The Price of a Pioneer Homestead in 1877
A modest real estate listing from a century-and-a-half ago highlights the stark contrast between early Seattle’s property market and today's vertical city.
According to the page, the Light Brigade was ordered toward thirty Russian cannon posted in a valley, with cavalry and infantry columns behind them. Lord Lucan received the instruction from Capt. Lewis Edward Nolan of the Fifteenth Hussars, who pointed to the guns; another account said Nolan simply said they should take them. Lucan ordered the Earl of Cardigan forward. The brigade numbered 607 horsemen, officers included, and had about a mile and a half of open ground to cross, scattered with dead and wounded from an earlier fight.
Under artillery and rifle fire the squadrons charged. Nolan was struck by a shell and carried back; Col. Lionel Beverley was mortally wounded but kept his sword up; Frank Wilford was killed. The brigade reached the guns and cut down gunners, then found it had no supports. It retired under concentrated fire. The narrator’s horse fell, and he remounted a bay horse of the Eleventh Hussars that later fell, disemboweled by grape-shot.
The account says only a remnant of the regiments came back, many wounded or dismounted, with dead, wounded, and missing men and killed horses counted when the rolls were called. The narrator found twenty notches in his sword blade, three lance prods, two sword cuts, and his uniform torn.
“One House and one lot 60x120 feet. Located on Second Street, between Seneca and University.”
Today, a 60x120 foot lot in the heart of downtown Seattle (now dominated by the skyscrapers of First Hill and the central business district) would be worth tens of millions of dollars. In 1877, this listing represents the era before high-density zoning, when a single-family home on a large plot was the standard footprint of a young, growing frontier city.
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