The Struggle for a Road from Duwamish to Seattle

Editor Post-Intelligencer: I see a piece in the paper, written by someone without a name, who asks the county to build a new court house, as if we did not have one already. Now, my dear sir, I think we ought to have a wagon road from the settlements into town. It seems to be a matter of impossibility to get our County Commissioners to appropriate anything worth while to build a wagon road down the beach. This much-needed matter has been tried time after time, and has always failed. They have even allowed the railroad company to take the right of way from us. The Commissioners say that our beach road was not a legal one. What have they been doing for the past twenty odd years that they have not attended to such matters? I am one of the first men that ever struck a lick on the road, and now can hardly get to town with my wagon in the winter. I think the time ought to be at hand when we can have a respectable wagon road—one that would be a credit to our town. There is nothing that will more discount an immigrant than to see such an abominable road as our beach road. Our townsmen and settlers are able to build a good plank road, 30 to 40 feet wide, from the head of the bay into town. I will guarantee that every settler on the Duwamish and White rivers will help. There is no town on the Pacific Coast that is more flourishing than Seattle. There are but few places that have as large a liquor license revenue as Seattle, which money could be appropriated for the road. If the men the people have chosen to do our business will not take hold of this matter pretty soon, I will never vote for a man again, and will surely try my best endeavors to electioneer for the women to do our county business.