The Great Seattle Saw-Mill Lottery
A frontier town turns to state-sanctioned gambling as a desperate economic strategy to boost local development.
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.
Legalized by an act of the Legislature and approved November 12, 1875, by Governor E.P. Ferry, the Puget Sound lottery is officially underway with a capital of $300,000. Divided into 60,000 tickets at $5.00 coin each, the lottery offers a grand prize that reflects the era's industrial ambition: the Seattle Saw-Mill and mill property, owned by H.L. Yesler. The County Commissioners of King County have appointed M.S. Booth, George D. Hill, and John Collins as trustees to manage the property deeded in trust for the prize holders. Other notable prizes include the Honey-Birke boarding house and the Pacific Brewery property. There are 5,575 prizes in total, and tickets are currently for sale at the office of the manager, H.L. Yesler, in Seattle.
“The Seattle Saw-Mill and mill property, owned by H.L. Yesler, will be the grand prize of $100,000.”
In 1876, Seattle was so eager for capital that it gambled away its foundational industry, the Yesler sawmill, via state-sanctioned lottery. Today, the city’s economic development relies on high-tech tax incentives and zoning battles rather than raffle tickets, but the underlying anxiety—that the city's future must be 'bought' through grand, collective schemes—remains a distinct feature of the local psyche.
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