The 'Nile of the Occident' Demands a Road
A settler from Kittitas Valley writes a fiery open letter to Seattle, advocating for a direct mountain passage to boost the region’s agricultural potential.
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.
Kittitas Valley is situated in longitude 120 west, latitude 47 north, lying east of the Cascade mountains, and is 108 miles east from the city of Seattle. The valley has an average length of thirty miles and thirteen in width. On the west are the Cascade mountains, with intervening foothills, which are covered with a very heavy growth of fir, spruce, pine and other woods. Flowing through the valley is the Yakima river, with its numerous tributaries on each side. The soil is fertile to be tackled; the yield is enormous—wheat producing sixty and seventy-five bushels per acre; barley, rye, potatoes and all culinary plants producing in abundance. Nature ordained this locality as the home of such growths and productions. Yet the valley is sparsely settled. This locality, like all new countries, has no use for croakers, grumblers, and upstart aristocracy. We want men and women—not things—those that are determined to build up their own fortunes and secure the pleasure and solid comfort that is attendant upon a settled and thrifty population. With such a population, the day will not be far distant when we will have a wagon road, if not a railway, through the Snoqualmie Pass. Seattle is our market and by nature we are tributary to that port. We cannot look to any other source of commerce and we must put forth our energy to open the road, which will give to us population, to us wealth, and to you, our city, a complete and metropolitan market.
“This locality, like all new countries, has no use for croakers, grumblers, and upstart aristocracy. We want men and women—not things.”
In 1877, the struggle to connect Seattle to the fertile interior via a mountain pass was a battle for economic survival. Today, the infrastructure debate has shifted to the expansion of light rail and the congestion of the same mountain passes, proving that Seattle's growth has always been tethered to its ability to bridge the physical geography of the Cascades.
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