The City That Outgrew Its Rivals
An 1885 dispatch from the front lines of the Seattle boom describes a town shedding its humble roots and leaving former neighbors like Steilacoom in the dust.
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.
Seattle, W. T., Dec. 3d, 1885. No town on Puget Sound so impresses one, after an absence of a few years, with the wonderful growth and development that has taken place as does this, which now proudly and boastingly calls itself the City. The onward march of improvement here has been steady, substantial, and almost unprecedented. The citizens may well feel a pride in this progression, for the reason that it is the result of indefatigable and earnest work by them. It takes no retentive memory to keep in mind the time that Seattle was intensely insignificant—the time when Steilacoom could well look down upon her with contempt. This time is not so far removed as to be dimmed with the mists of many years. Now, today witness the change. Steilacoom is a graveyard that any respectable corpse with reasonable enterprise would desert for a point not so profoundly dead. The county seat has been removed to a town of more recent date, and with a shade more life—Tacoma. But as the two towns stand today, there is no comparison. Seattle is incomparably in advance. Today Seattle and Belltown have grown into a complete one, and the growth has been commensurately extended on all sides. Mill and Commercial streets, with substantial buildings, bear a metropolitan air. Uniformed policemen and street cars bespeak a town not to be left behind when it comes to city airs. We speak of Seattle as bearing the most unmistakable progressive marks, and so it does. All honor to her citizens for it!
“Steilacoom is a graveyard that any respectable corpse with reasonable enterprise would desert for a point not so profoundly dead.”
In 1885, Seattle was a scrappy town obsessed with growth, branding itself 'The City' to distinguish its future from decaying regional centers like Steilacoom. Today, Seattle continues to grapple with the same intense pressure of rapid expansion, competition for infrastructure, and the constant friction between its frontier history and its metropolitan ambitions.
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