A Trail of Fire Through Port Townsend
When four hundred torch-bearers paraded the bluff at night, they turned the seaside town into a spectacular display of political theater.
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 Republican rally in the city last night was perhaps the most imposing political demonstration ever witnessed on the Sound. Large delegations were present from Dungeness, Port Discovery, and Chimacum, and four hundred torch-bearers paraded, and the streets were all astir with Republican glory. The procession, while marching up the Washington street incline, was a beautiful sight. A running fire of Roman candles was kept up all along the line during the entire march. After marching through the principal streets on the hill, the procession descended on the Taylor street switch-back, presenting from the waterfront a most extraordinary and grand pyrotechnic display. The blazing column, tracing in fire the zig-zag line down the bluff's front, looked like a thunderbolt.
“The blazing column, tracing in fire the zig-zag line down the bluff's front, looked like a thunderbolt.”
In 1889, Washington territory was on the cusp of statehood, and political enthusiasm—often literal fire in the streets—was a primary form of civic participation. Today's political rallies rarely involve hand-held pyrotechnics, but the fierce intensity of the struggle for influence in a rapidly growing Pacific Northwest remains a constant in Seattle and its neighboring port cities.
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