A Gold Rush Tide Swells Through Steilacoom
Miners from Oregon and the Columbia are streaming through town bound for the Fraser River, buying supplies and predicting thousands more.
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 GOLD FEVER. On Tuesday last we were visited by a body of some [hundred] men from Oregon, on their way overland to the Fraser River Mines. Since Tuesday, other small parties have come, bringing with them the intelligence that an immense number of miners (some say as many as three thousand) are on their way from the Columbia River, via Steilacoom, for Fraser's and Thompson's Rivers. It certainly looks as though the tide were setting this way. The first party encamped a few miles out of town, came in and obtained additional supplies, and next day went on their way rejoicing, in good spirits. This is but the beginning of the end. We learn from private sources that several thousand more are expected, brought over by Mexican [trains] from California, via the Dalles.
“An immense number of miners (some say as many as three thousand) are on their way from the Columbia River, via Steilacoom, for Fraser's and Thompson's Rivers.”
In 1858 Steilacoom was briefly a boomtown waypoint, provisioning thousands bound for a distant resource rush. The pattern—a small Puget Sound town suddenly reshaped by migration and supply demand—rhymes with today's growth, housing and infrastructure fights. Then as now, the question was who captured the windfall and who paid for the roads and services.
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