Rockefeller Closes In on a Puget Sound Company Town
The Everett Land Company could not raise the December interest on its $1 million loan. By summer, insiders expected Rockefeller interests to take full control.
Everett, April 18.—Special.—Mr. Gardner Colby and other officials of the Everett Company are expected here in a week or two from New York City. It is understood in well-informed circles that the effort of the committee to raise the amount required to pay the December interest on the loan from the Central Trust Company and to carry out certain improvements was not successful, only a small portion of the amount being subscribed. It is the belief in circles in pretty close touch with the Everett Land Company that the Rockefeller interests will assume full control soon after the first of June, either under a receivership or by the terms of the trust deed given to the Central Trust Company of New York when the loan of $1,000,000 was made.
“It is the belief in circles in pretty close touch with the Everett Land Company that the Rockefeller interests will assume full control soon after the first of June.”
Everett was a company town built on speculation, and this 1898 report shows how quickly a place could pass from local promoters to distant capital. The Rockefeller takeover is an early Puget Sound example of the outside investment that would repeatedly remake—and inflate—the region's real estate.
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