The 1877 Guide to Starting Over in Seattle

We have of late been receiving an unusual number of inquiries in regard to our country and climate from parties in the States East of the Rocky Mountains who are looking this way for new homes. As a specimen, we reproduce the following from a resident of Iowa: 'As there are quite a number of us that contemplate moving to Puget Sound in the Spring, you will much oblige us by giving us all the information you can on the following points: About what is the population respectively of Seattle and Olympia?' The census-taker for Northup’s Business Directory of Seattle, in his canvass made last summer, enumerated a population of 3,700; but there has been steady and rapid increase. Our city last November cast 980 votes—this at five per vote would give us a population of nearly 5,000. Olympia, the Territorial capital, is an attractive little city of about twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants. 'How far back of Seattle would one have to go to get Homestead land, and is there any prairie land subject to homestead entry in King county?' There is no government land left in the immediate vicinity of Seattle, but plenty that may be purchased on such terms as to offer profitable bonanzas to purchasers for occupation and use. On the streams emptying into the Sound, and on the hills north of Seattle, from 20 to 100 acres of the richest settlement, with frontage upon navigation and of inexhaustible fertility, can be found. There is no vacant prairie lands nearer than Yakima county, 75 or 100 miles east of the city. 'What wages do carpenters and mill hands get—also miners and wood-choppers?' The first named receive from $3 to $5 per day, according to skill. Coal miners receive $1.25 per ton and make from $3 to $5 per day. Wood choppers get $1.25 per cord. Wood sells in the city at from $3 to $4 per cord, delivered.