The Great Tacoma Potato Fiasco
When a local farmer tried to break into the Tacoma market with a wagonload of produce, he found that the city’s much-vaunted commercial prosperity was, quite literally, not worth a hill of beans—or potatoes.
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.
A farmer living above Tacoma, but always making Seattle his market, was persuaded that Tacoma was the coming market on Puget Sound, and determined to try it by taking sacks of potatoes to that town. After calling on a few of the principal dealers and being told that there was no demand for potatoes, he resolved to canvass the city by traveling each street from end to end. He commenced with Pacific Avenue, then Railroad Street, C Street, D Street, E Street and Tacoma Avenue; called on every grocery dealer, every provision and grain dealer, all the hotels, every restaurant and boarding house, and at many private residences, but could not get an offer for his potatoes. Then he determined to throw them into the bay after paying the wharfage, which was 75 cents, but was informed by the freight agent that he would take them for the wharfage. Being met with a negative answer, the obliging agent said that probably the O. K. & N. Company would give what it cost to take them to town, but the farmer said if he was going to give them away he would do it outright and not make any half-way work about it. Meanwhile, he had engaged men to wheel them overboard. Just at this moment a man off board the Zephyr from Seattle took in the situation at a glance, and begged the farmer to send them to Seattle, as he could get a ready sale for them there, which he had no trouble in doing. What an enterprising city Tacoma must be! What an immense amount of capital must be invested in Tacoma. What an infinite amount of business must be done in such a great and thriving city as Tacoma, when the whole population combined was not able to buy twenty-nine sacks of potatoes—no, not even look at them.
“What an infinite amount of business must be done in such a great and thriving city as Tacoma, when the whole population combined was not able to buy twenty-nine sacks of potatoes—no, not even look at them.”
This 1885 editorial swipe at Tacoma reads like a vintage version of today's petty, high-stakes municipal rivalries. It captures the exact moment when the 'City of Destiny' (Tacoma) and the growing metropolis (Seattle) were aggressively fighting for regional economic dominance—a scrap that still echoes in the way our cities compete for investment and cultural prestige today.
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