The Sound’s Secret: How Deep Waters and Giant Trees Built a City
A reprinted editorial from New York reveals why Puget Sound is the 'Mediterranean of the West,' detailing its impossible depth, massive timber resources, and the strange phenomenon of forests with only small and giant trees.
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.
"Puget Sound, Washington Territory, perhaps the least known in the East of all our large water surfaces, is the one for which its acquaintances claim the largest future fame. It covers an area of 2000 square miles, with a breadth rarely exceeding ten miles, and has a line of 1,500 miles. Its shores are bold and its waters deep, and it is quite free from shoals and reefs. The large lumber vessels which frequent the Sound are bothered to find good anchorage, scarcely less than a hundred fathoms of water appearing anywhere.
So deep are the clear waters of this Mediterranean of the West, says a recent visitor, that a great Commodore of the United States Navy once innocently ruined the chances of one of the Puget Sound towns for being the final terminus of the Northern Pacific Mail road by taking his ship up to the town. On sounding the water for anchorage ground, he failed to find as little as thirty fathoms of water anywhere, excepting one place, and that so near the bank that there was danger of the ship going ashore when swinging with the tide.
The principal industry of the Sound is lumbering. The timber comprises ash, dogwood, alder, white oak, maple, cotton wood, spruce, hemlock and laurel among other varieties; but these are in limited quantities. The greater part of the timber is yellow fir and cedar. This vast fir forest is thought to be the finest tract of timber land on the face of the earth. It covers an area of about 32,000 square miles... The proprietors of the logging camps fell their first trees so close to the shore that they could be made to fall directly into the water if desired.
The yellow fir is known in the East as Oregon pine or Puget Sound pine. It is a wood of great value, owing to its toughness and strength. The first cargoes of it were sent to San Francisco about twenty-five years ago. The length and beauty of the timber attracted the attention of Admiral Farragut, who caused tests of it to be made at the Mare Island Navy Yard... Tests have also been made recently in the oak. It is proved that yellow fir is fully the equal of Eastern white oak in toughness, neatness and toughness. There is no doubt left upon the point, and yellow fir is now the universal wood on the Pacific coast.
This 1882 article captures Seattle at a pivotal moment: it was still a young territory town relying entirely on its natural geography—specifically its deep-water harbor and endless timber—for survival. The piece highlights how the very depth that made shipping difficult also signaled the Sound's potential as a major port, while the 'giant trees' described here were rapidly harvested to build not just Seattle, but much of the American West.
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