The Migrant Tide Building Seattle
A look back at the restless wave of Eastern and Midwestern youth who, having drained the vitality of their home towns, arrived in the Pacific Northwest to build the city of Seattle.
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 Philadelphia Press, in a recent editorial, calls attention to the fact that the young men of all the Eastern and Middle states for the last forty years have been going west. The drain has greatly weakened the stamina of some of the older commonwealths. Canada has also suffered from the same cause. Young men constantly drift across the lakes and they seldom return. The Port Hope Guide, a Canadian newspaper, prints a list of 500 young men who have left that place—a smart town on the lakeside—to better their opportunities in the land of the free. These emigrating young men are of the same class as those who, at an earlier period, settled Ohio, Indiana and all of the Western states proper. It is just such men who are now found as the moving powers in creating the new Northwestern states just about to enter the Union. They are rebuilding Seattle today and displaying such pluck and good sense as to gain praise from the civilized world.
“They are rebuilding Seattle today and displaying such pluck and good sense as to gain praise from the civilized world.”
This 1883 account captures the recurring cycle of 'boomtown' migration that has defined Seattle’s history. Just as these young men arrived to reshape the frontier, today's tech-driven migration continues to drive the city’s rapid demographic and economic evolution.
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