![]() But it was more sheltered from the wind and had deeper water for a harbor and loggers could cut the trees on the hillside and easily slide them down to mills on the waterfront. This site was not perfect, either the steep hills rising from the water would complicate the process of building a city. The next year some of the settlers moved to a more sheltered site, on the eastern shore of Elliott Bay, where the modern city of Seattle was begun. Some if the founding party, after one winter there, decided that Alki Point's windy and cold weather, coupled with a relatively poor harbor, made it an unpromising place to lay out a town. The city was begun in 1851 at Alki Point, in what now is West Seattle. This treatment of nature began early on in the town's history. ![]() ![]() In sum, the city flourished by harnessing to its own ends the many forms of nature that surrounded it. In order to grow and flourish as a city, it developed a network of streetcars that dispersed residents acquired a water supply and an electric system by harnessing the Cedar and Skagit Rivers leveled the hills surrounding downtown in order to facilitate real-estate development straightened the channel of the Duwamish River and created a man-made harbor built a new ship canal and locks that tied Lake Washington more directly to Puget Sound and laid out a large-scale urban park system. At the same time that Seattle rose to greater prominence by mastering nature at some distance, it undertook concerted efforts to master nature more locally. Railroads also ensured that when gold was found in the Yukon and Alaska during the 1890s and 1900s, Seattle would become the metropolis for those hinterlands-although its connections to the north were made by sea rather than by land. They linked Seattle to the coal mines east and south of Lake Washington and to farms in eastern Washington. Railroads permitted this mastery in one sense. One key to Seattle's success was the ability of its residents and promoters to master nature. (Courtesy, Museum of History and Industry, Seattle.) Nature Literally Harnessed (below): Postcard advertising the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition held in Seattle in 1909. Its population had leapt to 315,312 by 1920, while Portland's stood at 258,288 and Tacoma's at 96,965. Yet by 1920, in spite of its apparent handicaps, Seattle had passed its rivals to become the dominant city of the Pacific Northwest. Many predicted that Tacoma, assured of becoming the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad, would shortly surpass Seattle and live up to its (Tacoma's) slogan, The City of Destiny. In 1880, its population was about 3500 people fewer than Walla Walla possessed and about one-fifth the size of Portland. ![]() Seattle, by contrast, had to play catch-up. ![]() As discussed earlier ( Lesson 13), Portland enjoyed advantages, related largely to its ability to command the largest hinterland, that gave it an early and enduring lead over prospective rivals. The cities of the Pacific Northwest competed energetically with one another to gain dominance in the region. neg., Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma.) (Special Collections Division, University of Washington, neg. Seattle from the waterfront, 1878 (right). Lesson Sixteen: Mastering Nature: The Rise of Seattle, 1851-1930 ![]()
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