The Railroad Map That Erased Seattle
Northern Pacific's latest map omits two under-construction Puget Sound lines and reduces Seattle to a dot. The Post suspects a land-selling scheme behind the silence.
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.
Two large railway maps lie on the table before us. One is published by the Union Pacific and the other by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. The Northern Pacific map is the latest published and should be accurate. Yet every branch and extension is properly laid down except two: the Puget Sound Shore Line and the Cedar and Green River line. Both are part of the Northern Pacific system, both are under construction, and together they include over sixty miles of railroad. To secure the Cedar and Green River line, Seattle citizens obligated themselves to pay $150,000 before May 1, 1884. The Shore Line is nearly complete save about eight miles of rails; on the other, five miles of track have been laid, with ten or fifteen additional miles ready for track. Not a mark, not an indication of the existence of these lines or their construction is to be found on the “new and correct map.” Seattle, containing a population of 10,000 persons, the chief city in the Territory and the second largest city of the Northwest, is simply placed as a dot upon this admittedly correct map, with not even a line to show its present or proposed connection with the Northern Pacific system. We believe this omission is intentional—part of a plan to divert attention to a town in which certain Northern Pacific stockholders have extensive landed interests. Seattle has ever met the Northern Pacific Railroad more than half way; it has conceded important privileges. It must not be ignored.
“Why is the city of Seattle ... simply placed as a dot upon this admittedly correct map, with not even a line to show its present or proposed connection with the Northern Pacific system?”
The 1880s fight over whether the Northern Pacific would favor Seattle or Tacoma helped decide which city became the region's metropolis. Modern Seattle still reads transit maps and corporate siting decisions as verdicts on who belongs—and who gets left as a dot.
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