The City That Wants to Be the Boston of the Pacific
While San Francisco fretfully watches its own supremacy, an 1880 editorial predicts a rising Puget Sound metropolis of millions.
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.
San Francisco men are somewhat alarmed at the prospect of a loss of at least partial supremacy to their city. Portland is something of a rival, but is looked upon as the least threatening, owing to her inland location and the difficulties and dangers in the Columbia river bar. San Diego is about as threatening as Portland, and no more. The great danger comes from Guaymas in Mexico, Seattle, Washington Territory, and possibly from some place in British Columbia. The citizens of the metropolis try very hard to believe that San Francisco will occupy a position similar to that of New York on the Atlantic; Seattle, Victoria, Portland, San Diego and other cities corresponding with New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, Wilmington, Providence and Portland; they hardly admitting for us the possibility of becoming the future Pacific Boston, Baltimore or Philadelphia. It is not impossible, though, for her to be outstripped in the race even yet, and if any place does outstrip her that place will certainly be located on Puget Sound, and will quite as certainly be Seattle. The great commercial center [of the northern half of the region] will be a city of two or three million souls on the eastern shore of Puget Sound. There are many men now living who will see fully realized the prediction herein made.
“There are many men now living who will see fully realized the prediction herein made.”
This 1880 projection of Seattle as a future commercial titan mirrors our modern-day discourse about 'Big Tech' dominance and population growth. Just as 19th-century San Francisco feared Seattle’s ascent, modern residents grapple with the infrastructure and affordability pressures of a city that indeed became the 'Pacific Boston' the author envisioned.
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