The First Train to Seattle: A Lightning Ride and a City’s Arrival
On June 3, 1876, the Northern Pacific Railway blasted its way through the Cascade Mountains, delivering 100 Chinese immigrants and a crowd of hopefuls to Seattle in record time.
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.
SEATTLE, June 3.—The first train arrived at this town at 8:10 this morning, loaded with ten or twelve men. The second train, with one hundred immigrants and also a large crowd from Iowa, was at the depot and greeted the train with cheers upon its arrival.
The whole distance of the Humboldt Division, 236 miles, was traveled in six hours and three minutes. The breakfast of the locomotive at Chehalis detained the train thirteen minutes, and a hot box caused another detention at Battle Mountain Landing, a delay altogether of twenty-five minutes on the Humboldt Division.
Notwithstanding the heavy grades and curves between Tacoma and this point, a speed of forty-eight and three-tenths miles per hour was maintained. The train was five hours ahead of time, and anticipations of arriving in San Francisco between 8 or 9 A.M. Sunday were confidently expressed by passengers who were seated assiduously pleased and satisfied with this brilliant feat.
At about 8:30 the train dashed on its way out of hearing.
This account captures Seattle’s pivotal moment of transition from a muddy river port to a connected city, driven by the Northern Pacific Railway. The mention of '100 immigrants' arriving with the train is a stark reminder that the region's growth was built on the labor and migration of Asian workers, even as anti-Chinese sentiment (discussed in the adjacent column) was simultaneously hardening into federal law.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.