The Lumber Mistake: Why Seattle's Founders Chose the Bay

Mr. Orji H. Smith, who has been down to San Francisco to further extend the trade of hard wood lumber from this part of the Territory, returned on the Panama yesterday. He informs us that the demand for the White River maple and ash lumber is likely to become very great, and that there is already a market there for more than twice the quantity that can be shipped from here. He says if there were three or four mills here of the capacity of the one now running on the White River, there would not be the least difficulty in disposing of the lumber. He says, however, that the proprietors of these mills made a great mistake when they located their establishments where they did. Their product would have been much larger, and they could have worked to far greater advantage had they located their mills here at Seattle. The proper site for establishments of this kind, he considers to be at the head of the bay. The logs could be driven down the river much cheaper than sawed lumber can be freighted down in scows, and aside from this, if the present mill had been located here on the bay, the proprietors would not have sustained the damages they have this winter from the loss of logs. It is a very difficult matter to keep a mill boom in the river during the winter freshets without some loss of logs. Another disadvantage they are laboring under arises from the fact that the mill is located some distance above the best timber, and the logs have to be towed upstream. For any future mills that may be constructed for this purpose, a site should be selected somewhere on the bay here near the mouth of the river.