The Mud-Sunk Streets of Pioneer Square
A local editor slams city officials for leaving commercial thoroughfares in such disrepair that industrial wagons are being swallowed whole by the earth.
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.
Yesterday we noticed one of the mill teams completely stalled in the mud on Commercial street, between Jackson street and the wharf. The cart was down in a quagmire up to the axles and the horse was standing in the mud knee-deep. The team was so effectually mired, that the driver was obliged to throw off his entire load before the cart could be pulled out. Such scenes on the streets of some Southern city, situated on a low marsh, near some malarial swamp, where alligators and mud-hens abound, might be excusable. But on one of the most public streets of a city like ours, occupying as it does, a beautiful incline, overlooking a large bay, where all the natural advantages of sewerage are directly available, it is a disgrace, to say the very least. Seattle may soon become proverbial for her wretched streets and roads, of which her citizens ought to feel ashamed. A little money and a very small amount of effort put forth in the right direction would obviate this trouble. And we repeat the question again: why cannot something be done? It is not only the portion of Commercial street just mentioned that should receive attention, but the entire street is a literal quagmire. Any enterprising logger would hardly permit his road to get in a condition in which his teams would mire.
“Such scenes on the streets of some Southern city... where alligators and mud-hens abound, might be excusable. But on one of the most public streets of a city like ours... it is a disgrace.”
Long before the regrades reshaped Seattle’s topography, the city’s waterfront was a notorious swampy bottleneck. This 1870 complaint about 'wretched streets' echoes the modern civic frustration with crumbling infrastructure and the recurring tension between rapid economic growth and basic city maintenance.
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