The Mud-Hole of Commercial Street
An 1876 editorial campaign to transform Seattle's 'wretched' mud-caked thoroughfare into a paved road using convict labor and harbor ballast.
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.
It is readily conceded that it would be better for the harbor if ballast was not dumped there. We would suggest that this ballast be utilized to the great benefit of the city. Our streets are in a wretched condition; all of them, without an exception. Even Commercial Street, the principal thoroughfare of the city, is a literal mud-hole. Its condition is so bad that we have seen teams mired on their way to the S. & W. W. R. R. depot, and their drivers obliged to throw off their load before they could extricate them. Its condition is not only an inconvenience but a discredit to the city. We see no better way of accomplishing this than by covering the street with the ballast that is now not only thrown away, but disposed of in such a manner as to certainly prove an injury to our harbor. It should be discharged at our wharf, and then, by the help of the prisoners in the jail—who should be made in this way to remunerate the city for the expenses of their crimes—it could be carried to Commercial Street, after which it should be leveled off and the road surface broken up with malls by the prisoners. In this way, we can very cheaply secure one of the best streets on the coast.
“Even Commercial street, the principal thoroughfare of the city, is a literal mud-hole.”
This editorial captures a classic Seattle struggle: the tension between civic growth and infrastructure maintenance. Long before the city's modern debates over street tolls and transit levies, pioneer-era editors were advocating for using public resources—and, controversially, prison labor—to solve the problem of a city literally sinking into its own mud.
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