The Myth of the 'Frozen' Northwest
An 1877 dispatch to a San Francisco newspaper explains the 'warm belt' of air—the Japan Current—that kept Puget Sound from being a frozen wasteland.
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 resources of Washington Territory, if unlocked by direct communication with the East, are sufficient to make her one of the first states in the Union. When people in the East look on the map and find Puget Sound in the same latitude as the frozen regions of Canada, they naturally look for a similar climate. England and Ireland, lying further north than the United States, possess a milder climate. The truth is there is a warm belt of air, known as the isothermal line, winding its serpentine course around the earth. The great Japan current that pours through the North Pacific presses against the coast of Washington Territory, and its warm water, brought into Puget Sound by the daily tide, imparts to the surrounding land a temperature similar to that of Virginia. Were it not for this influence, that Territory would be given over to stunted trees and white bears. With railroad communication, the great basin of Puget Sound, with its broad, magnificent forests, its inland sea a hundred and twenty miles long, and its inexhaustible beds of coal and mines of iron, will attract the attention of capital and labor.
“When people in the East look on the map and find Puget Sound in the same latitude as the frozen regions of Canada, they naturally look for a similar climate.”
Long before 'climate change' dominated our discourse, early settlers were obsessed with proving that Seattle wasn't just a cold, isolated outpost. This passage captures the frantic 19th-century desire for transcontinental rail links to unlock the region's 'hidden wealth,' a precursor to the economic booms that continue to define the city.
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