Birth of Industry - By Dick Wagner
The first step in the Transportation grant project is to document and identify the unique history and stories of Lake Union that could be shared through exhibits and interpretative activities.
The founder of The Center from Wooden Boats, Dick Wagner, is documenting many of the compiling stories and the history of Lake Union, from his unique perspective of living and working on Lake Union for over three decades. These narratives are in draft form, and should be considered a work in progress. We welcome any thoughts, comments or stories you may have.
Birth of Industry
In March of 1852, Chief Seattle’s imposing canoe glided onto the Piner Point beach, City of Seattle. The arrival drew in the whole community as the paddlers were singing a canoe song and thumping their paddles on the cedar canoe. In the stern seat of honor were the noble chief and a dapper white man, David Maynard, M.D.
Maynard’s arrival as a guest of Seattle, the Chief, was exciting to the settlers because the doctor wanted to establish a practice, a drug store, and an operation to salt and pack salmon for the San Francisco market. This would double the City of Seattle’s commercial portfolio.
The piling trade was still a hot enterprise, running at Alki on the other side of Duwamps. Since everyone but Terry had moved to Seattle, Alki had now become Seattle’s first suburb.
In October, another entrance was made in a native canoe, from stage west. The new cast member was Henry Yesler. He wasn’t as smartly dressed as Doc Maynard, but he also had a dream. He was looking for a site to set up a steam sawmill, and he had a $30,000 letter of credit. There was, as yet, no sawmill on Puget Sound. The townspeople gushed over Mr. Yesler. Seattle’s industrial ventures were now tripled. Soon a huddle of cabins sprang up within close reach of the mill. Logging had geared up and everyone who wanted had a paying job, including the Duwamish and Suquamish.
Yesler adopted an old native trail that ran up to the ridge from the bay and down to Lake Washington. It is now Yesler Way. Peeled logs were set crosswise along the trail. The logs were greased to reduce friction of the felled trees being hauled to the mill. This was Seattle’s skid road. The term eventually became infamous, defining a strip of brothels and bars, but in Seattle it was meant to serve the sawmill.
The year 1853 was a turning point. Besides Yesler’s sawmill, Thomas Mercer brought a team of horses, the first within 30 miles, and began Seattle’s one and only trucking company. Also, a store opened with consignment goods brought from San Francisco by the good ship Leonessa. The same year was the birth of Seattle’s first office, restaurant, school, and church. Its first hotel, the Felker House was locally known as Mother Damnable’s, after the manager, Seattle’s first brand name.
Dexter Horton arrived to work at the sawmill, but he brought a cast iron safe purchased at a bargain price. His fellow mill workers needed a safe place to deposit their earnings, so Horton opened a bank. If he forgot the combination, he could pull the safe away from the wall. It had no back. No one lost their savings and Horton eventually expanded to become Seattle First National, the largest banking institution in the Northwest.
And possibly the most needed facility for this settlement appeared. It was the steam side wheeler Fairy, brought by sailing ship from San Francisco. Now there was a vessel with seats and rain protection to carry passengers, cargo, and mail to Olympia from Yesler’s wharf.
Although a monumental amount of hard physical labor had dominated the pioneers, they also acquired a curiosity about their surroundings, so different from the grassy plains they left. Curiosity is an understatement. The new folks came with a big vision. Their environment either fit the dream or, by gum, they would make it fit.
In the early 1860’s, Harvey Pike found the isthmus between Lake Union and Lake Washington an unacceptable impediment to progress. So, with pick, shovel, wheelbarrow, and brute strength, he began to cut a channel. Pike eventually wore himself out but others took on the task and soon there was a flume between the lakes allowing east to west passage of canoes and logs.
Seattle, the city, almost died in 1855. The January 26, 1855 Battle of Seattle scared off a lot of recent immigrants. They decided frontier life was not for them. Two Seattle men were killed by native sharpshooters. The population that day was about 200. By 1860 it had fallen to about 50. The war was inevitable. In 1853 Isaac Stevens was appointed governor of Washington Territory. His main task was to make room for more white immigrants by assigning native tribes to reservations. A couple of years later, the Washington tribes began to realize that those treaties they signed were not what they expected. Some would be sharing land with tribes they had no connection with or, worse yet, their traditional enemies. Out of frustration, many natives began raiding homesteads and settlements. The natives acquired guns through trade with the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Nisqually.
When the muskets started popping in Seattle, the settlers immediately fled to the two blockhouses they recently had built. The U.S. Navy sloop Decatur fired their cannon into the ridge above town. By nightfall it was all over. The natives probably had run out of ammunition and probably run out of resolve that murdering the Seattle settlers would deter the manifest destiny of future colonists. Seattle was saved. By 1870 the population was about 2000.
Intra-city transportation began with a multi-mode system in the late 1860’s. A horse-drawn street car from downtown Seattle connected to the 26-foot steam launch, City of Latona, at CWB’s site, which the natives called Ctca’qwcid, “where a trail descends to the water.” The street car went on the Indian trail through dark primal forest. Passengers could ride the steamer around the lake in comfort, stopping at all the homesteads and settlements.. The lake was now becoming Seattle’s first playland. The City of Latona stopped at Jensen’s Grove. In fact, Latona was the only means to reach Jensen’s with its restaurant, beer hall (they made the beer), a German oompah band, dancing, and swimming. This first resort of Seattle was set in a forest clearing with 3 streams running through it.
There were so many new things to learn about survival in the Northwest. The Duwamish were a great source of information, especially about the food resources of the sea. Illinois flatlanders hadn’t a clue about catching and preparing clams, oysters, crab, and salt water fish. Those who observed the natives most carefully noted the cooking fires in the plank houses had burning rocks. Coal! How long did it take to realize there was yet another natural product in the neighborhood that could be exported?
Hired natives showed the location of the black rocks, Newcastle, on the east side of Lake Washington. Plans for a coal empire and the technology it required began immediately. By 1871 narrow gauge railroad tracks were laid from Pike Street to south Lake Union’s wharf, the moorage of City of Latona. A steam locomotive was shipped from San Francisco. It was hauled from the ship’s wharf to the tracks by 16 horses. Locomotive “Ant” and eight locally made coal cars with removable seats were ready to begin the operations of the Seattle Coal and Transportation Company. Passengers were welcome on Sundays.
The coal was mined and a railroad took if from Newcastle to Lake Washington where it was loaded into a barge pulled by a steam tug. The tug came from Puget Sound, up the Duwamish, to the Green River which then branched into the Cedar River, Lake Washington’s outfall. This required crossing several sand bars. The technique to get over the bars was nautical pole vaulting. Long, beefy timbers were secured about midships on each side of the tug with a pivot bolt through the guard, sheer plank and clamp. The timber was angled forward, and deeper than the keel. When it hit the sand, the tug’s momentum would lift it up and over the shallow spot.
The barge was unloaded twice a day at the isthmus between the lakes. The coal was hand loaded into the tiny rail road cars and horse drawn to the Lake Union side where it was reloaded in a barge and towed to the south Lake Union shore. The coal was reloaded and hauled by steam railroad to Pike Street. Vessels could moor at the wharf below Pike and the coal would be tumbled down a chute into a ship’s bunkers.
Seattle was beginning to offer the amenities of an established city within a generation of its pioneer beginning. And Lake Union had played a starring role.
- Dick Wagner