The Great Terminus Fever of 1871
As rumors swirled about the location of the Northern Pacific Railroad’s Pacific Coast terminus, Seattleites were gripped by a volatile, real-estate-driven madness that made men 'demented' and land values skyrocket.
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.
The terminus excitement is rapidly coming to a head. People are getting more and more crazy, and it will be strange if the Insane Asylum at Steilacoom proves sufficiently capacious to accommodate all the victims. Men are running hither and thither, some on horseback and some afoot, all looking as if the most momentous event of their lives was about to transpire and they would be too late to witness it. The like of it we never saw. During the week, fortunes have been made and lost in real estate speculations. One hundred acres sold two weeks ago for two thousand dollars has since changed hands for five thousand, and is now held at ten thousand dollars. Other parcels of land have undergone a like rapid enhancement in value, and some cannot be purchased at any price. Land claims that have gone a begging for years for purchasers at one thousand dollars have suddenly been discovered to be worth ten thousand; if the owners were offered the last named price today, they would demand fifteen or twenty. So the thing works. All are excited and many demented. The end we have yet to see. Hurrah for the terminus!
“All are excited and many demented. The end we have yet to see.”
The 1871 'Terminus Fever' captures the frantic, speculative nature of Pacific Northwest real estate that persists in the Seattle consciousness today. Just as speculators chased the potential arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1871, modern developers and homeowners track infrastructure projects like Link Light Rail, viewing every new station as an engine for the same kind of volatile, rapid land appreciation.
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