The Secret Millionaire of West Seattle
How a San Francisco journal saw the promise of Seattle’s 'West End' before the city was fully grown.
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.
We take an exceptional interest in the surroundings of this outlying 'West End' and must run the risk of what might be considered 'gushing' in our praise by some, and 'cheeky' in our advice by others. We have traveled the coast from Alaska to the Mexican border. We have seen the Alps, and have revelled in the beauties of Lucerne from the Rigi, felt the influence of the Mediterranean and devoted weeks to the castle-fringed banks of the glorious Rhine. We have sought and admired the finest scenery of the Old World and the New, but we have never been so impressed with the beauty of the landscape as that viewed from the table land of West Seattle. It is simply unique. In front of you, the majestic Rainier points his hoary crest into the very clouds in his grandeur, like a very god, his massive crust of 14,444 feet making but mere pigmies of the surrounding mountains that would else appear giant. In front of you Mount Baker, another white and glistening monument some hundred miles or so away, thrusts himself upon your view. To the right and left of you the Cascade and the Olympic ranges form one of the most exquisite mouldings that the mind of man can conceive, rugged in their outline and ever changeful in their soft and varying tints. Through this property will pass the Seattle & West Seattle Railroad, which will at once be rapidly pushed to completion with a handy ferry slip. On either side will extend wharves and great factories and stores.
“We have sought and admired the finest scenery of the Old World and the New, but we have never been so impressed with the beauty of the landscape as that viewed from the table land of West Seattle.”
This 1889 editorial captures the exact moment West Seattle was being sold as a speculative 'table land' paradise, promising the very rail and factory infrastructure that would define the neighborhood's industrial evolution. It serves as a reminder that the 'untouched' beauty marketed to late 19th-century land investors was almost immediately transformed by the industrial expansion that continues to shape Seattle’s waterfront today.
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