The Mukilteo Colony Dream
Promoters pitched a 32-tract 'colony' in Mukilteo as a perfect, self-sustaining opportunity for families to own land and work the Sound, promising everything from shipbuilding to fertile marshland farming.
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 best opportunity ever offered to own a home on easy terms that will soon be very valuable. The Mukilteo property is divided into thirty-two tracts of about nine acres each, extending back to the water so as to include tide-low and garden land, clearly cleared, much timber land on the tract. Five of these have been already sold. Credit will be given at low rate of interest to those unable to pay cash down. Also desirable property on the front for sale or lease on reasonable terms for business purposes. Bargains offered in tracts of 40 and 50 acres adjoining the Mukilteo town site. The natural advantages of Mukilteo are not excelled by any other place on the Sound for fishing, milling, shipbuilding or manufacturing purposes. All the steamers down the Sound in Snohomish, Whatcom and Island Counties stop there going and returning; it is also on the direct route of ocean steamers up the Sound. There is also an excellent location for cattle raising, from which to ship the products of Snohomish, Island and Whatcom Counties in cold water vessels. On these premises will also be built a cattle wharf thirty or forty feet in all, thus affording those purchasing tracts a chance to secure stock if they so desire. In addition to the above, will be sold 320 acres of the finest marsh land in the Territory, known as the Hurley Ranch, with 20 acres of upland. This is only four miles from Snohomish City on La Grande Marsh, well drained, not subject to overflow, soil extra fertile, dry and nearly ready for the plow. There is a wagon road to the premises, and products can be taken by this road or by boats from the premises to market. Terms easy. The best chance ever offered in the Territory to secure a home. Just the location for a colony! As it can be subdivided into forty-acre tracts, each of which will yield an abundant support for a family.
“Just the location for a colony! As it can be subdivided into forty-acre tracts, each of which will yield an abundant support for a family.”
This 19th-century 'colony' scheme captures the perennial Washington obsession with land development and the dream of self-sufficiency. Today, as Snohomish and Mukilteo struggle with rapid urban sprawl and housing density, these promises of 'easy terms' and 'abundant support' echo the modern tension between residential expansion and sustainable local economies.
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