The Coal Rush: How 1876 Industry Linked Seattle and Tacoma
A historic editorial argues that the expansion of Northern Pacific Railroad coal lines from Puyallup will drive mutual prosperity for Seattle and its southern neighbor.
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.
Coal and lumber constitute the very best resources for the rapid growth of a city. They are a longer-lived, more profitable sort of capital than gold and silver bonanzas, and because of the high wages earned by the skilled labor of the miner and millmen, the gains are far more contributory to city growth than an equal agricultural product. It is now a business certainty that the Northern Pacific Railroad Company will extend their line the coming season up from Tacoma to develop their coal fields on the upper Puyallup. This will be a broad gauge with a view possibly to running trains through from the mines to supply Portland and the Oregon valleys. This step, it is thought, will be a great exhilarator to the growth of Tacoma. However, its benefit will not be confined alone to Tacoma, but will be felt in a still greater degree by Seattle. Whatever tends to increase the commercial prominence of the district in many particulars tends directly to the prosperity of its chief commercial town. The Puyallup mines are almost as near to Seattle by the valleys of Stuck, White river and Duwamish as to Tacoma by the Puyallup.
“Whatever tends to increase the commercial prominence of the district in many particulars tends directly to the prosperity of its chief commercial town.”
This 1876 editorial reflects the early industrial vision of a unified Puget Sound economy, where infrastructure projects were seen as rising tides for all cities. Today, the debate over regional transit and economic corridors continues the exact same struggle to balance inter-city rivalry with the necessity of shared infrastructure growth.
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