Portland State University PDXScholar Geography Masters Research Papers Geography 2014 Rivers of Steel: The Economic Development of Seattle During the Rail Age, 1870-1920 Neil T. Loehlein Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.edu/geog_masterpapers Part of the Human Geography Commons, and the Physical and Environmental Geography Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Loehlein, Neil T., "Rivers of Steel: The Economic Development of Seattle During the Rail Age, 1870-1920" (2014). Geography Masters Research Papers.edu/geog_masterpapers/13 10.13 This Paper is brought to you for free and open access.
It has been accepted for inclusion in Geography Masters Research Papers by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: pdxscholar@pdx. Rivers of Steel: The Economic Development of Seattle During the Rail Age, 1870-1920 Neil T. Loehlein Submitted for partial fulfillment of Master of Science degree in Geography Portland State University Approved by: _____________________________________________________________________________________ Type instructor’s name _____________________________________________________________________________________ Type Department Chair’s name with title Date: _____________________________________________________________________________________ ii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.
Geographic Effects on Settlement. THE PUGET BASIN. The Early History of Seattle. THE ROLE OF RAILROADS.
The Railways Extend Westward. Early Railroads of the Pacific Northwest. The Sound’s First Railroads, 1873-1885. The Northern Pacific.
The Seattle & Walla Walla. Competition Breaks the Monopoly, 1886-1893. The Northern Pacific’s Cascade Line. Railroads and the Lumber Industry.
The Seattle Lake Shore & Eastern. The Great Northern. The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Competition and the Railroad Pattern.
THE KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH 1897-99. The Connection to Coal. Seattle’s Maritime Trade. Weathering the Depression.
The Gold Rush. Reaping the Klondike Boom. How Crucial was the Klondike Gold Rush?. AFTER THE BOOM.
The Decline of Rail. The 1920s to the 1990s. Key Places in the Puget Basin, 1870-1920. The Columbia River Basin.
Coal Deposits of Western Washington. The Northern Pacific Railroad, 1879. The Seattle Coal & Transportation Co. and the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad.
Newcastle Annual Coal Production, 1870-1880. The Northern Pacific, the Oregon Rail & Navigation Co., and the Seattle Lake Shore & Eastern, Proposed and Completed Lines. The Great Northern Railroad. Washington State’s Rail Network, 1893.
Major Railroads of Puget Sound, 1893. Routes to the Klondike, 1897-1898. Population Change of Major Pacific Northwest Port Cities, 1880-1920. Washington’s Railroad Shipments of Lumber and Shingles, 1892-1897 .48 vi ACRONYMS CPR.
Canadian Pacific Railway C&PS. Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad GN. Great Northern Railroad NP. Northern Pacific Railroad OR&N.
Oregon Railway & Navigation Company OSN .Oregon Steam & Navigation Company P&PS. Portland & Puget Sound PSS. Puget Sound Shore Railroad SC&T. Seattle Coal & Transportation Company SLS&E.
Seattle Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad S&WW. Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad vii ABSTRACT 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 3,500,026 1 (U. 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. 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. Census, includes the cities of Tacoma and Bellevue.
2 Portland as the Pacific Northwest’s dominant urban center. He argues that the development of a regional hinterland does not serve as an adequate explanation for Seattle’s rise to preeminence, because both cities had extensive regional hinterlands, granting each the status of “regional city” (1992, 293). At the beginning of the 20th Century, Seattle had already established itself as the dominant city on Puget Sound through the development of extensive trade relations. However, Abbott considers both Seattle and Portland as regional cities during the first half of the 20th Century; it was not until after 1950 that Seattle began to develop extra-regional networks beyond what Portland could claim.
These extra-regional networks, he suggests, contributed to Seattle’s growth in the latter half of the century. Abbott argues that the basic changes in the “sectoral compositions and spatial patterns of economic activity” in the 20th Century create the circumstances where extra-regional networks become more important for a city’s growth than regional ties (1992, 298). He suggests a “dual urban systems” model where one set of cities conducts international trade, while a set of smaller cities are primarily responsible for national trade (1992, 298). Abbott asserts that Seattle’s ability to be the primary outfitter for the gold rush in Klondike region of Canada’s Yukon Territory during the late 19th Century, was a first step, toward which the city would expand its extra- regional trading networks, leading the city to attain the status of a “network city” (1992, 300).
The data that Abbott highlights include population, income ratios between each city and its relative hinterland, the Ginsberg Index 2, waterborne 2 The Ginsberg Index is the population of the most populous city in the region divided by the combined populations of the next four largest cities. 3 international trade, and immigration. He uses these quantitative data to support the claim that Seattle surpassed Portland in the 1950s and 60s. Taking Abbott’s assertions into account, the question that this paper answers is: what factors led Seattle to have the capacity to eventually serve the role of supply hub for the Klondike Gold Rush (also referred to as the Yukon Gold Rush)? To address this question, scholarly literature is analyzed to determine these primary variables.
This paper focuses on the social, economic, and geographic factors, with an emphasis on the role of railroads in the reshaping of the region, during the time when these changes first became apparent. The time period of 1870-1920 represents the age in which the railroads were a major factor in the development of urban centers in the Pacific Northwest. But this was not a one-way causality; the railroads were influenced by development as well. In addition to the rail network of Puget Sound, there are four factors that led to Seattle’s ability to capture the market for the Klondike Gold Rush: 1) Seattle’s early establishment as a community; 2) central location on Puget Sound; 3) strong maritime trade; and 4) proximity to large coal deposits.
Some factors helped to give rise to other factors, such as Seattle’s early establishment and its central location laid the groundwork for a strong maritime trade network to develop. In turn, all four of the aforementioned factors played an important role in how the rail pattern developed around Seattle. By the early 1890s, the railroad network would effectively connect Seattle with important places, locally and nationally, establishing trade relationships and funneling population towards the city. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this paper will argue that Seattle’s local and transcontinental rail connections played a crucial role 4 in the city’s ability to become the primary outfitter of the Klondike gold rushes.
While the railroads would boost growth in the broader Pacific Northwest, the specific geographic pattern of track that emerged would serve as the most important factor in Seattle’s ability to capture the Klondike market and its rise to become the dominant port on Puget Sound. Understanding how different network patterns and modes of transportation have shaped the regional economic development of urban centers in the Pacific Northwest can assist researchers in the study of transportation modes and their effects on the urban fabric in other regions and time periods. Determining what has changed and what remains the same, with regard to the connective, space-conquering qualities of transportation, can clarify how people understand their society and its everyday inner-workings. Regional Context A survey of the regional context is important to understanding the dynamics of Seattle’s development.
The patterns of development across the Pacific Northwest played a role in Seattle’s particular growth as a city. Competition between urban centers was a common theme throughout the rail age, where residents hoped that their city would become the ascendant metropolis of the region (MacDonald 1959; Quiett 1965; Armbruster 1999). Inter-urban rivalry was often a zero-sum situation, where the rise of one urban center directly led to the descent of a rival city. These patterns were shaped by actors at the local, regional, national, and international scales, as well as the region’s physical and human geography (Figure 1).
Key Places in the Puget Basin, 1870-1920 (Source: Author 2014) Geographic Effects on Settlement The Pacific Northwest is a region of the United States that includes the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Before the advent of railroads, rivers and other bodies of water served as the primary transportation routes. This had a profound impact on the location of urban development. Cities would most likely develop along rivers or coastal areas with sheltered harbors, where available.
MacDonald describes how most pre-railway population centers are located around “transportation breaks” or places where the transportation of goods and people requires a change in the mode of transportation to continue to their destination (1973, 69).