Seattle’s Looming Epidemic
Facing a potential outbreak of cholera, the city council debates the urgent need for drainage and cleaning up the ‘rank smelling’ slums of Seattle in 1885.
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.
Your Committee on Sewers and Drainage, to whom was referred the communication of the City Surveyor in relation to needed drainage at the intersection of Mill, Terrace, and Fourth streets, would respectfully report that they have examined the premises and find the condition in that vicinity substantially as reported. The rainy season is now so far advanced that it is hoped the surface water complained of will no longer render travel dangerous by its encroachments. But with the subsidence of this evil, other and graver considerations are likely to appear, demanding better drainage. Sanitary considerations force themselves upon us at this time with more than ordinary urgency. We regard the last monthly report of our City Health Officer, Dr. Weed, as a timely warning that our city should be placed in better sanitary condition. It is unwise to delay preparation for an epidemic until it is actually upon us. The alarm has been sounded all over our country, and especially along our seaboard have the authorities of late been more than usually active in the enforcement of such sanitary regulations as shall promote the public health and ward off, if possible, the much dreaded epidemic of Asiatic cholera with which we are threatened in the near future. Should it appear on our coast, as predicted, during the approaching summer, it requires no prophetic vision to see that our city stands upon a slumbering volcano. We should blush to have the Health Officer of our respectably clean city visit some of the filthy, rank smelling places now tolerated in our city. It is our imperative duty to enforce, through our police, every sanitary regulation bearing upon individual property holders.
“It is unwise to delay preparation for an epidemic until it is actually upon us... our city stands upon a slumbering volcano which in its eruption must swallow up untold numbers of our population.”
In 1885, Seattle’s infrastructure was primitive, and the city council was terrified that a cholera outbreak would wipe out its rapidly growing population. While the cholera never came, the argument remains familiar: the city struggling to keep up with basic sanitation and infrastructure demands during a massive period of growth and speculative building.
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