A Port on the Bay
Fairhaven positions itself as the primary maritime gateway for Bellingham Bay to bypass shipping delays in Seattle and Tacoma.
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 people of the several towns on Bellingham have the opportunity to secure to themselves a rare advantage in matters of transportation if they will but unite in accepting the proposition recently made by Captain Brown, representing the steamer Haytian Republic. Heretofore our merchants and tradesmen have dealt largely with San Francisco, but there has been no direct means of procuring shipments of goods from that point except by rehandling and reshipping either at Seattle or Tacoma. The facts are that an investigation of the waters of the bay, with the present facilities for landing and distributing freights, reveals the fact that Fairhaven is the one place on the bay where the Republic and ships of her class can land. She carries 800 tons and draws with a full cargo twenty-two feet of water. If the Republic comes to the bay she must for the present come to Fairhaven and to no other point.
“Commerce always means competition with other points, and in these times and in our situation, commercial competition means freights.”
The fierce rivalry between Fairhaven and its neighbors for maritime status illustrates the 'company town' ethos of the period, where geography was Destiny and infrastructure (or the lack thereof) decided the winners of the Pacific Northwest urban race.
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