The Coal King of Snohomish County
Clarence Coulter outlines plans for a massive new coal shipping operation and rail line, eyeing the Northern Pacific market.
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 dispatch from the P. I., dated March 10: Clarence Coulter, of Portland, owner of the Washington coal mines in Snohomish county, Washington Territory, has been here for the past few days, and has arranged through the Huntington-Hopkins company for a standard gauge road to the mines from the North Snohomish river. He has secured very favorable rates from New York, and the firm expects that steam power will be shipped at once. A number of workmen will be sent immediately. The company is known as the 'Coal of the Northwest' Mining Company. A reporter called upon Clarence Coulter last night and asked him as to the truth of the statements. Mr. Coulter said: 'The dispatch is substantially true. We own about 400 acres of coal land near Seattle, about eight miles from the line of Northern Pacific, and in this land we have a 12-foot vein of clean, lignite coal. The mine has never been operated to any extent, for the reason that we could never secure fair freight rates, but conditions have changed. We are now one of the men so engaged in railway for the tank, and will build the road. We have a contract to furnish the Northern Pacific and expect to do quite an extensive coal business.'
“In this land we have a 12-foot vein of clean, lignite coal.”
Coulter’s vision of the Snohomish coal boom highlights the rapid industrialization of rural Washington in the 1880s. While coal extraction was the primary economic engine of that era, modern Snohomish County is better known for tech and aerospace, showing the complete economic pivot of the region over a century.
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