The Day the Seattle Gold Lottery Fell Apart
A grand public spectacle at Occidental Square took a sour turn when organizers confessed they had sold only half the tickets, forcing a desperate, on-the-spot slashing of prize money.
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.
The drawing of the Grand Gold Coin Lottery, of which Mr. Conkleman is manager, came off yesterday afternoon in the presence of a large crowd. A platform had been erected in the square in front of the Occidental Hotel, on which were the two glass wheels, one to contain the prizes and the other the blanks. About three o'clock, Mr. Conkleman appeared on the platform and announced that the management had been unable to sell more than half the tickets, and in consequence would either have to postpone the drawing altogether or to cut down the value of the prizes one-half. After considerable discussion in the crowd, it was finally decided to have the drawing go on and to reduce the value of the prizes, making the 1st grand prize $5,000; the second, $1,500; the third, $500, etc. Capt. Geo. D. Hill came forward and read an affidavit to the effect that a committee, consisting of H. McAleer, Frank Matthias and himself, had counted the tags and thrown out all those for which the corresponding tickets had not been taken. The tags on which were the amounts of the prizes and the number of tickets were then placed by the committee in the respective wheels, and a committee, consisting of Capt. Geo. D. Hill, H. McAleer and John Anderson, were chosen by the ticket-holders present to conduct the drawing. Two small boys were put on the platform and blindfolded and the drawing commenced.
“The management had been unable to sell more than half the tickets, and in consequence would either have to postpone the drawing altogether or to cut down the value of the prizes one-half.”
Public lotteries and speculative 'grand openings' were common in the boom-and-bust era of 1870s Seattle, often fueled by optimistic hype that rarely met financial reality. Today, that same spirit of rapid development and high-stakes speculative fervor persists in the city's frantic real estate and tech-driven economy.
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