Pioneers and Pandemonium Stability and Change in Seattle History john m. findlay have been teaching at the Univer- our transportation system cannot keep fore. What we are experiencing now is sity of Washington since 1987. In pace with the influx of newcomers or in some ways more typical than atypi- I that time, our city and region have with the construction boom around cal. One of my main points tonight is been obsessed with growth—with the city. Buses are full, highways are that cities change constantly, and rapid measuring it, planning for it, celebrat- backed up, congestion spills over to all growth has been one of the regular ing it, resisting it, complaining about the other streets of the city, and delays changes affecting Seattle. At least as in- it, assigning blame for it, and coping for roadwork multiply. None of these tense as our current rapid expansion, I with its consequences. Yet growth is conditions is really well accounted for think, were the sustained initial burst not new in the history of our city. in the decennial numbers produced by of urbanization from 1880 to 1910 and As the accompanying figures illustrate, the U.S. Census. the tremendous expansion launched growth has been a constant in Seattle. by World War II. These two historical Our current growth spurt seems quite spurts, along with our current burst of The table and graph are based on U.S. overwhelming and burdensome. In growth, represent what I call pandemo- Census figures, which are recorded ev- fact, however, the city has been through nium moments in the history of Seattle. ery 10 years. Like most historians, I am some very intense spurts of growth be- That term suggests chaos—and the ex- a big fan of the U.S. Census, because it perience of rapid growth certainly has provides information that is simply seemed chaotic. People living through foundational for understanding the the changes felt that the city had gotten past. However, using the census to out of control, that things had taken a gauge urban growth has its limitations. turn for the worse. But another word When measured over each decade, the for these moments would be transfor- growth of Seattle seems almost steady mative. Each major quantitative change and predictable. But we know first- correlated to a city that was qualita- hand that is not how growth is experi- tively different from before. In other enced. It tends to arrive in fits and words, rapid growth helped to redefine starts, and in total disregard for the what the city was, and what it meant, schedule of federal census takers, and how power was exercised. which the U.S. Constitution (article 1, section 2) sets at every 10 years. Thus another goal tonight is to con- sider the evolving nature and function Today we are undergoing one of the of Seattle in historical perspective, us- most intense bursts of growth in recent ing our three pandemonium moments memory, with news reports and per- as pivot points. What was urban life sonal anecdotes documenting the in- like—or supposed to be like—in dif- tensity of changes. Our population ex- ferent eras? What roles did the city pands; our housing prices climb, and play—around Puget Sound, in the people find they cannot afford to live larger region, on behalf of the nation, here; cranes dot the landscape as more and in relation to the world? And how and more new buildings go up (and did these roles change with changes to they do literally go up—everything is the city’s size? In answering these ques- more vertical than before); increasing tions, we need to think about stability density changes neighborhoods. Then and change in relation to the diversity there is the traffic: improvements to of the city’s population. In other words, 4 Pacific Northwest Quarterly exploring stability and change in Seat- irreverent account of the pioneers tle’s history offers an opportunity to called Sons of the Profits (1967), expos- Seattle’s Pandemonium Moments: think broadly about our city’s past, to ing the greed of the founding fathers. The Decennial Census versus come to terms with long-term trends Fittingly, it took a local businessman Other Measures and key events, and to rethink the con- like Speidel to produce the first Marx- I: 1883-1910 clusions of earlier historians. ist account of early Seattle. Seattle’s first pandemonium mo- To illuminate the meanings of stability Although the second generation of Se- ment lasted from the arrival of the and change in Seattle, I propose to attle historians treated pioneers with transcontinental railroad in 1883 place its pandemonium moments into less adulation, it did little to reduce the through 1910. According to the U.S. conversation with voices from pioneer importance of the founding genera- Census, the peak period of popula- Seattle. In my view, while historians tion. Some of the second generation tion increase was the decade from 1900 to 1910, when Seattle added an Seattle Population, 1860-2010 average of 15,652 annually. But one historian suggests that Seattle grew at an even faster pace, 19,166 per year, between 1897 and 1903 (David Williams, Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography [2015], 12). II: 1940-1960 Source: Data from Grant and U.S. Census Bureau. Seattle’s second pandemonium mo- ment coincided with mobilization have not always done a great job ex- even adopted the generally uncritical for World War II and the Cold War. plaining rapid change in the city, they tone that the pioneers and their de- The decennial census tells us that have devoted pages and pages to the scendants had used. The foresight and Seattle averaged 9,929 newcomers founding generation of Seattle—the hard work, the patience and virtue of per year during the 1940s and 8,950 so-called pioneers. In fact, the very the pioneers, it was claimed, made it during the 1950s. In fact the bulk of first histories of Seattle focused almost inevitable that Seattle would flourish. expansion occurred between 1940 exclusively on pioneer figures; many And according to some, the pioneers’ and 1943, when Seattle gained on were actually written by the pioneers, influence lasted an astonishingly long average 37,333 residents each year or by their sons and daughters. Not time. In his elegantly written Seattle, and expanded from 368,302 in 1940 surprisingly, those accounts treated Past to Present (1976), Roger Sale sug- to roughly 480,000 in 1943 (Cal- pioneers with reverence. They credited gests that pioneers had ensured that vin F. Schmid et al., Social Trends in the founding generation almost en- Seattle would be “a bourgeois city from Seattle [1944], 300). tirely for “the supremacy of Seattle,” its its first breath.” Nard Jones’s 1972 his- “commanding greatness,” its “whole- tory of the city describes Seattle’s mod- III: 1990-2015 someness, prosperity, and stability.”1 ern character as a cross between two leading pioneers: the sober and dour Seattle’s third pandemonium mo- Eventually, there came along a second Arthur Denny, and the less sober, more ment started with the tech and retail generation of Seattle historians who gregarious David “Doc” Maynard.3 Ac- expansions of the 1990s and gained proved more irreverent. Murray Mor- cording to both the first and the sec- steam with the growth of Amazon gan’s Skid Road (1951)—which to my ond generations of Seattle historians, and other businesses after 2000. The mind remains the best-written over- the personalities and attitudes and val- census had Seattle increasing by an view of Seattle history—offered a fresh ues of figures from the 1850s and 1860s annual average of 4,712 for the look at the founding fathers by exam- set the urban tone for more than a cen- 1990s and 4,529 for the next decade. ining the city’s history “from the bot- tury. In this view, no amount of pande- Then growth spiked to 14,511 an- tom up.”2 During the 1960s, the local monium appeared capable of dimin- nually between 2011 and 2014. Such journalist Bill Speidel created the fa- ishing the influence of the founding expansion made Seattle the fastest mous underground tour of old Pio- generation. growing American city in 2012-13. neer Square, turning history into com- merce. Speidel also wrote his own Tonight, while considering closely the Winter 2015/2016 5 words and ideas of pioneers and pio- terms of EETs is so provocative that Some Pioneer Histories neer historians, I wish to offer a more one cannot help following suit. But critical perspective on them. In this en- there are costs as well as benefits. Re- Arthur A. Denny, Pioneer Days on deavor I am assisted by the insights of sorting to EETs to characterize popula- Puget Sound (1888) another, third generation of historians tion change is probably helpful for who have reexamined Seattle history some readers. Those who find “310,000 Frederic James Grant, ed., History of over the last two decades or so. The people” too abstract can perhaps pic- Seattle, Washington (1891) city’s founding fathers continue to ture “three Bellevues” much more loom large in some respects, but recent readily. However, I must confess to be- Emily Inez Denny, Blazing the Way; works have brought their story more longing to that segment of the popula- or, True Stories, Songs, and Sketches up to date, treated their words and tion that has a very literal streak. When of Puget Sound and Other Pioneers deeds with more skepticism, and paid I read about EETs I cannot help imag- (1909).