The Myth of the Sterile Sound
A Victorian-era editorial refutes the popular belief that the Snohomish Valley and surrounding lands were unfit for farming, arguing that geological history created a landscape ripe for immense agricultural prosperity.
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.
It is the opinion of scientists that in the formation of the present natural divisions of the globe, there have been many changes of surface and climate. These changes, although taking place gradually in past times, are now, in the course of a hundred years, seen to have changed the vegetable and animal life of the world. The coal of the Snohomish basin was deposited in the Tertiary period. This was followed by a period of intense cold, wrapping the northern portion of the United States in bonds of ice. These rock-like glaciers have not inappropriately been called nature's great plow-shares, grinding down the rocks and pulverizing the soil, thus fitting the earth for civilizing man.
Historically, the regions back of Olympia and Steilacoom were the first settled, and because the soil there is composed of gravelly materials, the idea became prevalent that all soil in the Puget Sound basin, except river bottoms, is unfit for cultivation. This is a mistake. The glaciers grinding and polishing their way down river valleys like the Snohomish, Skagit, etc., furnished the material for the great flats at Whatcom county.
In the Snohomish valley, including the Snoqualmie, there are some 200,000 acres of fertile bottom land, while in the rest of Snohomish county there is probably not far from 50,000 acres more. It is not too great an estimate to say that there is fully 500,000 acres of upland and bottom land in Snohomish county well fitted for agricultural purposes, when the timber is once removed. Wages on the Sound are more than twice as high as the average of the eastern States, while the cost of living is only about one-third greater. With all these advantages, this is the poorest country in the world for the lazy man who expects to realize without physical labor. All the great advantages of this country are of that kind developed only by severe physical toil and perseverance.
“These rock-like glaciers have not inappropriately been called nature's great plow-shares, grinding down the rocks and pulverizing the soil, thus fitting the earth for civilizing man.”
This 19th-century editorial highlights the persistent tension between the region's rapid development and the physical challenges of clearing the dense, old-growth landscape. Today, the 'physical toil' of clearing land has been replaced by the struggle for housing density and land-use planning, but the core debate—how to best utilize Snohomish County's limited, valuable space—remains identical.
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