Railroad Chief Urges Shared Yards to Protect Seattle Waterfront
Railroad tycoon James J. Hill takes the stage at City Hall to warn Seattle against repeating Chicago’s development mistakes.
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An unusually large audience gathered in the lobby of the house of delegates last night to hear President Hill of the Great Northern Railroad discuss the future of the railroad right-of-way in Seattle. Hill warned the city against allowing a single railroad to dominate its infrastructure. He pointed to Chicago’s failures—where high costs and congestion drove seventy factories to leave—as a cautionary tale. He proposed a plan where all roads would terminate in double-track yards south of the city, ensuring equal footing for all lines while preserving the waterfront for local use. Hill expressed a desire for a central passenger station accessible to all lines, emphasizing that for Seattle to maintain its supremacy, it must prioritize the cheap handling of freight.
“Commerce flows to the point which offers the least resistance as surely as water does.”
Hill's 1892 warning about 'monopolies' and infrastructure capacity mirrors contemporary Seattle debates over port authority, transit expansion, and the struggle to balance corporate interests with public utility. The specific land-use disputes he discusses at the turn of the century set the foundation for the industrial geography of the SODO district today.
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