Scavenging in the Ashes
While Seattle recovers from the Great Fire of 1889, opportunists sift through the debris of the burned post office in search of mail—and valuables.
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.
There are some thieves in the district who think nothing of the danger they run. A pair of these individuals went through the library ruins yesterday morning without looting anything, but their main attention was directed to the site of the post office. They were seen at different points in the ruins, sifting through the debris in order to find something of value. At the post office site, the thieves were seen moving some of the bricks which had fallen into the basement. They had been burned out of a home and had come to the ruins of the post office to look for their mail. Now that they have given up hope of finding it, they continue to stay in the ruins, picking through the charred remnants. They are clearly looking for currency or valuables that had passed through the mail. The fire had burned them out of their own home, and in the way of a starter, they were beginning their life with theft and the plunder of the city.
“The fire had burned them out of their own home, and in the way of a starter, they were beginning their life with theft and the plunder of the city.”
This story from July 1889 captures the lawlessness and desperation that followed the Great Seattle Fire, which leveled the city's commercial core. Today, the location of the burned-out post office (near the Pioneer Square district) remains a site of intense civic memory and urban struggle, though the 'ruins' have long been replaced by the enduring infrastructure of modern Seattle.
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