The Buried Wealth of King County: Seattle’s Industrial Rise

From the time of the first settlement of the country bordering on Puget Sound, there have been from year to year succeeding discoveries of coal veins. The first discoveries were made on the Stillaguamish River in 1853, but the vein was of a poor quality and so thin that experts pronounced it could not be profitably worked. Later, coal was discovered on Bellingham Bay, and a mine was opened, but by the mid-1860s, work was abandoned. In the fall of 1854, two men, Brown and Hewitt, accidentally discovered a large vein of lignite near Bellingham Bay. They located the land and interested San Francisco capitalists in forming the Bellingham Bay Coal Company.

It is in King County, however, that the greatest development of this grand industry has occurred. The first attempt to put coal on the market was in 1863, on the banks of Black River. The pioneers carried the coal in their primitive appliances, taking it down the river in barges to Seattle. This mining was kept up in a desultory manner until the outbreak of the Indian war. In 1863, a settler named Andrews, in the valley of the Squak (Issaquah), discovered a large vein of high-quality lignite. Transporting it was difficult, requiring wagons to Lake Washington, barges across the lake, and wagons again into town.

This method proved too expensive, and in 1867, the property was sold to a syndicate of San Francisco men for $53,000. The Seattle Coal and Transportation Company was then organized. A railroad was built from the mine to Lake Washington, with a barge line and a portage railroad system connecting Lake Union to Seattle. By 1877, the annual output had reached over 104,000 tons. In 1880, the coal mines and railroads passed under the control of the Villard syndicate, now operated by the Oregon Improvement Company, which raised the output to 300,000 tons a year. A thriving village of 800 inhabitants, named Newcastle, has grown up about the mine.