Selling the 'Magic City': Fairhaven’s 1890 Development Boom
Boosterism was at its peak in Fairhaven as the Fairhaven Land Company touted steel furnaces, electric lights, and an inexhaustible connection to Skagit coal.
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.
Fairhaven, the Magic City of the Lower Sound, sees its exceptional advantages recognized and admitted. The city boasts a hotel costing upwards of $100,000, and nine millions of brick are intended for new buildings to be erected in the spring of 1890. The most complete and successful Arc and Incandescent Light Plant in the state is now illuminating the city. Extensive waterworks, comprehending all modern improvements, are contracted for and will be completed from Lake Padden to the city by May 15, 1890. An electric railway is incorporated and under way, and mammoth steel and iron furnaces are to be blown in during the summer. The Fairhaven Southern Railway is operating daily trains to Sedro, tapping the coal and timber of the Skagit River.
“These are Not Idle Vaporings, but Actual Facts.”
This advertisement is a masterclass in 1890s boom-era 'boosterism.' The promise of rapid transformation into a major industrial metropolis mirrors the periodic development frenzies in modern Bellingham, where promises of grand infrastructure projects often aim to drive real estate speculation.
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