B. Allen championed a trans-hemispheric waterway through Nicaragua to liberate the Pacific Northwest from the high costs of rail transit.
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In a 1892 speech before the U.S. Senate, Senator John B. Allen presented a resolution from the Puget Sound Lumber Manufacturing Association urging the federal government to ensure the construction of the Nicaragua Canal. Allen argued that the current reliance on transcontinental railroads and long, dangerous voyages around Cape Horn stifled the economic potential of Washington State's vast natural resources. He highlighted the 'unmonopolizable highway of commerce' that a canal would provide, allowing timber, coal, and agricultural products from Puget Sound to reach Atlantic markets at a fraction of the cost. Senator Morgan of Alabama supported the measure, praising Washington as a 'garden of fruitfulness' and echoing the sentiment that uniting the nation’s two seaboards through a canal was a divinely ordained destiny.
“There should in such a work be not only no taint of jobbery or fraud, but not even the opportunity or plausible semblance of any such thing.”
Senator Allen’s 1892 advocacy for a canal reflects the evergreen anxiety of Seattle's business community regarding physical connectivity to global markets. While the Panama Canal eventually served this purpose, the modern discourse around infrastructure—such as current port expansions and the need for efficient logistics—remains a direct evolution of this Gilded Age obsession with cutting off the 'detour' of geography.
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