The Empire State of the West
An influential New York academic turns down California dreams to bet on the future of Washington Territory.
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.
Thomas Riffery, of the Ulster Academy of Kingston, New York, on the 30th of March, wrote an enthusiastic letter to our Delegate in Congress, Hon. Thos. H. Brents. It will be only filling a great desire of my own to give to the people of this section a better idea than they now have of your glorious Territory, soon to be the youngest, the most robust and the most promising of the great sisterhood of States. Some already within the last few months have reached there, and written from Seattle in the most flattering manner. Farmers in our neighboring county, Delaware, are offering their farms for sale in order to move to Washington Territory. I had determined to go to San Diego, Southern California, and with a view to that purchased the site of a residence there, but since the information which I received from you and friends who have gone to Seattle, I have entirely changed my mind, and feel that, for the future, my lot is cast with the people of Washington Territory. A letter from Seattle, however, startles them, by the writer saying that he found it colder in Jackson, Florida, in winter than he did in Seattle. I intended to take the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as soon as I find time to write to the editors. I think it is an excellent paper, and a credit to the Sound.
“I had determined to go to San Diego, Southern California... but since the information which I received... I have entirely changed my mind, and feel that, for the future, my lot is cast with the people of Washington Territory.”
In 1882, Seattle was selling itself as an affordable 'Empire State' to restless Easterners, effectively framing the city as an alternative to a crowded, expensive California. Today, the roles have largely reversed, with Seattle’s own housing affordability crisis driving the same demographic anxiety and migration patterns the paper once encouraged.
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