The Rival Ports of the Northwest
A look at the growing competition between Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle as the Northern Pacific Railroad nears completion.
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.
There are two great rivals for the internal water communication of the Northern Pacific states—the Columbia river system and the Sound system. Portland has the advantage of being the first terminus of the Northern Pacific railroad. But the Columbia is open to criticism from a commercial point of view; the bar at the mouth is wide and difficult to cross, and vessels drawing 24 feet of water have to lighter at Astoria. At the other end of the rail line lies Puget Sound, where Tacoma and Seattle are competing for business. Tacoma is a new point which has increased in the last three years from 1000 to 4000 inhabitants. About 40 miles further down the Sound is Seattle, its present largest city, with 7000 inhabitants. Seattle has no debt, its lumber mills and manufactories pay $750,000 annually in wages, and citizens have subscribed $150,000 toward a railroad to the Green and Cedar river coal mines. Mr. Villard says he shall make one rate to all points—Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle—and let them fight out their rivalries by the tests of time and growth.
“The men of Seattle are men of pluck and push and in the main of native stock.”
The Gilded Age competition between these three cities for rail dominance set the stage for Seattle to eventually become the economic engine of the Pacific Northwest. While the 'rivalry' of the 1880s centered on coal and timber shipping, the modern region continues to grapple with the same infrastructural bottleneck issues and corporate-driven urban development patterns.
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