The Boom That Built Bellingham: How Four Towns Merged Into One City
In the spring of 1904, the bustling communities of Sehome, Whatcom, Fairhaven, and Bellingham were rapidly converging. With housing prices soaring and carpenters working day and night, this historic merger created the city we know today.
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.
Bellingham Bay ought to be lucky, for it is shaped somewhat like a horseshoe or mule shoe, which it still better fits round by the purple hills of the peninsula of Lummi. It makes the most exquisite bit of color, of light and shadow that can be imagined. The sunrises and sunsets are magnificent, and once or twice this winter there has been a moonlit picture that would drive an artist wild.
Whatcom, Sehome, Bellingham and Fairhaven are rapidly growing toward each other, with the evident intention of blending into one city. Whatcom is, at present, the metropolis of the bay, but Sehome has a fine location and is going forward at a rate that makes people from Angeles—who are supposed to know what booms were—turn pale with envy.
Lots that could not be thought of three months ago for fuss, could not be tombed today for Three room houses, not even best titles! by the name, or shape, of cottage rent for from $13 to $16 according to location. Money is plentiful, and on every hand is heard the ring of the woodman's ax and the whir of the carpenter hammer, and the blasting at giant anvils.
At 12 o'clock at night, when the light is dying over the broad sweep of the waters and the frogs are merrily crying, "struck it!" "struck it!" and a hundred trees go leaping upward into the darkness of the moonless night, the "oldest inhabitant" sits on his stoop and smokes the "pipe of peace" and prosperity and agrees with the frog he has indeed "struck it."
There is one thing that is a disgrace and a slight to the whole bay, and that is a tri-weekly mail for an intelligent and refined people, living in one of the most picturesque nooks not exactly a nook, either of the world, to not have a daily mail.
But behold, however, young and lacking in many things beknown has a fortune. Her line is on the lowest round at present, but is going to climb so high that the whole world will yet look at her with eyes of envy.
This 1904 account captures the chaotic, speculative energy of the Pacific Northwest's early 20th-century land booms. The rapid convergence of Whatcom, Sehome, Fairhaven, and Bellingham into a single municipality mirrors modern debates about urban consolidation, zoning density, and the affordability crises that often accompany such explosive growth.
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