The Great Egg Exodus: Why One Seattle Boarding House Keeper is Trading City Squalor for Fidalgo Island Farming
In a move that defies the city's booming real estate speculation, Mrs. Johnson abandons her Commercial Street boarding house to launch a poultry empire on Fidalgo Island, proving that sometimes the best investment is a flock of chickens.
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.
Mrs. Johnson, keeping a boarding house on Commercial Street just east of the United States Hotel, is about to remove from Seattle and take up her residence on Fidalgo Island just opposite Mr. Robert Becker’s farm, to engage in the hen and egg business. Her houses are in process of erection, as her chickens and turkeys are now purchased and becoming impatient and 'all ready to start' for Fidalgo Bay; and methinks I hear them in chorus cackling at the approach of the Libby as it passes her door every week on its way to Monk’s wharf. Long may she live to enjoy the fruits of her plucky enterprise, for it is a move in the right direction. But we would not advise every one to follow her example, for if they did the fabulous prices that eggs now bring would not obtain.
While modern Seattleites often flock to Fidalgo Island (now part of Whidbey Island) for weekend getaways or retirement, Mrs. Johnson’s move in 1876 was a serious economic pivot from urban service work to agricultural production. Her departure highlights the early tension between Seattle's rapid commercial growth and the surrounding rural economy, where land was still cheap enough to support small-scale farming ventures that would soon be priced out by the city's expanding footprint.
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