The Year the Trains Couldn't Hold Everyone
Seattle's rail agents report the heaviest travel in years — packed cars, booming Alaska bookings, and a colony of 500 Hollanders settling on Whidbey Island.
The Northern Pacific is now figuring out a new time schedule with a view to putting on an extra train to Portland. This step has become almost a necessity by the great increase of travel, which now is so heavy that cars are crowded every day. It is probable that the local train will leave here earlier in the morning and go by Olympia and Gate City Junction, thereby relieving the overland of the Gray's Harbor passengers. The overland, it is thought, will then take the main line by Tenino.
The passenger movement is not confined to local traffic, but seems to extend to the entire system of the Northern Pacific. General Agent I. A. Nadeau reports better business from the East than for many months. Regular tourist and excursion travel is enormous. This season is about 45 per cent better than last year and is one of the best on record. An unusually large number of commercial travelers are on the road and carry unusually heavy baggage, which proves jobbing conditions here and general business conditions in tributary towns are substantial and progressive. Alaska travel is booming, and not a berth can be secured on any Alaska-bound steamer of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company before the end of July, full bookings having been made for the sailings of the Topeka, July 8 and 22, and the Queen, July 12. Yellowstone park travel is more than twice as strong as it was last year at this time. One of the biggest Yellowstone parties of this season will be that of the Cincinnati Post, for which the Northern Pacific is arranging to run a solid train from Cincinnati August 6.
Probably the most encouraging indication for the state is found in the fact that there is a greater movement of immigrants to this state than at any time in the two years. There have been many shipments of household goods, betokening the settler who has come to the country to stay and to help build up the state. The movement is not confined to any one point, but is general, the new-comers dropping off all along the line of the road.
The largest number of immigrants to come by the Great Northern this year was the colony of 500 thrifty Hollanders from the farming states of the interior, who have been located on Whidbey Island. They are now engaged in planting orchards and making substantial improvements. The Canadian Pacific reports no movement of actual settlers west at present. The tourist travel is fully up to the average.
“Alaska travel is booming, and not a berth can be secured on any Alaska-bound steamer of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company before the end of July.”
In 1895 Seattle was a rail terminus selling itself to the rest of the country, and the measure of its health was how many strangers got off the train. The 500 Hollanders on Whidbey Island are a reminder that the region's growth has always been an immigration story — and that the booster math of '45 per cent better than last year' is the same arithmetic chambers of commerce still run on.
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