Gold Fever Lands at Bellingham Bay
Mail-steamer dispatches report 1,400 argonauts bound for the new mines, Victoria land prices climbing to a 'dizzy elevation,' and rumors of a fresh townsite at Semiahmoo Bay.
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.
By the mail at Steilacoom, on Wednesday last, of the U.S. Mail Steamer Constitution, Capt. A. B. Have, we have later and interesting intelligence from below. By the kindness of the purser we are put in possession of the following items:
The steamer Panama, Capt. Dull, arrived at Bellingham Bay on the 18th, bringing from San Francisco 400 passengers. The Pacific, Capt. Haley, arrived on the 19th with some 400 passengers, having landed besides at Vancouver, on the Columbia River, 300 soldiers on their way to the Walla Walla country. The Farm, Capt. Horner, arrived at Bellingham Bay on the 20th, with some 600 passengers.
By the above numbers we learn that there is great excitement in the mining towns of California, and that extensive preparations are making for migration to the new mines. Californians are thick in Victoria in land speculations. Real estate has gone up to a dizzy elevation. As yet there has been little building at Victoria consequent upon the gold excitement. Brokers who have had their day in San Francisco, grown grey and corpulent in dreams of wealth, are now promenading the streets of Victoria with quick and buoyant steps, with faces glowing in anticipation of coming events. There is not yet any positive and certain news of the whole opening of the trail from Bellingham Bay to the mines. It is rumored that a town will be laid out at Semiahmoo Bay, only about [blank] miles south of Fort Langley, between which two places the country is represented as excellent.
“Real estate has gone up to a dizzy elevation.”
The 1858 Fraser Canyon gold rush turned Puget Sound ports into boomtown staging grounds almost overnight, with shiploads of miners and speculators arriving before any infrastructure existed. The same pattern—land values spiking, new townsites platted on rumor, and boosters selling the next big thing—has recurred across Washington whenever a new industry or transit line promised sudden wealth.
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