The Seattle Coal Boom of 1876
As Seattle mine exports topped 100,000 tons, boosters predicted a regional dominance that would sideline the competition.
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.
The growth and expansion of the Puget Sound coal trade is certainly an excellent proof of our ability as an industrious people. When we left here four years ago, it was barely an experiment, and hardly a successful one at that. In 1871, we exported 4,918 tons; by 1876, that figure climbed to 101,656 tons. Hitherto, the Seattle mine has exported more than both the Talbot and Benton mines together, but we look for a marked increase in the exports by those two companies hereafter. The Talbot mine has occupied several months in the completion of a negative tunnel to carry off the water from the mine, thus avoiding the expense of pumping. Some people have the idea that the opening of a coal road up the Puyallup valley will injure us by competition, but that we discredit. California is at best a poorly timbered region. Ten years ago, one coal yard supplied the whole city of Sacramento; now there are over twenty coal yards doing a thrifty business. Hence we are justified in the belief that the demand for Puget Sound coal must so increase that the opening of Tacoma as a coal port cannot possibly injure Seattle.
“The figures are there, and they will not lie.”
This 1877 report captures Seattle’s early pivot from a small timber town to an industrial coal hub. Just as the writer dismissed concerns about Tacoma's competition, modern Seattle continues to grapple with shifting regional infrastructure and the boom-and-bust cycles of its resource-dependent economy.
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