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 consider 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 moment 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). Denny was the daughter of considerably more attention to the ining 3 replica Bellevues (each com- the pioneers David Denny and Lou- views and experiences of groups other plete with its own Bellevue Square isa Boren Denny. than the city’s pioneer founders. Re- shopping mall) or 14 replica Lynn cent authors have revised Seattle’s past woods (again, each complete with its Clarence B. Bagley, History of Seat- by placing it within the context of a own Alderwood Mall) plunked down tle, from the Earliest Settlement to the broader historical literature on race, around Puget Sound. Personally, I like Present Time, 3 vols. (1916). Bagley class, gender, environment, and urban- Bellevue and Lynnwood, and have no was the son of the pioneer minister ization. As a result, they have produced problem with one of each. However, Daniel Bagley. In 1929 he also pub- more inclusive and more incisive ac- deploying EETs as a way of character- lished a 4-volume history of King counts of the city’s history. My own izing metropolitan growth makes it County. work has benefited accordingly. seem as if urban areas expand through a process of cloning already existing Cornelius H. Hanford, ed., Seattle While acknowledging my debt to other towns. Such a depiction not only and Environs, 1852-1924, 3 vols. historians, I would like to note that I alarms me as a literalist, leading to a vi- (1924). Hanford was the son of the have learned much from journalists as sion of towns being reproduced as if pioneers Edward Hanford and Ab- well. I am particularly indebted to they were Stepford wives. It also con- bie J. (Holgate) Hanford. newspaper accounts for generating a cerns me as a historian, because the new unit for measuring urban growth. concept of cloning does not adequately During the 1980s and 1990s, as locals describe the transformations in urban became preoccupied with urban ex- form that pandemonium moments are pansion, it became common for re- capable of producing, the qualitative porters to illustrate predicted or actual changes generated by quantitative population gains by explaining their increases. Some Second-Generation figures in terms of what I call equiva- Histories lent existing towns, or EETs. Thus one here is a fundamental tension in reporter wrote that between 1990 and Taccounts of early Seattle. Histori- Archie Binns, Northwest Gateway: 1997 the combined population of Sno- ans want to write about the beginnings The Story of the Port of Seattle (1941) homish, King, and Pierce Counties had of a significant city, but in doing so grown overall by 310,000 people—the must contend with town founders who 4 Calvin F. Schmid et al., Social Trends equivalent of “three Bellevues.” Simi- in most respects had little intimate in Seattle (1944) larly, newspapers covering the pro- knowledge of urban life. Let’s think for jected growth of Snohomish County in a moment about pioneers’ qualifica- Murray Morgan, Skid Road: An In- the late 1980s said to expect the equiv- tions as town builders. Like the vast formal Portrait of Seattle (1951) alent of “three new cities the size of Ev- majority of Americans of the mid-19th erett” by 2010.5 Or, if one did not mind century, Seattle pioneers had very little Bill Speidel, Sons of the Profits (1967) waiting until 2020, one could antici- actual experience as urbanites. They pate the addition of the equivalent of arrived on Puget Sound in the 1850s, Nard Jones, Seattle (1972) fourteen Lynnwoods, or a hundred claimed land grants, laid out a town Arlingtons.6 site . . . and then waited for nearly three Roger Sale, Seattle, Past to Present decades for a city to appear. They (1976) Fourteen Lynnwoods? A hundred Ar- hoped that a town would take hold and lingtons? Calculating urbanization in grow, but could not afford to count on

6 Pacific Northwest Quarterly it. So while they waited, they logged big-city status was no sure thing. The and milled and fished and traded and great majority of towns founded in the Some Third-Generation Histories mined and farmed and promoted. The 19th-century West actually failed. same people who speculated in town Quintard Taylor, Forging of a Black lots often worked for wages, or tried What Seattle had in its favor was the Community: Seattle’s Central District their hand at different businesses, at- tremendous economic and territorial from 1870 through the Civil Rights tempting to keep afloat until property expansion of the United States during Era (1994) values increased. Like many westerners the late 19th century. Irrespective of of that time, they were novice and what town founders thought or did on HistoryLink, historylink.org, on- part-time urbanites—not really sure the Pacific Coast, industrial capitalism line encyclopedia of Seattle and what they were doing, and largely de- was growing voraciously, demanding Washington history, 1998-present pendent on good fortune to help them raw materials, and integrating far- succeed. Some history books make it flung lands into its system. Some Pa- Kathryn Morse, The Nature of Gold: sound as if Seattle was from its found- cific Northwest towns were bound to An Environmental History of the ing—because of its founders—“a city benefit from these economic forces, Klondike Gold Rush (2003) predestined to be great among great but prosperity and permanence would cities.”7 But given how inexperienced take a good deal of time and luck. Until James N. Gregory, ed., Seattle Civil the pioneers were with cities, attaining the right forces aligned, not much hap- Rights and Labor History Project, http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/ (2005-present)

Matthew Klingle, Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (2007)

Coll Thrush, Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place (2007)

Carl Abbott, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America (2008)

David Williams, Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography (2015)

The two Denny couples, the Lows, William Bell, Carson Boren, and Charles Terry were all members of the group that landed at Alki in November 1851. (Special Collections, University of Washington [UW] Libraries, UW 37720)

Winter 2015/2016 7 pened. Seattle’s pioneers actually lived through the least urban phase of the city’s history, the period with little urban transformation. Historians call the years before 1880 Seattle’s “village period.”8 In other words, pioneer Seattle represented stability, not pandemonium. In fact, the town was so stable that many founders either died or de- parted before the village became a city. Only a handful of individuals persisted long enough to taste success. And what exactly did success mean? Given their backgrounds and expectations, pioneer Seattleites (again, like most Amer- icans) were poorly equipped to think about Seattle as a city—to understand its evolution as an urban entity. When the town became a city, it turned into something that the pioneers themselves had a hard time recognizing.

In reviewing the relationship between Seattle’s founders and what their town became, it helps to think carefully about vocabulary. Seattle’s founders called themselves pioneers. This is a term that we have used in the history of the American West, but not so much in urban history. The word refers to the first non-Indian settlers in an area. (Native Americans might have called Seattle’s founders invaders or coloniz- ers.) Settlers who identified as pioneers tended to see themselves less as town founders than as agents of American civilization. For example, one of the earliest histories of Seattle explained that the foremost goal of overland migrants such as Arthur Denny and Da- vid Denny was “to plant once more and more widely the ideas of progress, liberty, and human advancement.”9 Nothing was said about planting a major city!

o Seattle’s founders, in describing Seattle pioneers laid out streets, city blocks, and town lots for sale. The original themselves as pioneers, attached plats stretched four miles, from Pioneer Square to Lake Union. As late as the 1870s, S however, the great majority of residents clustered within a half-mile stretch of the themselves more to America’s west- waterfront. These maps (from approximately 1860 and 1878) illustrate the pioneers’ ward movement than to the creation planning for a substantial town. (Special Collections, UW Libraries) of a city. In Seattle’s case, the pioneers did found a town. They meant to produce an urban outcome. They laid out town lots and streets, put property up

8 Pacific Northwest Quarterly back east. So when Seattle began to achieve numerical success—when the village actually became a city—the pioneers were hardly ready for it. The shortcomings of their vision were ex- posed by the first pandemonium moment, 1883-1910.

Strictly on the basis of population growth, Seattle became urban during the 1880s. At the start of the decade, its population of 3,533 made it the second-largest town in the territory. Yet it ranked behind Walla Walla, and many felt that Tacoma, which had been se- lected as the terminus for the Northern Pacific Railway (the first transcontinental line to the Northwest), had the more promising future. Nonetheless, by the end of the decade Seattle would surpass 40,000 residents—increasing more than elevenfold, nearly catching up to Portland, and putting distance between itself and Tacoma. By the time the city became the terminus for the Seattle residents were forced to rebuild cisco? Urban success or failure was Great Northern Railway—another, much of their city after the devastating mostly a numbers game; there was lit- much better managed transcontinen- fire of 1889. (Boyd and Braas, Special tle imagination devoted to what living tal railroad—in 1893, its quantitative Collections, UW Libraries, UW 27340z) in a large city might or ought to be urban future was assured. In fact, the like—other than a vague hope that Se- entire period between 1880 and 1910 for sale, then waited and schemed for attle would imitate prosperous cities saw enormous, sustained growth. The others to show up, particularly immigrants and investors who might help the city grow and thereby increase property values. The pioneers’ vision of the town meant that it was above all a real-estate development. As a result, the pioneers’ vision of urban was pretty narrow. For them, Seattle was primarily an economic venture, and its success was defined almost entirely in quantitative terms. When would property values increase? Could Seattle attract enough people and investment to keep ahead of Tacoma? Might it eventually grow enough to surpass Port- land, or even come to rival San Fran-

During the gold rushes in the Yukon and Alaska, Seattle merchants sold tons of supplies to prospectors heading to the Far North. (Asahel Curtis, Special Collections, UW Libraries, A. Curtis 345A)

Winter 2015/2016 9 city surpassed Portland in 1910. century, Seattle was, among other things, engaged in regrading the hills Census figures help us grasp the scale surrounding downtown; creating Har- of increase over three decades. How- bor Island; straightening the channel ever, if we rely solely on them, we gloss of the Duwamish River; filling in the over the great turbulence of the period. tide flats along Elliott Bay; revamping We need to remember events such as its system of parks, parkways, and the 1889 Seattle fire, the major depres- playgrounds; hosting a world’s fair that sion of the mid-1890s, and the gold (as a dividend) remodeled the Univer- rushes to the Klondike and Nome be- sity of Washington campus; and dig- tween 1896 and 1903. Between the de- ging a canal to connect Puget Sound cennial visits by census takers there with Lake Union and Lake Washing- were marked booms and busts. One ton. In the dozen years between 1900 writer estimates that Seattle’s popula- and 1912, furthermore, the city con- tion grew by more than 10,000 in the structed 525 miles of road, paved 200 year after the fire, and doubled be- miles of streets, poured 800 miles of tween 1897 and 1903, to 115,000.10 An- sidewalk, and installed 400 miles of other way of characterizing those six water pipe.11 At that point Seattle was years of intense growth is to say that hardly finished rebuilding itself, be- Seattle added the equivalent of two cause it next had to completely recon- Tacomas. figure its streets in order to deal with the quickly increasing use of automo- Early Seattle’s shortage of white women How Seattle tried to keep up physically biles and trucks. was played up in Here Come the Brides, a with such population increases re- television show on the air from 1968 to 1970. minds us of why rapid growth seems n short, Seattle had entered a much so calamitous to those living through Imore urban—and much more hec- it. During the first decade of the 20th tic—phase of existence. Yet it was one 20th-century popular culture. Con- that the surviving pioneers were not sider for a moment Here Come the During the 1860s, the pioneer Asa prepared for. One day, the story goes, a Brides, the TV show that ran from Mercer recruited white women from ship captain visiting Elliott Bay de- 1968 to 1970 and introduced Seattle’s the East Coast to move to Seattle, a city clared, “You Seattle pioneers are very bluest skies and greenest greens to the with a large male population. (Special peculiar people. You want to have a big rest of America. The show revolves Collections, UW Libraries, UW 2209) city but don’t want anyone to live there around three brothers—Jason, Jeremy, but yourselves.”12 This story may be and Joshua Bolt. The Bolts run a log- apocryphal, but it is revealing none- ging company, but their crew con- theless. One of the hallmarks of cities stantly complains about the lack of is that they are diverse. They attract or women in the local population. To absorb people from different races, keep the crew on the job, the Bolts find different classes, different religions, a way to import potential brides from different nations, and different world- back east—but have to promise their views. Cities have been magnets over investor that none leaves Seattle for a the centuries for people who sought year. The show lasted two years by more privacy or tolerance for noncon- finding amusement and adventure in formity than could be had in rural or the experiences of young women and small-town settings. Not being experi- men on the Washington frontier. One enced urbanites (again, like most white episode featured the betrothal of a Americans during the mid-19th cen- Chinese woman and man, the latter tury), pioneer Seattleites failed to ap- played by the actor and martial artist preciate or embrace the social diver- Bruce Lee, who attended high school sity that a suddenly urbanizing Seattle and college in Seattle. possessed. Here Come the Brides was based on an Pioneer Seattleites’ commitment to actual incident in Seattle history. The homogeneity was memorialized in mid- pioneer Asa Mercer (who served as the

10 Pacific Northwest Quarterly first president of the territorial university) during the 1860s made two trips back to the northeastern states to recruit marriageable women to come settle on Puget Sound. In fact, early Se- attle’s population as counted in the census was heavily masculine—perhaps between 75 percent and 90 percent male. One pioneer historian explained that without the refining “influence of pure-minded women,” the town’s many single men were “practically homeless.”13 This defini- tion of homelessness differs from that in our own time. It took for granted a mid-19th-century, middle-class assumption that women were homemak- ers and men earned income outside the home. In any case, Mercer’s im- ports arrived in Seattle and began performing the roles of wives and teachers and seamstresses that had been intended for them.

et there was a racial subtext to this Yepisode. In fact, there were plenty of women in and around Seattle—they were Native or mixed-blood women. Some white men formed relationships with these women, and in many in- stances started families, but such relationships were not what the founding fathers—eager to have Seattle seem re- spectable to eastern immigrants and investors—aspired to. Very little detail concerning white men’s relations with Native women made it into pioneer histories. In fact, by importing “well- Labor tensions and hard times resulted in efforts to expel Chinese immigrants from reared white women” from the north- many West Coast cities, including Seattle. (West Shore Magazine, March 1886) eastern states, the early historian Clar- ence Bagley explained, Seattle hoped to avoid the “disaster” that pioneers Americans. consumed by racial and class conflict. feared would arise when “the white The entire West Coast suffered an eco- and Indian races intermarry.”14 Even Many Seattle pioneers were equally nomic downturn during the mid- though few residents of early Seattle narrow-minded when it came to class. 1880s, with large-scale unemployment. could actually live up to the ideal, pio- Cities have often showcased the con- With conditions ripe for unionization, neers and pioneer historians antici- tradictions of capitalism; they are, one labor organizers exploited the hostility pated that the town should consist writer says, “engines of prosperity and of white workers toward Chinese im- primarily of white families. And in inequality in equal measure.”15 These migrants. They sought to recruit new fact over time, whites, through legisla- traits became readily apparent in the union members by campaigning to ex- tion, arson, and other means, exerted burst of expansion during the 1880s, pel the Chinese. They based their effort increasing pressure on Indians to when rapid growth erased the village on claiming that the Chinese (a) were leave Seattle. No phase of local his- the pioneers had known and replaced in the country illegally; (b) could never tory has connoted stability for Native it with a city bursting at the seams and become citizens and would never ac-

Winter 2015/2016 11 largely a conflict between labor and laziness. We had no eight hour, nor even ten hour days then, and I never heard of any one striking, not even an Indian.17 riting in The History of Seattle W(1916), Clarence Bagley echoed Arthur Denny’s disdain for working- men when he described the mid-1880s. He blamed labor unrest on “the professional agitator,” as if to deny that workers could develop legitimate grievances on their own. In September 1885, Bagley explained, an anti-Chinese congress in Seattle attracted “every social- ist and anarchist who could walk or steal a ride. . . . Long-haired men and short-haired women were noticeable by their numbers and their noise.” Un- rest and union organizing drew “tran- sient loafers in the lowest slums of the town, labor-imposters, too lazy to work, too cowardly to face the battle of life.”18 Once more, unhappy workers suffered by comparison to the pioneer generation.

Violence resulted when white Seattle residents drove Chinese immigrants out of In dismissing the complaints of white the city in February 1886. (Harper’s Weekly, March 6, 1886) labor, Arthur Denny and Clarence Bagley seemed incapable of appreciat- ing how the times, and the city, had culturate; and (c) hurt white workers but facts,” as if he were going to keep changed. Seattle’s founding fathers had by driving down wages and by taking his opinions out of the story. But he been able to acquire from the federal jobs that whites felt belonged to them. could not help drawing quite opinion- government free donation land claims Although each of these claims was dis- ated comparisons between his own of up to 320 acres. That legislated op- putable, many towns around the West generation and those whites who had portunity—a precursor to the Home- responded to the white workers’ unrest arrived more recently, during the stead Act of 1862—had ended in the by forcibly expelling the Chinese. In 1880s. Denny heaped praise upon his mid-1850s. Very little good land re- November 1885, Tacoma ran its Chi- own cohort of pioneers for their per- mained available in the 1880s, either nese out of town with very little debate sistence, hard work, and constant sac- for free or at an affordable price. Most or resistance. Seattle followed suit in rifice. By contrast, Denny portrayed of the best undeveloped acreage was February 1886, but attempted to do so workers in 1880s Seattle as “degenerate under the control of railroad compa- in a more cautious way that (according scrubs, too cowardly to face the same nies, the result of vast land grants to the pioneers) upheld its commit- dangers that our pioneer men and made by Congress during the 1860s. ment to the rule of law. Seattleites con- women did, and too lazy to perform an Big corporations were another new trasted their expulsion with the more honest day’s work if it would procure presence in the urban Northwest, part lawless “Tacoma Method,” thus aiming them a homestead in paradise. They and parcel of the expansion of indus- to preserve Seattle’s reputation among would want the day reduced to eight trial capitalism that made urban Seat- prospective immigrants and investors.16 hours and board thrown in.” Denny tle possible in the first place. Denny continued by suggesting that if recent had staked his claim before corpora- What did the pioneers think of all this? arrivals had imbibed more of tions became so dominant in the re- Arthur Denny wrote his memoirs just gion, and never much felt threatened the spirit that then actuated the “old moss as the labor unrest and anti-Chinese backs,” as some reproachfully style the old by them. By contrast, many new ur- violence unfolded. Like most histori- settlers, we would hear less about a conflict banites saw corporations as obstacles ans, Denny promised to write “nothing between labor and capital, which in truth is to their own success. It is not surpris-

12 Pacific Northwest Quarterly ing to us that some of those urbanites tury, Seattle became intimately con- curred by saying that for 17 years the would consider union membership a nected to the projection of American Northern Pacific railroad tried “to reasonable response to local economic power overseas—whether as a site of wipe Seattle off the map.” Due to their conditions. Yet Denny and Bagley military bases, a leading exporter, a constant struggle to survive, Bagley saw labor organizers as illegitimate manufacturer of aircraft and space- concluded, “the spirit of combat has troublemakers and disparaged union craft, a source of foreign-policy exper- always been strong in the hearts of Se- members as lazy. They made little ef- tise, or in some other capacity. Like attle people.”22 fort to appreciate where white work- many cities the world over, Seattle is a ingmen were coming from. Class divi- martial metropolis. eeing themselves as at odds with sions clashed with their vision of what Sother towns and with railroad com- Seattle should be. This was not a role that pioneers envi- panies no doubt served to heighten the sioned for Seattle, and it was not a di- idea of sacrifice and toil on the part of Arthur Denny disliked what he saw his mension that pioneer historians em- pioneers. But the perception of early city becoming, but he could not stem phasized. To be sure, the town’s role in Seattle as perpetually at war with other the tide of change. In fact, the era of the Indian wars of 1855-56 was high- towns and with private companies the pioneers had drawn to a close, and lighted in pioneer accounts of the past. misrepresents the nature of cities. a new phase of Seattle development The city founders did contribute to While it is true that towns do compete had opened. The new phase required a dispossessing the Native Americans. in a host of ways, it is also the case that new kind of history. In his 1891 His- Clarence Bagley contended that in towns such as Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, tory of Seattle, Washington, Frederic J. their westward migrations the pio- Portland, and San Francisco needed Grant explained that up to the 1880s neers remained “conscious that they one another. Cities coexist as parts of pioneers had “made the place.” In were carrying the boundary of an em- networks—and no place more promi- keeping with the prevalent “Great Man” pire with them.”20 However, pioneers nently than in the vast stretches of the historical tradition, Grant treated pio- and pioneer historians gave very little West, the most urbanized part of the neers “as individual men, with their attention in their accounts to national United States. Seattle received invest- characteristics and labors apportioned or international conflicts. They barely ments and residents from Portland; it to each.” But Seattle was changing mentioned the Civil War or the Span- sold raw materials to San Francisco. Its so quickly that its story could no lon- ish-American War, even though each first serious burst of growth coincided ger be told through the biographies of was actually crucial to the city’s with the arrival of the transcontinental elite individuals: “The future,” Grant development. railroad in Tacoma in 1883 and the warned, “will estimate its citizens in construction of a branch line of that the aggregate, by numbers of souls, by In fact, Seattle pioneers identified not road to Seattle in 1884. Seattle received numbers of dollars, by banking capital, other nations but other communities as second-class treatment from the Ta- and by ships cleared, or passengers their main enemies. Early histories coma-based Northern Pacific Railway, passed from the depots.”19 Like the pi- portray the town as if it existed in a to be sure, but it gained enough from oneers, Grant still measured urban de- Darwinian struggle for survival that the connection to truly prosper as a velopment in quantitative terms— spanned two or three decades. The city for the first time. In 1893 Seattle people and dollars and ships and rhetoric is eye opening. Devoting an itself became the terminus of the Great passengers. But he recognized that the entire chapter to what he describes as Northern Railway, an event that tends rapidly increasing size of the popula- “the struggle for existence” between to be celebrated rather than lamented tion made it less and less satisfactory to 1860 and 1875, Frederic Grant ex- in pioneer histories. But in making de- emphasize individuals as the driving plained that Seattle’s urban rivals “ex- mands on Seattle the Great Northern forces of development. History now pected to walk over [Seattle’s] dead could be just as imperious as the needed to be told “in the aggregate”; body to their own metropolitan splen- Northern Pacific, and that rail connec- the organization—whether the corpo- dor.” In this telling Tacoma loomed tion only tightened Seattle’s ties to the ration, the union, the institution, or large as Seattle’s archenemy because it more powerful metropolis of Minne- the city itself—now prevailed over in- was the regional headquarters of the apolis–Saint Paul. dividuals. Rapid urbanization dictated Northern Pacific Railway company. that the very nature of history itself Grant averred that “the [c]oils of rail- To repeat, Seattle was hardly at war change. road speculation and railroad domina- with every other community on the tion were being woven tight around Pacific Slope. Rather, it became part of want to turn to another function of this young commonwealth” by Tacoma a network of towns and cities that in- I the city—its role in American em- and its “immense monopoly.”21 The teracted with one another in a host of pire. Over the course of the 20th cen- pioneer historian Clarence Bagley con- ways. That network was hierarchical.

Winter 2015/2016 13 Seattle claimed as its own. Exhibits at the fair illustrated the raw materials that extractive industry took from the earth and that Seattle helped to process and ship to the world. Moreover, through statuary and other means the exposition celebrated those individuals who had enabled the city to connect to its far-flung hinterlands. James J. Hill, the capitalist behind the Great Northern Railway, not only de- livered a keynote address on Opening Day but also became the subject of a large bronze bust placed on the fair- grounds. In sum, the 1909 fair recognized the economic success of the city pioneers had built.

But the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposi- tion was about more than hinterlands and extractive industry. By hosting the exposition, Seattle succeeded in putting itself on a par with other substan- This statue of George Washington, erected at the AYP Exposition of 1909, expressed tial American cities by showing that it Seattle’s ambition to project U.S. power overseas. The statue commemorates not was capable not only of commanding President Washington but General Washington. He stands with sword in hand, and he faces west across the Olympics toward the Pacific Ocean. The exposition specifically the resources required to sponsor a identified territories around the Pacific as Seattle’s hinterlands, and it was intended to world’s fair but also of attracting assure people that the city was mature enough to be trusted with a national mission. (Frank H. Nowell, Special Collections, UW Libraries, Nowell x1971) A bust of James J. Hill was added to the UW campus during the AYP Exposition On the West Coast, San Francisco ini- city on a deep-water harbor, toiled to of 1909. The people of Seattle wished tially stood at the top, and towns such attract railroad lines to the town, and to honor Hill for bringing the Great as Bellingham and Walla Walla ranked outcompeted other towns for the con- Northern Railway to the city in 1893. toward the bottom. Seattle aimed to trol of trade to the north and to the (Frank H. Nowell, Special Collections, move closer to San Francisco than to west across the ocean. They imple- UW Libraries, Nowell x3212) Walla Walla, and paid special attention mented a successful formula. But lead- to its standing vis-à-vis Tacoma and ers of the generation succeeding the Portland. During the 1890s, it man- pioneers wanted still more growth aged to climb up a few rungs on the than transportation nodes and hinter- ladder. The city’s chief success was land resources could provide. And they promoting itself as the leading me- hoped to mitigate the boom-and-bust tropolis for Alaska and the Yukon at cycles so integral to extractive indus- the time of the Klondike and Nome try. That meant getting plugged into gold rushes. In the space of just a few additional urban networks and taking years, Seattle came to dominate a on new urban roles. northern hinterland that rivaled the Columbia River watershed long com- The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (AYP) Ex- manded by Portland. position of 1909, Seattle’s first world’s fair, nicely illustrated the ambitions of ioneers had believed that urban two different generations of leaders. Psuccess would stem from acquiring The event did not include in its title transportation connections and a fer- the name of the host city; instead, tile hinterland. Thus they built their “AYP” referred to the hinterlands that

14 Pacific Northwest Quarterly sirable in light of recent history. Dur- ing the anti-Chinese agitation of the 1880s, federal troops had been sum- moned to Seattle twice to help quell disorder. They had had to come all the way from Fort Vancouver, and the army had to pay considerable room and board to stay in the city. By building Fort Lawton, the commanding general of the army’s Department of the Columbia explained during the mid-1890s, the army would have troops closer to the “restless, demon- strative, and sometimes turbulent” ele- ments of the local population.23 This was a period when soldiers and police- men were expected to defend capital- ists against labor unrest. No wonder Seattle businessmen were so eager to acquire the base that they arranged for the donation of more than 700 acres of the Magnolia peninsula to the army! In July 1900, Fort Lawton was little more than a tent encampment for the First Cavalry. By the time of the AYP Exposition in It soon became a cantonment for infantry troops traveling to and from postings around the Pacific. (H. Ambrose Kiehl, Special Collections, UW Libraries, UW 37719) 1909, of course, Seattleites felt they had left behind the city’s unsettled or frontier phase and entered a more cosmo- millions of visitors to the event. It ton in 1900. politan phase. Fort Lawton stood as a thus claimed a place in a nationwide symbol of maturity rather than of the metropolitan network. Furthermore, For both military leaders and the city’s urban immaturity the army had de- through the AYP Exposition Seattle ruling elite, an army base seemed de- tected 15 years earlier. announced that it was mature and important enough to serve as an integral part of American empire, helping to By 1934, when this photo was taken, the army saw diminishing value in Fort Lawton. project U.S. military and diplomatic In 1938, it offered to sell the base to the city of Seattle, but the offer was declined. power across the Pacific. In sum, the (Charles Laidlaw, Museum of History and Industry [mohai], 1983.10.17579.1) world’s fair not only recognized Seat- tle’s relationship to its far western hinterland but also touted its connections to other leading American cities and its assumption of significant national missions.

s in other western towns, civic A leaders in Seattle increasingly saw the U.S. government as one resource to be exploited for urban purposes. Dur- ing the 1890s, communities around Puget Sound entered the competition to secure military bases. Bremerton obtained the nucleus of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard; the army erected Forts Worden, Flagler, and Casey to defend Admiralty Inlet; and in Seattle the army opened Fort Law-

Winter 2015/2016 15 With Fort Lawton, Seattleites discovered that going into business with the federal government could be challeng- ing, because that government changes its mind at times. The site was initially chosen and designed as an artillery base, intended to help ward off naval invasions of Puget Sound. Shortly after opening, the army changed its function to serving as a cantonment for infantry troops being rotated to and from postings around the Pacific. This change had racial implications. The army at the beginning of the 20th century permitted only white troops to handle artillery, so if the fort had been used as originally intended only white troops would have been stationed there. But when the army changed its mind—without really consulting Se- attleites—it became inevitable that African American troops would be stationed there, which occurred in 1909- 11 and contributed to friction between the military and Seattle’s white population, who saw black soldiers as a threat to property values. Once more, Seattleites were not prepared to embrace the diversity that is part and parcel of urban life.

Although Fort Lawton made Seattle a more integral part of the defense of the United States and boosted the local economy, its primacy was never a sure thing. Once the city of Tacoma do- nated 70,000 acres to the army during World War I, Fort Lewis quickly surpassed Fort Lawton. In fact, by 1938 the army had decided that Fort Lawton was redundant and offered the base back to the city of Seattle for one dol- lar. The city turned the offer down, because it could not afford the mainte- nance. Within a few years Fort Lawton suddenly became valuable again, serving as the country’s second leading processing site for soldiers heading to and from the Pacific theater of World War II. Seattle had entered its second The sociologist Calvin F. Schmid published this map of Puget Sound population growth pandemonium moment—and the rein Social Trends in Seattle (1944). He provides two population figures for each town in the lationship it had cultivated with the region—the 1940 census count above, and his estimate for 1943 below, in italics. Thus Seattle had 368,302 in 1940, and an estimated 480,000 in 1943. Tacoma had 109,408 in federal government was essential for 1940 and an estimated 140,000 in 1943. Bellevue mysteriously does not appear on the map. the new growth spurt.

16 Pacific Northwest Quarterly After leveling off during the 1920s and transformed. Many more workers with put up with bus and streetcar systems 1930s, Seattle’s population suddenly far fewer skills now produced planes that were overloaded, and housing that spiked again during the early 1940s, on an assembly line. Women loomed was very difficult to find. Apart from when the entire Pacific Coast mobi- large in production. Prior to the war government projects, it was nearly im- lized for World War II. The war was they had been deemed unqualified for possible to acquire the materials actually a population drain on most numerous Boeing manufacturing po- needed for new civilian homes. Be- states, but California, Washington, and sitions; now they were recruited to cause of residential discrimination, Af- Oregon (in that order) led the nation work at many of the heaviest or dirtiest rican Americans faced some of the in demographic increases. Population jobs. greatest challenges. In 1940, the Cen- diversity grew as well, as the region at- tral District contained roughly 3,700 tracted more workers of color than Living conditions in wartime Seattle blacks; by 1945, it held up to 10,000. ever before. Washington’s Latino and were catch-as-catch-can. As in other People lived in abandoned gas stations African American populations grew pandemonium moments, many faced and old poultry sheds, and they took much more quickly than did that of considerable hardship, but for two rea- shifts sleeping in apartment beds. The the state overall. sons they might have been reluctant to rapid urban growth of the early 1940s complain too much. First, government seemed nearly unmanageable. ll of the decade’s population gain propaganda reinforced the idea that A occurred in the early 1940s, dur- people on the home front, like soldiers Seattle’s mobilization refashioned its ing World War II, and most went to overseas, simply had to endure their relationship to Uncle Sam. Increas- urban areas. In fact, under the pres- share of wartime sacrifice. Second, the ingly, the city was expected to meet sures of wartime, the demographic population tended to see wartime wartime national standards, as federal and economic growth was astounding. conditions as temporary, something to officials tried to rein in the excesses of The Puget Sound region in particular be tolerated only “for the duration.” pandemonium. Congress sent a com- boomed, as the accompanying map il- They believed (mistakenly) that things mittee devoted to congested urban ar- lustrates. Most notably, in the space of would return to “normal” during eas to hold hearings. The executive just a few years Bremerton tripled in peacetime. Consequently, many resi- branch dispatched officials tasked with size by adding the equivalent of two dents of Seattle accepted the pande- reducing racial tensions so that peo- Bremertons. We can readily identify monium of the early 1940s as a matter ples of color gained fair treatment in the employment centers responsible of short-term, patriotic sacrifice. They the workplace and so that Japanese for such growth: the Puget Sound Na- val Shipyard, Fort Lewis, Fort Lawton, Wartime labor shortages gave women the opportunity to take on new manufacturing and Boeing. Largely because of Boeing, jobs. These Kenworth Motor Truck Company employees made components for but also because of shipyards, the city Boeing B-17s and B-29s. (Webster and Stevens, mohai, 1983.10.14851.16) of Seattle by itself received $5.6 billion in war contracts during World War II, ranking it third in the nation in per capita war orders. Boeing had 4,000 employees in 1939, but thereafter that figure began to grow as the company filled European orders for the B-17 and other aircraft. In September 1941—before Pearl Harbor—Boeing employed 20,000; by the end of the year, it employed 30,000; and at the peak of production during 1944, it employed on average 50,000 people and amassed yearly sales of $600 million (the value of all Seattle manufacturing in 1939 had been $70 million).

Over the course of the war, the company produced 7,000 B-17s and 1,100 B-29s. To achieve such mass production, manufacturing was dramatically

Winter 2015/2016 17 Americans would be accepted upon tance of activities, resources, and ter- long-range networks of finance, investment, their return from wartime incarcera- ritories around the Pacific Rim. The tourism, and trade that link the North tion. The military threatened to make city continued to grow briskly. American and East Asian core regions of the world economy. It outranks Portland not the city off-limits to troops if the local only in the volume and value of overseas police did not get control of prosti- In becoming a more important player trade, but also in the number of direct tutes, who were blamed for an epi- in national mobilization, Seattle had overseas flights, number of foreign bank demic of venereal disease that threat- graduated to a different kind of urban offices, amount of foreign investment, ened the preparedness of servicemen. network. Contrast its situation with number of professional consular offices, and proportion of foreign born residents.24 Portland’s. Each city had played the hat the federal government was same sort of role from 1890 to 1940, To put it in different terms, Seattle not Ttrying to manage race relations as serving as the metropolis for a regional only became more “major-league” well as sexual relations in Seattle points hinterland in an economy devoted to than Portland, but also saw its major- to another qualitative change that had extraction and processing of raw mate- league baseball team strengthen con- occurred. The city had become a key rials. Both cities mobilized during nections to East Asia through both site for projecting American military World War II, but most of Portland’s Japanese ownership and a steady influx power (and other kinds of power) wartime industry disappeared after of Japanese star players. around the world. There would be no 1945, and the city basically reverted to going back to the “normal” of 1940. In- its previous existence as the headquar- The two cities now operated in quite stead, Seattle found itself mobilized for ters for a regional economy. By con- different orbits. Just how much had war not only during the years 1941-45 trast, Seattle remained more or less Seattle surpassed its rival to the south? but also during the Cold War from mobilized indefinitely. It continued its In 1987, one local reporter predicted 1947 to 1991. One price to be paid was role in the regional economies of that by the year 2020 the Puget heightened federal surveillance, which Washington and Alaska, but it now was Sound area’s population would in- contributed to the anticommunist cru- performing significantly morenational crease by the equivalent of “Portland sade in Seattle and Washington State and transnational duties. Building and its suburbs.”25 during the late 1940s and early 1950s. upon the astonishing growth occa- The reward was enormous economic sioned by World War II, Seattle leaders y the time Seattle became a major- and demographic growth, and an eco- moved aggressively to strengthen their Bleague city, the meaning of the nomic base that was more diversified ties beyond the Northwest. Much more term Seattle had changed. For the first than before. The sudden and sustained than did Portland, Seattle won con- century or so of its history, the name of expansion of the Boeing Company was tracts from the Department of De- the city referred primarily to the lands the most obvious manifestation of that fense; gained appropriations from the and people inside the municipal mobilization; the creation or perpetu- U.S. Congress and the state legislature; boundaries. During the mid-20th cen- ation of nearby military installations turned its institution of higher educa- tury, however, a different meaning was another outcome. The University tion into an immense economic driver; emerged. The word Seattle increasingly of Washington performed its share of and upgraded its port facilities. It described an urbanized area that defense-related tasks as well. formed new and improved linkages to stretched beyond the municipal limits other cities across the United States— and included different types of In the 19th century, Seattle’s founders for example, through better airline places—urban, suburban, rural—lo- had helped the city succeed through a connections, more regional corporate cated at a distance from the city the host of activities, but their town had headquarters and branch plants, and pioneers had founded. The U.S. Cen- also been fortuitously located in a participation in major-league sports, sus Bureau was relatively proactive in place where industrial capitalism was i.e., networks that connect the nation’s responding to the new reality. In 1949 reaching out to absorb raw materials biggest cities. Then it built on those it coined the concept of standard met- and transpacific streams of labor. In connections to cultivate new and bet- ropolitan areas (or SMAs) to recognize the mid-20th century, something simi- ter ties around the globe. the phenomenon of sprawling urban lar occurred to cement a new phase of forms. The 1960 U.S. Census identified urban development. Seattleites again The historian Carl Abbott explains the the Seattle SMA as King and Snohom- made some of their own luck, but they post-1945 divergence between Port- ish Counties, which included suburbs were also fortunate, in terms of timing land and Seattle as the difference be- such as Bellevue and Bothell and com- and geography, in getting linked to (a) tween a “Northwest city” and a “Pacific munities such as Everett that long had the rise of the United States to global city”: been cities in their own right, but now power, especially militarily and eco- found themselves defined as part of a nomically, and (b) the growing impor- Seattle increasingly participates in the larger metropolitan aggregate. In 1983,

18 Pacific Northwest Quarterly the census bureau expanded the urbanized area to include Tacoma and Pierce County. By 1993, it had added Olympia, Bremerton, and Coupeville by creating the Seattle-Tacoma-Brem erton Consolidated Metropolitan Sta- tistical Area, coinciding with Island, King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston Counties. Throughout these decades the phrase central city served to describe Seattle’s relationship to surrounding towns.

The new census designations recognized that urbanization had spread from Seattle to many other parts of the Puget Sound region. This urbanization took different forms. In some places it appeared as heavily residential communities, that is, conventional suburbs, whose residents commuted to jobs in more traditional urban centers such as Tacoma, Everett, and Seattle. But other parts of the urbanized area were highly commercial, or industrial, and attracted their own share of com- muters, with some coming from central cities. The towns of Redmond and Renton come to mind. The new way of tabulating census data was a necessary response to suburbanization and urban sprawl—recognition that towns and cities had begun to run together. As population continued to increase, for some purposes it made little sense to just keep measuring things and people only within municipal boundaries.

Seeing a city as an SMA would not have made sense to Seattle pioneers. Although a few large American cities This 1938 map shows when portions of Seattle were annexed. Additional territory had begun to develop suburbs during was acquired to the north during the early 1950s. (Seattle Municipal Archives) the mid-19th century, suburbs as con- ventionally defined (that is, as residential communities located beyond the timber in a host of other outlying dis- Seattle’s population expanded so spec- borders of central cities) for the most tricts. And to keep smells and pollu- tacularly between 1880 and 1910. part did not become part of Seattle’s tion away from the city center, certain When we study this growth more experience until later. What we today unpleasant industrial activities in- closely, we again recognize that decen- regard as Seattle suburbs were in the creasingly came to be located in neigh- nial census figures by themselves do 19th and early 20th centuries part of borhoods outside Seattle. not tell the entire story. Growth re- Seattle’s extractive hinterlands. People sulted not just from numerical in- grew hops in Issaquah, cultivated truck When adjacent districts became urban crease but also from territorial increase farms in Kent and Snohomish, mined enough, one response was for the city during this period. How was it that coal in Newcastle and Renton, and cut to annex them. Let’s think back to how Seattle’s population multiplied from

Winter 2015/2016 19 80,671 in 1900 to 237,194 in 1910? The of annexations, Seattle’s share of the loomed large—not just as a practical excess of births and new arrivals over county population peaked at 83 per- matter for a growing population, but deaths and departures explains only cent. Slowly, the county began to catch also because in this new urban phase part of the expansion. The city more up. In 1960, Seattle retained 60 percent folks were increasingly drawn to the than doubled in area between 1905 of the county’s population; 10 years metropolitan area because of its natu- and 1910 through its annexation of later, in the middle of the Boeing Bust, ral amenities. Urban and suburban Ballard, West Seattle, Laurelhurst, the non-Seattle population of King growth after 1940 quickly transformed Georgetown, Ravenna Park, South County surpassed the central city for Lake Washington. By the mid-1950s, Park, and Columbia City. Territorial the first time. (And whereas the central the sewage those communities pumped expansion, which led to demographic city’s population declined between into the lake threatened to destroy it. growth, was another form of rapid 1960 and 1980, King County’s popula- The Seattle attorney James Ellis spear- change. tion continued to grow steadily during headed the drive to create a new agency the same period.) By the year 2000, Se- called Metro that could coordinate the n fact, Seattle’s municipal footprint attle possessed less than one-third of clean-up efforts by reaching across Iwas even greater than its growing King County’s population. Pioneer town boundaries, uniting urban and municipal boundaries indicated. To histories had spoken about how Seattle suburban populations, and ensuring achieve a supply of water and power, attained “commanding greatness” in proper treatment of sewage. Metro was Seattle took control of most of the Ce- relation to its hinterlands and other not Ellis’s first effort to cut through the dar and Tolt River watersheds in east- Northwest towns.26 Now, just within bureaucratic tangle of different towns ern King County and parts of the the boundaries of King County, Seattle and governments in greater Seattle, Skagit Valley in Skagit County. Eighty hoped merely to continue being re- and it was not the last. During the percent of the people in King County garded as first among equals. 1960s he spearheaded the Forward buy their water from the city of Seattle, Thrust campaign to build parks and and a handful of towns to the north Once more, bursts of rapid growth other infrastructure around King and south of the central city buy their brought Seattle’s changing relation- County. Ellis did not succeed at every- electricity from Seattle as well. For a ship with its neighbors into clear per- thing he tried, but his efforts reflected long time, Seattle assumed it reigned spective. And substantially more than a growing awareness that, especially supreme over outlying communities, before, issues of environmental quality when dealing with pollution and trans- and many of those communities had reason to think that Seattle did exert a great deal of leverage over them. A floating bridge between Mercer Island and Seattle, which opened in 1940, was one of many transportation developments that contributed to the growth of suburbs. (Asahel Curtis, Special Collections, UW Libraries, A. Curtis 65146) Eventually the tide changed as suburbanization took off. The development of interurban railroads encouraged such suburbs as the Highlands and Al- derwood Manor to appear in the first decade of the 20th century. Increased use of and infrastructure for automo- biles were also crucial. After 1940 or so the development of new highways, floating bridges, and a reliable ferry system permitted suburban development on a new scale. The Boeing Com- pany’s practice of scattering plants and offices all around the Puget Sound area reinforced the centrifugal pattern.

The changing relationship between Se- attle’s and King County’s populations illuminates the trends. With its great expansion during the 1880s, Seattle came to have two-thirds of the county’s population. In 1910, after the burst

20 Pacific Northwest Quarterly portation, conditions for Seattle had By contrast, Seattleites in the mid- forming or maintaining long-term al- changed. The city was now embedded 1990s were largely accepting of the liances with the towns, counties, tribes, in a larger metropolitan area in which new regime. The city generally sup- and other governmental bodies within its residents no longer amounted to a ported efforts to protect rural lands the Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton Consol- majority. To deal with such issues as and wilderness, and it relatively cheer- idated Metropolitan Statistical Area— growth and environmental quality, it fully agreed to take on more than its such as Sound Transit, the merged was essential to abandon the attitudes share of the new population growth, in Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, and the associated with urban supremacy, or part by welcoming greater density in Puget Sound Regional Council. Seattle with Darwinian struggle, and find select parts of the city, especially those continues to grow briskly, and it re- ways to get along with neighbors. served (or prospectively served) by an mains the central city of Puget Sound. expanding interurban transit system. Yet the city’s population constitutes wo developments accelerated the As it turns out, planning for growth less than one-third of King County’s, Tprocess of collaboration. One was was one thing; living through it has and of course a still smaller fraction of a surge of economic growth (or a series been quite another. In the 1990s, the the Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton Con- of bursts of growth, dependent in part solidated Metropolitan Statistical Area. on Boeing, in part on high-tech indus- One could argue that Seattle retains its try, and in part on the retail sector) af- greatness but not its supremacy. ter 1980 that led to demographic expansion, which in turn demanded There is much that this talk does not heightened attention to pollution, traf- cover. Most historians of Seattle, tend- fic, and other region-wide concerns. ing to adopt the viewpoints of the ur- Then the state in 1990 passed the ban elite, which has, not coincidentally, Growth Management Act, which man- left behind the most sources, have ac- dated that communities plan for pop- cepted the idea that growth was both ulation increase in a more holistic way. inevitable and an unquestioned mea- The new law required cities and coun- sure of success. Yet some would ask ties to draw urban-growth boundaries. whether we should be doing more to The state anticipated enormous popu- limit, or even halt, growth, or at least lation growth in coming decades— deflect it in some other direction. from 2,750,000 in 1990 to 4,140,000 in Along those lines, it could prove in- 2020 (in King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Sno- structive to inquire more deeply into a homish Counties—we are now at social and economic system that places 3,860,000). The goal was not to stop or such a premium on sustained growth, limit that growth; rather, the Growth especially in light of the ecological Management Act aimed to channel it concerns and economic inequities of into existing urban and suburban city was more or less optimistic about the late 20th and early 21st centuries. places so that rural and wilderness ar- being able to absorb large numbers of eas on the urban periphery would be newcomers. In the last decade or so ddressing such questions is be- protected from development. By 1994 that optimism has dissolved in the face A yond the scope of this lecture. representatives from around King of very rapid population increase and However, I do want to note that Seattle County had hammered out a new a city being remade before our eyes. In has experienced many periods when comprehensive plan in order to meet the years after 2010, we have seen the growth was absent. Some of Seattle’s the new growth-management stan- pace of population growth within the most traumatic moments as a commu- dards. Not everybody was happy. Prop- city limits actually surpassing that in nity, according to every generation of erty owners in rural parts of King King County outside of Seattle—the historians, have occurred during peri- County in particular resented new re- reversal of a decades-long trend. There ods of sharp contraction, when the strictions on development of their are increasingly times—for example, process of growth was reversed. These land. They explored the idea of break- during rush hour, which now lasts at were pivot points of a different sort: ing away from King County in order to least three hours morning and eve- the Indian wars of 1855-56 and their be able to write their own growth man- ning—when urbanites stuck in traffic aftermath, when the nascent town of agement plan as the proposed Cedar wish that they could telecommute Seattle and nearby rural developments County, but discovered that the state from Cedar County. In the meantime, stagnated for a decade; the rapid de- constitution does not permit a new to address the assorted problems of mobilization at the conclusion of county to secede from an existing one. growth, the city of Seattle finds itself World War I, which exacerbated the

Winter 2015/2016 21 polarization of classes and led to the Today many of us feel that we may Seattle General Strike of 1919; and the never escape the current chaos. But Boeing Bust of 1968-72, when in-state some hint that, in an age of climate employment at the aerospace company change, pandemonium could turn into fell from 101,000 to 38,000 in the paradise. Those who study the impacts space of a few years. Historians gener- of climate change predict that greater ally have treated these downturns as Seattle—once again through a combi- calamities. nation of design and luck—will become an even more attractive and pop- And as exceptions. The overall pattern ulous place to live. The urban area has been expansion rather than con- already has appeared on more than traction, stemming in part from Seat- one list of cities most likely to with- tleites’ design and in part from factors stand—and perhaps even flourish be- that lie mostly beyond local control. If cause of—climate change. Why? Cli- one sees growth as a generally positive mate scientists and urban planners thing, then Seattle has been fortunate applaud local leaders for policies that to be in the right place at the right time been built. On the other hand, climate take global warming seriously and help over and over again during its rela- change represents a different type of the city prepare for it. They agree as tively brief history. In the 19th century, disaster. Cities such as Seattle contrib- well that the coastal region between it situated itself astride the pathways ute to climate change through their Anchorage and San Francisco will suf- that funneled such raw materials as carbon emissions, and they are vulner- fer less from the negative effects of cli- fish and lumber and coal to manufac- able to rising sea levels and changing mate change than most other parts of turers and markets around the world. weather patterns. In other words, they North America.28 The weather expert In the 20th century, it benefited from are part of the problem. Yet at the same Cliff Mass believes that our urban re- the nation’s rise to globalism, from the time many look to urban centers as so- gion could become a “climate refuge” increasing attention devoted to re- lutions, too. C40 Cities, a global col- for people fleeing problems elsewhere. sources and nations around the Pacific laboration of municipalities devoted “All in all, it’s a pretty benign situation Ocean, and from a complex set of fac- to addressing climate change, notes for us—in fact, warming up just a little tors capable of producing high-tech that “urban density can actually create bit might be a little bit welcome around employment. the possibility for a better quality of here.”29 Seattle may once more find it- life and a lower carbon footprint self in the right place at the right hat about the 21st century? Al- through more efficient infrastructure time. And as a climate refuge, perhaps Wthough historians are not well and planning.”27 In other words, cities even as paradise, the city could well qualified to predict the future, let me such as ours can help create a greener experience additional pandemonium offer a couple of speculations. Seattle world. They cannot do so through moments. has been growing for many decades, sprawl; we cannot afford to replicate and that growth seems likely to con- Arlington one hundred times. Instead, John M. Findlay teaches history of the tinue. Of course, a natural disaster a greener city needs to acquire more Pacific Northwest and North American could interfere with growth, but it density, build more efficient transit West at the University of Washington, would need to be the right kind of nat- systems, produce less waste, and so Seattle. He is working on a book that ural disaster. A volcano or an earth- on—all things that Seattle is trying to surveys the American West between quake or a tsunami could instanta- do, even if at the expense of making 1941 and 2001. neously destroy much of what has change appear more unmanageable.

22 Pacific Northwest Quarterly 1. Frederic James Grant, ed., History of 14. Ibid., 1:408. “Securing the Sound: The Evolution of Seattle, Washington (New York, 1891), 15. Adam Gopnik, “The Death and Life of Civilian-Military Relations in the Puget 402 (1st qtn.), 237 (2d qtn.); Clarence B. Urban America,” New Yorker, Oct. 5, 2015, Sound Area, 1891-1984,” Ph.D. dissertation, Bagley, History of Seattle: From the Earliest p. 80. 2 vols. (University of Washington, 2007), Settlement to the Present Time, 3 vols. 16. The phrase “the Tacoma Method” was 1:120. (Chicago, 1916), 1:407 (last qtn.). used to characterize how white Tacomans 24. Carl Abbott, “Regional City and Network 2. Murray Morgan, Skid Road: An Informal expelled Chinese in November 1885. City: Portland and Seattle in the Twentieth Portrait of Seattle (New York, 1951), 10. Whereas white Tacomans defended Century,” Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 3. Roger Sale, Seattle, Past to Present (Seattle, their method as peaceful and effective, 23 (1992), 317 (1st, 2d qtns.), 317-18 (last 1976), 18; Nard Jones, Seattle (New York, critics—including some residents of rival qtn.). 1972), 35. city Seattle—decried Tacoma’s approach 25. Bergsman, “Snohomish County Warned,” 4. Eric Pryne, “No Letup in Region’s Growth,” as lawless. George Dudley Lawson, “The B3. Seattle Times, Sept. 3, 1997, A13. Tacoma Method,” Overland Monthly, March 26. Grant, 237. 5. Jerry Bergsman, “Snohomish County 1886, pp. 234-39; H., “Sequel to the Tacoma 27. “Why Cities: Ending Climate Change Warned: Prepare to Add 3 Everetts,” Seattle Method,” Overland Monthly, March 1886, Begins in the City,” C40 Cities, http://www. Times, Sept. 22, 1987, B3. pp. 239-40. c40.org/ending-climate-change-begins-in- 6. Jerry Bergsman, “Officials Prepare for 17. Arthur A. Denny, Pioneer Days on Puget the-city (accessed July 7, 2016). Rush,” Seattle Times, Oct. 6, 1989, B3. Sound (1888; rpt. Seattle, 1969), 4 (1st 28. Jim Meyer, “Spared by Climate Change: 7. Cornelius H. Hanford, ed., Seattle and qtn.), 16 (2d qtn.), 27 (last qtn.). The 10 Best Cities to Ride Out Hot Times,” Environs, 1852-1924, 3 vols. (Chicago, 18. Bagley, 2:457 (1st qtn.), 2:458 (2d qtn.), Grist, May 24, 2013, http://grist.org/cities/ 1924), 1:97. 2:461 (last qtn.). spared-by-climate-change-the-10-best- 8. Ibid., 1:99. 19. Grant, 17, 18 (qtns.). cities-to-ride-out-hot-times/ (accessed 9. Grant, 50. 20. Bagley, 1:243. July 7, 2016). 10. David B. Williams, Too High and Too Steep: 21. Grant, 133 (1st qtn.), 17 (2d qtn.), 151 (3d, 29. Mass quoted in Jennifer A. Kingson, Reshaping Seattle’s Topography (Seattle, last qtns.). “Portland Will Still Be Cool, but Anchorage 2015), 55, 112. 22. Bagley, 1:252 (1st qtn.), 1:266 (last qtn.). May Be the Place to Be: On a Warmer 11. Matthew Klingle, Emerald City: An 23. Brigadier General Elwell S. Otis, Planet, Which Cities Will Be Safest?” New Environmental History of Seattle (New commanding officer of the U.S. Army’s York Times, Sept. 22, 2014, available online Haven, Conn., 2007), 105. Department of the Columbia, investigated at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/ 12. Otis A. Pease, “Comment,” PNQ, Vol. 64 the Fort Lawton site in 1894 and science/on-a-warmer-planet-which-cities- (1973), 161. recommended that the army acquire it in will-be-safest.html (accessed July 7, 2016). 13. Bagley, 1:407. 1895. Otis quoted in Brian Gerard Casserly,

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