The Boomtown Fever: Seattle and Tacoma in 1888
A visiting statesman details the rapid, frantic rise of two Puget Sound rivals, noting the soaring land values and the arrival of Eastern capital as workers flock to the territory.
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.
Seattle is the liveliest city in Washington Territory, and its growth like that of Tacoma is miraculous and phenomenal. It is the liveliest and most pushing city of its size I have ever seen. Half-a-dozen of the business streets are crowded from early morning till 10 o'clock at night by throngs of pushing young men, and if one would judge of the size of the city by the bustle and business, they would imagine themselves in a city of three or four hundred thousand people. The real estate men are on the sidewalks daily, and the merchants are doing a thriving business. New houses are springing up like magic on every side. I left here last Friday for Victoria; on my way to the steamer I passed a large pile of lumber laying on the sidewalk and on a vacant lot; I returned after an absence of three days and found the framework up three stories high, and they were putting on the roof. One advantage Seattle has over other towns is the close proximity of Lakes Union and Washington, which lie immediately in the rear of the city. The hotels here now remind one of the hotels in Toledo when the convention is in session. They are all crowded night and day by strangers from all parts of the world seeking business locations. Carpenters command from $2.50 to $4 per day for labor; brick masons from $6 to $7, and clerks get about three times the wages they get in the Eastern cities.
“New houses are springing up like magic on every side.”
The 1888 account of Seattle’s explosive growth—fueled by speculative real estate, rapid infrastructure development, and a surge in outside capital—is a direct ancestor to the modern 'boomtown' cycles that have defined the city's housing and labor markets for over a century. The frustration with housing affordability and the pace of development mentioned by the visitor mirrors the ongoing anxieties of present-day Seattle.
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