The Snohomish Hotel Boom: When the Exchange Was Too Small for Seattle's Ambitions
As the local exchange building becomes overcrowded with investors and merchants, the community is looking to build a new hotel near the site of the former Riverside House to accommodate the growing influx of capital.
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.
As the Snohomish Exchange is overcrowded with resorters [investors], parties are contemplating building a hotel near the site of the Riverside House, which was burned a year or so ago.
A well, sunk 85 feet, on Charles Jackson's place now furnishes the upper part of town with fresh water.
The steamer Alki is making regular trips up the Snohomish and Snoqualmie rivers to within three miles of the falls, greatly to the convenience of the loggers and farmers along the route. The Nellie will connect with the Alki during the summer, and pleasure parties wishing to visit the falls can learn full particulars by applying to Captain Lowe.
The steamer Nellie arrives here every Wednesday and Saturday evening loaded down with freight and passengers from Seattle.
This brief note captures a pivotal moment in Snohomish’s history: the transition from a quiet river town to a speculative boomtown driven by Seattle investors. The mention of an 'overcrowded' exchange suggests that local infrastructure was already struggling to handle the volume of capital and commerce flowing north from Seattle, foreshadowing the rapid urbanization and real estate speculation that would define the Puget Sound region in the coming decades.
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