The Smoke of Industry at Newcastle
An anonymous correspondent reports on the boom-time conditions, mining accidents, and the arrival of curious elites at the coal-rich settlement of Newcastle in 1878.
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.
Thinking a few items might not be out of place, I venture to send these: For the past two months they have been working the mines day and night, and are getting out from five to seven hundred tons of coal a day. There are more men employed in the mine now than there has been at any one time for the past three years. Still they come, for not one is turned away that is willing to work. The coal trains come in four and six times a day when not delayed by a car off the track, generally bringing passengers, among which are tourists and occasionally some of your own townsmen, all attracted hither by the mines.
Last Friday Mrs. Logan was detained here by a car off the track, and being a lady that improves every opportunity, she gave a lecture on Temperance for the benefit of the juvenile Templars. The hall was crowded and all seemed much pleased with the lecture, proving the old adage that 'It is an ill wind that blows no one good.'
Saturday Newcastle came near being over-run by the elite of Seattle. There were Lawyers, Doctors, Merchants and Editors, and rumor says a party of capitalists from Dundee, Scotland. Mr. Kimball, the man who was jammed between the cars and bunkers here, is improving and thinks he will be out on the street in a week or two more. Mr. McClure, a miner, was injured on Saturday by a fall of coal, but not very seriously. The weather is sultry and the smoke envelopes the place in a perpetual cloud. A shower would be very acceptable just now.
“The weather is sultry and the smoke envelopes the place in a perpetual cloud. A shower would be very acceptable just now.”
Newcastle transformed from a rugged, smoke-filled coal-mining camp into the quiet, suburban community it is today. Yet, the 1878 account of 'capitalists' visiting from afar to scout investments echoes the cycles of rapid transformation and external economic pressure that Seattle neighborhoods still navigate.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.