Rivers of Steel: The Economic Development of Seattle During the Rail Age, 1870-1920

The Pacific Northwest experienced massive urban development and growth in population from 1870 to 1920. The railroad was a key factor contributing to the influx of people and expansion of the built environment. The rival port towns around the Washington Territory’s Puget Sound all strove to become the dominant center of trade. As the pattern of railroads expanded, this new mode of transportation would have a significant effect on which ports would prosper and which would languish. This paper will show that the rail network that developed between 1873 and 1893 would come to favor Seattle at a critical point in history: just before the Klondike Gold Rush. But as the railroads shaped the development of the Sound, other factors shaped the pattern of the rails as well. Seattle was able to play an early role as a local supply hub because of its early start as a community, central location, and strong maritime trade. The city’s proximity to large and high quality coal deposits also played a role its development and the extension of local rail lines. Seattle’s role as trade hub and local rail network created the infrastructure necessary to convince the Great Northern transcontinental railroad to make the city its terminus, nullifying the competitive advantage of its main rival on the sound, Tacoma. The railroad network that developed during this period further entrenched Seattle’s role as the trading hub of Puget Sound, which played a crucial role in the city’s rise to become the dominant port on the sound. This paper contributes to the historical analysis of Seattle’s early days as a burgeoning port town by surveying the works of scholars and providing a new perspective on the driving forces in Seattle’s rise to economic supremacy. Seattle, Washington, stands today as the preeminent port in the Pacific Northwest. Home to Boeing, Nordstrom, Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Starbucks, Seattle has a diverse economy with extensive international connections (Beyers 2011). The Queen City, as it is also known, boasts the largest population in the region, with 608,660 residents within its city limits and a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) population of 3,500,0261 (U.S. Census 2010a; U.S. Census 2010b). The city is said to possess an entrepreneurial dynamism, known simply as the “Seattle Spirit.” This phenomenon has been attributed to local actors who, at various points in Seattle’s history, have been thought to play major roles in shaping Seattle’s growth and development. Some scholars (MacDonald 1959; Sale 1976) see Seattle’s rise to become the dominant port in the Pacific Northwest occurring in the first decade of the 20th Century. These authors use population data from the U.S. Census and trade statistics to show that Seattle became a more populous city with a more extensive hinterland than Portland, Oregon between 1900 and 1910. Their analyses rely on concepts similar to central place theory, where the pattern of urban centers is shaped by their competition over hinterlands (Ullman 1941). The dominant urban center will rise to become the central place, while all challengers will hold secondary and tertiary statuses. Carl Abbott (1992) argues for a different interpretation of this history, claiming that the advent of Seattle’s dominance actually arose in the 1950s and 1960s. In his article “Regional City and Network City: Portland and Seattle in the Twentieth Century,” Abbott attempts to explain when and how Seattle surpassed 1 Seattle’s MSA, as defined by the U.S. Census, includes the cities of Tacoma and Bellevue.