The Pioneer Dream: Settling Seattle as an Organized Colony
In 1877, Seattle newspapers championed the idea of 'colonizing' the Washington Territory to solve the isolation of homesteading, mirroring today's debates over density and regional growth.
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.
The most unpleasant feature in pioneer life is isolation at the start. Colonies of ten or more families can settle on land in contiguous tracts, mutually helpful in many ways, and community of settlement increases the value of the lands taken. The special adaptation of this Territory, with its humid atmosphere and even temperature, is for the pursuits of agriculture. This fact, successive droughts in sunny California and grasshopper raids in deep-soiled Nebraska will demonstrate. It would be a good plan to organize colonies of a hundred families or more, either abroad or here in Seattle, out of the ranks of incoming immigrants, with the principal industrial trades represented and some manufacturing specialty as a leading feature. Thus might be formed with rapidity, and the most widespread benefit to the Territory and to individuals, numerous prosperous and self-sustaining municipalities in tenantless though fertile wastes where individual pioneers hesitate to break the way alone.
“The most unpleasant feature in pioneer life is isolation at the start. Colonies... are mutually helpful in many ways, and community of settlement increases the value of the lands taken.”
While this 1877 editorial frames colonization as a solution for agricultural isolation, it captures an enduring Seattle spirit: the urge to organize human settlement into dense, self-sustaining community units. Today, we still grapple with how to effectively group our housing and industry, though we prioritize urban infill over 'breaking the way' into the wilderness.
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