♪♪
-We are a city that was birthed by water.
We were shaped by water,
and hopefully we will be sustained by water.
That's why our story starts
and ends with what comes from the sky.
The thing that drives
and sustains all life in the northwest.
-Around 17 to 15,000 years ago,
a blink in geologic time,
much of our region's water took the form of snow and ice
frozen in the massive Vashon Glacier
that reached all the way south to Olympia.
It was 3,000 feet high,
where the Space Needle sits today,
and a mile tall, only 90 miles north.
Only the taller mountains stood above the massive ice fields.
Over time, the ice sheet retreated rapidly
and the Pacific Ocean flooded in, leaving inlets,
bays, islands and fjords,
what the natives called the Whulj, or the Salish Sea.
The southern end of the Salish Sea is today called Puget Sound.
As this ice melted, people settled the area.
They had their own creation stories and myths
for this fantastic landscape.
-In the timeline of [ Indistinct ] the Great Changer,
our human lives are the blink of an eye,
a snowflake falling on a blue glacier,
wispy breath of cloud in an azure sky
particle of mist
lifting a rainbow from a waterfall's dramatic cascade.
And though our lives are but a flake of snow,
drop of rain,
sparkle on a cresting wave,
together we are also the glacier,
the salmon stream,
the endless turning tides ebbing and flowing.
We are the changer.
In us, the spirit of water resides.
We have been here for a very long time,
holding sacred knowledge that water is life.
♪♪
-I grew up listening to my grandmother
talking about creation stories or origination stories.
-Stories of origin. -Mm.
Grandma used to talk about the story of
how we came to be,
how the humans first began to make an appearance here
in the Pacific Northwest.
There's a site on the north end of Lake Washington.
This site, being around 14,500 years ago,
simply verifies these stories,
what we call teaching stories about who we are
and where we come from.
-There are a lot of those stories
in our communities, in our native nations.
And what strikes me is that many of them are family stories.
We've got all these different stories.
How do we start to piece these together?
But that was actually the wrong question
because these are family histories.
And so, of course,
our families have come from many different places over time.
I guess I just think of them as long ago times,
stories from long ago times
which reflect the long history that our nations have had,
here in the Salish Sea.
-And I'll take that term, "our history"
just one step further
and actually call it a relationship.
-Yep. -With the landscape.
-Yeah. -A relationship with the first foods,
a relationship with the water systems.
-Mm-hm. -All of these,
you know, the mountains and all of these natural resources
that exist within these areas
that might help a lot of our non-native neighbors
understand a little bit better about who we are
and where we come from.
And once they understand that there's this unique
and very special relationship with these natural resources,
then I think we're off on the right foot
and in the right direction.
-Prior to the arrival of non-natives,
the indigenous peoples of western Washington
lived in thriving communities numbering over 30,000 people.
They hunted deer, elk, and bear
and gathered wild plants and berries
in owned fields maintained by fire.
Women cultivated camas, a bulb that tastes like an onion
and a sweet potato, when roasted.
Native families relied on seafood that was gathered
and caught from rivers, saltwater, and beaches.
Villages had access to specific locations
where they had harvesting rights.
Makahs also pursued whales and seals,
often going far out to sea to hunt.
The most abundant and dependable fish was salmon.
Native peoples took salmon and steelhead
in regular and dependable runs.
Communities exchanged dried salmon for other goods
across vast trade networks.
Their fishing methods both maximized catches
and conserved fish.
Because indigenous peoples saw salmon, whales,
and other fish as non-human kin who gave themselves to humans.
All communities observed some form of a first salmon ceremony.
After catching the first salmon,
they suspended fishing for a time
and shared that first salmon with everyone.
They then floated its bones down river
where it could tell other salmon of the respect it had received,
lasting for days, these ceremonies allowed many fish to return
to their spawning grounds.
The region's original peoples lived
in cedar plank longhouses in winter villages.
The largest longhouses could be over 500 feet long.
Extended families slept, cooked, repaired fishing gear,
and shared oral histories in their longhouses.
High ranking individuals owned property
like longhouses and fishing sites.
They earned and kept their status
by caring for the community.
Villages along a watershed often shared similar practices,
languages, and identities and worked together.
Community leaders, the ones settlers later called chiefs,
redistributed wealth through pot latches.
These large feasts commemorated important events,
affirmed the status of chiefs, and could last for weeks.
A pot latch host accumulated a great wealth over many years
before giving it away to the hundreds of guests
who came from nearby villages.
Before the arrival of non-natives,
western Washington was populated
by many different indigenous communities and languages.
These peoples had thrived for thousands of years
along the shoreline of Whulj,
the body of water we now call Puget Sound,
and in the nearby river valleys.
They created and maintained
and still maintain close relationships
with their homelands and waters.
-Since North America's discovery,
merchants and sailors had sought a shortcut between Asia
and the New World.
The mythical Northwest Passage, if it existed,
would cut months off a treacherous sea journey
around the tip of South America.
In 1596, a Greek known as Juan de Fuca
claimed he had sailed almost 3,000 miles north from Mexico
and located the strait, which now bears his name,
but returned home before mapping or exploring the area.
When Britain's great maritime explorer James Cook
arrived in 1778, he missed the strait because of poor weather.
-We saw nothing like it.
Nor is there the least probability
that ever any such thing existed.
-In 1790, Spaniard Manuel Quimper explored the strait,
leaving a legacy of names such as Lopez Island,
Haro Strait, and Rosario.
Many of Quimper's names and claims were soon replaced
when British Captain George Vancouver arrived in 1792.
Vancouver and his crews became the first Europeans
to sail south into what he named Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound.
The name honored his lieutenant, Peter Puget.
Like most explorers of the time,
Vancouver created new place names to establish ownership.
In contrast,
native place names reflected relationships based
on generations of habitation.
Names were not about ownership. They were about respect.
For the land was a member of the community.
As Captain Vancouver sailed through the region,
he was impressed by the landscape.
-To describe the beauties of this region will,
on some future occasion,
be a very grateful task to the pen of a skillful panegyrist.
-His appreciation did not extend to the native people.
He labeled one village --
-The most lowly and meanest of its kind.
-Clearly not a fair assessment of people
who had thrived for thousands of years.
Soon it would be altered forever.
Within decades,
the indigenous people were decimated by contact
with the explorers.
When Vancouver arrived, he found --
-A great many deserted villages capable
of holding many hundred inhabitants.
-The cause? Smallpox.
Native people had no resistance, no immunity to smallpox.
So it wiped out an estimated 30% of their population,
making them far more susceptible to colonial takeover.
With the arrival of the first Americans in 1841,
the relatively good relationship between native
and non-Native began to change.
When Charles Wilkes and the United States Exploring Expedition
sailed into the Sound in 1841,
they left behind more than 260 place names,
such as Elliott Bay and Bainbridge Island.
The goal was to establish a framework for future ownership
by non-native settlers.
54 years had passed since George Vancouver sailed
into Puget Sound.
The dream of a Northwest Passage was long forgotten.
In that time,
people's relationship to the land had changed,
in contrast to the native viewpoint
of sustainability and respect,
the newcomers saw the land and water
as products to be owned and sold.
Salmon, timber, fur, coal -- it was all fair game
for personal profit and exploitation.
The repercussions would echo down through the ages.
-My name is William Harrick.
I'm a sailor on Her Majesty's ship Discovery,
captained by George Vancouver.
It is the 30th of April, 1792,
and we have been more than a year at sea.
We've left the Sandwich Isles months ago,
seeking the Northwest Passage.
With the trade winds now quartering behind us,
there is less work aboard.
I pass the hours with my paint box.
I've used up all my bright colors in the tropics.
But now, as we cross latitude 47,
it seems as if the very color is draining from the world.
Our first sight of land is black cliffs.
Behind them a forest of the very darkest green.
Now I must use my dark colors.
We enter the great channel and spy dwellings
with smoke rising from them.
Dark figures gather on the beach to watch us pass.
Two skiffs are readied to ferry men ashore,
as we are eager to meet the inhabitants
and trade for fresh food.
The rats have gotten into our hardtack.
Our cheese is bad and the flour has weevils.
[ Thunder rumbles ]
The rain does not cease,
and I have come to the last of my dark colors.
Soon I will have no more paint.
I have nothing left but black and the white of the paper.
I need to find a thing to paint that is black and white only.
Ah, there it is!
-Moving west of the Rocky Mountains, England's
mighty Hudson's Bay company built Fort Vancouver in 1824.
The Oregon Country had become its Columbia Department.
Hudson's Bay was North America's largest trading company,
and pretty much all of North America's furs
passed through the company's warehouses.
Its leader was Doctor John McLoughlin,
but he was not smiling.
Foreign traders were getting furs right under his nose,
so he built forts from southern Puget Sound to Russian Alaska
and chased the foreigners out using fast canoes
and sailing ships.
Starting in 1833,
Fort Nisqually, located near present day DuPont,
was a small trading post,
but by the 1840s it had become the company's
main farming operation,
called the Puget Sound Agricultural Company.
Most of today's Pierce County had thousands of grazing sheep,
pigs, cattle, and horses.
Coast Salish natives British, French, Canadian,
and Hawaiian men, women,
and children were hired to work the herds and fields.
They harvested tons of produce, wool, furs, and hides,
all of which were shipped to distant ports.
The company even sent a canoe full of potatoes
to the hungry settlers on Alki Point.
The beginnings of Seattle. Even by 1845,
very few Americans lived north of the Columbia River.
The arriving settlers, with dreams of land and fortune,
wanted the Hudson's Bay Company and Coast Salish natives gone.
The trading post took center stage in a clash of cultures.
Company land and property were stolen,
animals killed and its people harassed by the settlers.
The treaty of 1846 set the international boundary
at the 49th parallel,
putting all of Hudson's Bay's holdings south on US soil.
Business declined,
and the company's leaders decided to leave,
selling its land and buildings
to the United States for $650,000 in 1870.
Today, Hudson's Bay company still exists,
but only in Canada.
In Washington state,
it survives in history books
and at places like Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
in Vancouver and Fort Nisqually Living History Museum in Tacoma.
-You see them at the aquarium, all cuddly and cute and playful.
But 200 years ago,
sea otters played a key role in the discovery and settling
of the Puget Sound region.
In those days, sea otters could be found from Alaska to Mexico
in great abundance.
Their fur, thick and soft and gorgeous,
fetched incredible prices in China,
and people combed the Pacific Northwest coast
in search of this soft gold.
Hundreds of thousands of otters were taken,
until by the 1820s, they were almost extinct.
While the search for otters was confined to saltwater,
trappers continued moving west from the Rocky Mountains
in search of beaver --
a pelt prized in Europe and Asia.
Tens of thousands of beaver and other fur animals were trapped,
skinned, and exported.
Fur trading companies such as the Hudson's Bay Company
built outposts and battled each other over access
to the best trapping areas.
Settlements were established and fortunes were made.
Early Seattle was built on an empire of fur.
-Today, at Alki Point,
the West Seattle beach
that draws thousands of Seattleites and tourists
each summer day,
there's a monument marking the city's birthplace.
This Seattle hot spot was very different in 1851,
when members of the Denny Party,
a group of settlers from Illinois
who came west on the Oregon Trail,
landed at Alki on the schooner Exact
on a dark, rainy November day.
The cabin built by one of their advance men,
was still without a roof.
Once off the boat,
women in the party sat on the driftwood and cried.
It was a rough way to start.
When the Denny's arrived,
Seattle was still in the Oregon Territory,
and Washington was another 36 years away
from becoming the 42nd state.
People say that settlers who came to Seattle
had a relentless entrepreneurial spirit.
That was certainly the case for the 24 members
of the Denny Party.
They called their new home New York Alki,
and the Duwamish people
helped them survive their first winter
and kept the youngest, six week old Rolland Denny,
fed with clam nectar.
Within a few months, several from the Denny Party
moved to a more favorable spot on Elliott Bay.
The area looked much different then,
with steep hills and immense tide flats,
where today we have glittering sports stadiums.
The city's namesake, Chief Seattle,
was welcoming, providing food and trade
to help the hapless settlers gain a foothold.
Around that same time, March of 1852,
Doctor David "Doc" Maynard landed at the New York Alki settlement,
arriving in a canoe paddled by Chief Seattle
and other Duwamish tribal members.
Almost immediately, he launched new business ventures,
catching and salting salmon,
cutting cord-wood with help from the Duwamish people,
and opening the Seattle Exchange General Store.
The same month that Washington became a territory,
Henry Yesler opened Puget Sound's first sawmill
on the eastern shore of Elliott Bay.
It was lumber from the vast local forests
that created the city's first major export industry,
and built many of Seattle's first formal structures.
Yesler also employed many of the area's indigenous people
and had a reputation for treating them well,
knowing that without their labor and welcoming attitudes,
the mill and the pioneers would not likely have survived.
Roughly a decade later, Asa Mercer,
the first University of Washington president,
brought groups of Mercer girls here from the East Coast
in part to work local teaching jobs,
but also to be available as potential brides
in a city packed with bachelors.
[ Upbeat music ]
♪ The bluest sky ♪
-His effort was best remembered by "Here Come the Brides,"
a two season fictional TV series that debuted on ABC in 1968,
inspired by the Seattle story.
While the mills and those early businesses are long gone,
these early pioneers carved a city out of the forest.
In a way, they are with us still,
and we are reminded of them daily
by the local street signs -- Yesler Way,
Maynard Avenue, and the streets named for those
in the original Denny Party -- Denny Way,
Terry Avenue, Boren Avenue, and Bell Street.
-It was April 1852,
a year after the Denny Party's founding of Seattle,
that Nicholas Delin started building a water powered sawmill
on commencement Bay.
The mill jump-started development in what became Tacoma,
and it fueled a battle between Tacoma, Seattle, and Olympia.
Each had big dreams of becoming a prestigious
and profitable international port city.
The cities battled for the railroad terminus,
the state capital, and the territorial university.
Decisions that would reverberate for generations.
In 1868, Morton Matthew McCarver founded Tacoma.
Believing it would secure the railroad terminus,
Tacoma aggressively advocated
that it was the natural choice given its superior location
on Commencement Bay.
But the competition was fierce.
Northern Pacific Railroad surveyors visited Seattle
in 1870 and a buying frenzy erupted.
One Seattle lot that had sold for $300
only two years prior was resold for 10,000 bucks.
The city even offered more than $700,000 in incentives
to locate the railroad in Seattle.
Despite the incentives, Seattle was snubbed.
In 1873,
Northern Pacific announced Tacoma would get
the railroad terminus.
Seattle business leaders were furious and responded by
building the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad,
and later another line
that connected Seattle to the Canadian border.
They continued to push Seattle's commercial advantages,
slowly winning over Northern Pacific by the late 1880s.
The historian John Caldbeck wrote,
"Although Tacoma won the first transcontinental link,
it would be Seattle
that would have the first grand railroad depot
in western Washington."
King Street station was completed in 1906,
with Great Northern and Northern Pacific
trains arriving from the north and the south.
Landing the railroad service was a huge economic advantage for Seattle,
positioning the city as a premier port
and a transportation center for the entire region.
Though the capital remained in Olympia,
the big prize was the Territorial University,
and that was established in Seattle in 1861,
thanks to the efforts of pioneer Arthur Denny.
Washington's second governor,
former Seattle police chief and businessman John McGraw,
led the effort to purchase the land
when the campus moved to its present location in 1895.
Today, thousands make their first impressions
of the northwest at the University of Washington,
one of the world's top universities,
thanks to the visionary efforts of Seattle's early leaders.
It was all part of a fierce competition between cities
over 100 years ago.
-When I was a little girl, the first home that I remember
was the little house on First Avenue and Marion Street.
At the foot of the bank, Indians camped
and their canoes lined the beach.
Sometimes I would scurry down the bank
to watch the Indians about their campfires.
We traded apples to them for bows and arrows.
-A large Indian camp was built on the shoreline
of Lake Union near Westlake.
The village held several families,
and its longhouses were made of cedar slabs and bark
to withstand the weather.
An opening in the longhouse roof allowed the smoke to escape.
Poles were laid across, up near the roof, and on these,
fish and clams were strung to dry over the fire.
The women would be weaving mats and baskets,
cleaning fish, and drying berries.
We children like to go to the camp
where there were so many interesting things going on.
We tried to speak Chinook
and everyone laughed at us in good fun.
Even as a child, I realized the beauty of Indian life
and I have a memory of a young Indian woman silhouetted
against the sky with uplifted arms.
-Seattle is named after my great-great-great-great grandfather.
He was born about the year 1780.
The city still carries his name today.
It is the largest city in the world named after a Native American.
People all over the world say see-AT-ull,
but in the local language, it's pronounced more like see-AD-ull.
This is the indigenous language of the region, Lushootseed.
My grandfather was wise and resourceful.
He requested a provision of unencumbered access
to our tribal burial grounds.
in signing the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855.
Access to our burial grounds
is significant in our tribal beliefs.
He recognized the strength of these strangers
and the need to join forces with them
to ensure the welfare and longevity of his people.
Seattle represented both the Duwamish
and Suquamish tribes in signing the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855,
a treaty giving away all the land known today as Seattle.
He recognized that resisting the coming change brought
forth by these more powerful people
would only result in death and destruction of his people.
He chose to make friends with these strangers,
and in doing so,
influence any future decisions that might come.
These friendships were not always popular.
Seattle was a fore-teller of things to come,
recognizing the impact these new people would have
upon the region, people, and place.
My grandfather, Chief Seattle, chose the path of subtle influence and friendship.
-When settlers arrived west in the mid 19th century,
they came to claim land,
to seize it from native tribes
who'd called it home for centuries,
to transform it into cities and towns of their own making.
Two of those settlers, Arthur Denny and David "Doc" Maynard,
were architects of what would become Seattle.
And they were two very different characters.
Maynard, a drinker. Denny a teetotaler.
Maynard was full of endless ideas for change.
Denny was a cautious and careful business investor.
Maynard lived with a native woman.
Denny was a strict Christian.
The most visible symbol of that history
of these two different city founders came early
as they laid out street plans for the property they'd claimed.
The tangle their disagreements made of downtown streets
still define our city.
Denny's decision to run streets parallel to the waterfront
made downtown Seattle angle away from the shoreline,
all the way from James Street to what we now call Belltown.
Maynard, though, chose a traditional
north-south, east-west pattern.
The streets on his land followed the compass, not the waterfront.
It's most visible now, two centuries on,
at the intersection of James Street and Yesler Way,
the one angling up the hillside,
the other true to the compass, heading due east,
a perennial legacy of that 19th century quarrel.
-The story of Pacific Northwest salmon
is one of abundance and balance that lasted thousands of years.
Tens of millions of salmon arrived every summer and fall,
feeding whole villages for the entire year.
-We're salmon people.
Salmon has always been culture, and culture is salmon.
Everything points back to salmon.
For us.
-Salmon was as predictable as the rain and tides.
They were part of an ecosystem that fed the local people
and enriched the land.
-Our societies were built around salmon
and the runs and our village locations and longhouses
and winter villages and summer villages were places
where five generations of family could be at one time.
Everything was in sync and there was just abundance and life
and really living.
-The newcomers changed all that.
To them, the salmon were like liquid silver.
Soon there were fleets of fishermen,
nets across river mouths,
and hundreds of canneries up and down Puget Sound.
It was easy money.
Everyone rushed to exploit this bounty of the sea.
And still, the salmon kept returning for a while
until one day the nets didn't splash with silver.
Salmon, the iconic fish of the Pacific Northwest
for thousands of years,
the desire of sportsmen and chefs worldwide
was in big trouble.
Its demise was sudden and predictable.
-We're in a place called The Evergreen State,
and every time I read that, it makes me giggle.
Or the Apple State makes me giggle a little bit louder
because for us, it's the salmon state.
You look at the abundance of rivers
and the sea and Puget Sound.
It's the salmon state.
It's fed the inhabitants and the occupants
since the beginning of time.
-And so we wonder,
are we committed enough to save the salmon
if we save saved them.
Do we save ourselves?
-In the mid 1880s, the population of Seattle
was growing quickly as settlers began claiming land
where villages were located and where we hunted,
fished, and gathered food.
While many Indians and settlers worked and lived peacefully,
there were culture clashes, skirmishes,
and occasional outbreaks of violence
as land was claimed by outsiders.
Earlier in 1853,
Washington Territory Governor Isaac Stevens had held
a rapid series of treaty talks with the local Indian nations.
Stevens aim was to squeeze as many different Indian nations
into the smallest territories possible,
to make room for the incoming settlers.
The Treaty of Point Elliott, signed by Chief Seattle in 1855,
accepted a reservation for both the Suquamish and Duwamish.
He believed that the settlement of vast numbers of outsiders was inevitable.
Upset by the treaties and the taking of Indian lands,
in January 1856,
tribal warriors attacked the newcomers living
in the Seattle settlement.
US Marines and a Navy sloop of war, the Decatur, fought back.
The battle, which lasted a single day,
was part of a larger Puget Sound War
that included Yakama Indians, as well as Nisqually,
Muckleshoot, Puyallup, and Klickitat tribal warriors.
Governor Stevens tried to declare martial law.
"War shall be prosecuted until the last hostile
Indian is exterminated," he said.
Judge Francis Chenoweth pushed back on his power grab.
Chief Seattle was convinced that a peaceful path could be found.
He believed the settlers needed the Indian people's labor
and superior knowledge of the local natural resources.
At the same time,
Chief Seattle recognized the settlers brought technologies,
weapons and metalware, for example, and medicine
that could help counter the diseases brought by outsiders.
So he stayed out of the violent conflicts.
Tragically, the exclusion of Indian people from Seattle,
the overfishing of the region's salmon runs,
and the failure to adhere to the treaties
impoverished Indian people throughout the region.
Chief Seattle died waiting for the fulfillment
of the treaties promises.
Still, those treaties became the foundation
for later legal opinions
that restored some of the rights guaranteed by the United States
and practiced by our people today.
-My name is Caleb.
I'm 12 years old, and I work at Simpson Camp 7,
where the Cold River comes down from Mount Tahoma.
My father was a feller, cutting trees
until a barber chair broke his ribs.
That's an accident when the tree spins around
and just doesn't fall right.
Father says he worked in the camps, too, when he was young.
They took all the good trees first.
So now I work to make money.
I'll work in the camp kitchen for Ole Harper,
boiling the beans and making the biscuits.
When he isn't looking, I steal a spoon of molasses.
He smells like tobacco and wet wool.
The men are rough, and when I want to get away from them,
I go into the forest.
I go to where the big tree is.
Its Douglas fir that's too big to cut.
I have a friend who lives there.
I bring him crusts of bread, which he likes.
The trees we fell are fir, hemlock, cedar, and spruce.
Nicholas Nickerson is the crew chief.
He calls me "Little Brother."
He says that the spruce is for the masts of ships,
the hemlock for bad houses, and the fir for good houses,
the cedar for shakes.
He says that we are building the city of San Francisco,
a part called the Western Addition.
Someday I want to go there.
The men stand on springboards to fell the trees.
Then they limb them.
Nicholas says they will become beautiful homes.
But aren't they already beautiful homes?
We couldn't do it without horses.
They like molasses, too.
The horses pull the logs down the hill into the Black River.
We make rafts of them. This is dangerous, too.
Everything is dangerous.
A steamboat pulls our load to the Yesler Mill.
There, they load up ships with thousands
of board feet and shingles.
Nick says the railroad will soon come all the way to
the Yesler Mill and take our wood over the mountains.
The whole American West is building up --
cities, barns, schools, and churches.
One day I come back to Camp 7
and they're taking it apart.
We have cut all the trees.
We must start a new camp.
I help Harper load up the mules.
It's time to go.
But I want to say goodbye to my chipmunk.
I go to the big tree,
but they've taken it, too.
It's gone. Just a giant stump.
I don't see my chipmunk anywhere.
This was his home.
I hope he finds a new one.
-Seattle had a big problem.
Their infant settlement on the Salish Sea, Puget Sound
was isolated and accessible only by sailing ship or wagon,
hazardous journeys that took months.
To survive and grow, Seattle had to have a railroad.
Steam trains, iron horses that could carry household goods,
building materials,
farm produce, and people across the country
in as few as five days.
Seattle built its first railroads in the 1870s
to carry local coal to Elliott Bay,
giving the struggling young city a substantial economic base.
In 1884,
the main rail line to the outside world opened
and Seattle boomed. The convenience of train travel
boosted Seattle's population from 3,000 in 1880
to 43,000 in 1890.
Trains brought consumer goods from the East Coast
and returned with lumber, canned salmon,
and livestock from Puget Sound.
Railroad exports built this town.
Wealth grew. Many people lived better.
But the impact of the railroad
also ended Native American civilization,
as it had been for thousands of years.
Today, Amtrak Cascades and Sound Transit
carry growing numbers of passengers,
while Union Pacific and BNSF
haul millions of tons of freight in all directions.
Seattle is a portal to the world.
The railroads helped convert an isolated rainy city
in the northwest
into an interconnected transportation hub.
Thanks to generations of diverse, hardworking people,
all intertwined in Seattle's progression
from a pioneer settlement to a modern metropolis.
It wouldn't have been possible without the railroads.
-In the 1800s, coal was society's oil and gas.
Heating homes, powering ships and sawmills,
stoking railroad engines --
it was the energy that powered the economy.
Luckily, the Seattle area had lots of it.
Settlers opened coal seams in 1865 along Coal Creek
in the Newcastle area,
and soon coal towns thrived throughout King and Pierce Counties.
Such as Black Diamond, Franklin, and Renton.
Much of the coal was headed to California
to power the ever-growing demands of the railroads.
It became one of Seattle's major exports.
Coal mining was dirty, dangerous work,
and the mines were owned by ruthless, hard-headed companies.
Newcastle was a company town and every man in town
was employed by the company, from engineers to miners.
They were paid in scrip to be spent in the company store
at prices set by the company.
According to The Atlantic Monthly,
the miners lived in a grimy huddle of huts.
The work was brutal.
Miners excavated hundreds of feet into the earth,
lining the shafts with timber.
The mines were mostly manned by recent immigrants --
Welsh, Swedes, Scots, Finns, Italians, and Serbs,
some as young as 16.
Fire, cave-ins, and explosions were ever present.
Fear stoked horrible violence and reckless behavior.
Racism was prevalent,
with immigrants battling Chinese and Black miners.
There were strikes and horrible deaths
as everyone fought for their fair share.
In 1880, Newcastle produced 200,000 tons of coal alone,
fueling the growth of the west.
Coal production continued to rise,
and by 1910, over 3.5 million tons was mined.
But as society converted to oil and gas,
coal lost its favor in the northwest
and the mines faded away,
closing a chapter on one of Seattle's most colorful
and dangerous exports.
-The first Chinese immigrants to come to the U.S.
arrived in 1845, lured by the promise of gold.
Washington had mining and other natural resources
and needed workers.
-Chinese came here looking for work.
They were instrumental in building railroads.
The big one was Northern Pacific,
which hired some 15,000 Chinese.
-Chin Gee He came to Port Gamble in 1862,
where he worked in the mill
that shipped Puget Sound lumber worldwide.
Here, he learned English and Salish
and befriended Henry Yesler,
the head of one of Seattle's pioneering families.
-He came here and he joined with Chin Chun Hock
at the Wa Chong Company.
They had a general store, sold Chinese and American goods.
More important, they were labor contractors.
-The labor boom didn't last long.
In 1883,
a last spike ceremony commemorated the joining
of the Pacific Northwest leg
with the Transcontinental Railroad.
Upon completion, the industry had a huge surplus of laborers.
-They were mad at Chinese,
but even Chinese at that time didn't have jobs.
There were anti-Chinese stuff in Olympia, Spokane,
a little bit in Walla Walla.
-Competition grew for the scarce work
and already brewing anti-Chinese sentiments
began to coalesce into unrest and policy action.
-They wanted Chinese out of America.
That led to a number of riots.
They took the Chinese from their headquarters
and forced them onto wagons down to the waterfront
to get shipped out.
-Those who could not board the steamer
because they had no money,
were marched back to their quarters
when shots rang out, causing casualties and injuries.
Washington Territory Governor Watson Squire declared
martial law on February 10th.
By the end of February 1886,
only a few Chinese remained, including Chin Gee He.
Two years after the riots,
economic conditions raised the demand for labor
and Chin Gee He established his own business,
the Quong Tuck Company.
The Chinese survived targeted violence
and racist laws aimed to drive them out
of the Pacific Northwest.
It wouldn't be the only time
Seattle struggled with its Asian population.
Still, their perseverance was critical
for the early development of the region.
They established a strong community that grew,
flourished, and continues to contribute
over many generations.
Seattle would be a much different city without them.
-The spring of 1889 was warm and dry,
with very little rain that made Seattle famous.
Up and down its dusty streets, Seattle was booming.
People were pouring into town.
Seattle grew from about 3500 in 1880
to more than 42,000 ten years later, and by 1889,
many of the buildings in Seattle were almost 40 years old,
most made of wood, now old and dried, seasoned like kindling.
Ironically in a region surrounded by water,
Seattle didn't have much of a water system.
The city tried to build one,
but the people voted against spending the money.
So when a clumsy carpenter at the corner of First
and Madison accidentally set fire to a glue pot
on June 6th, 1889,
it's no surprise that the wood scraps and sawdust ignited.
When Seattle firefighters arrived to douse the flames,
Seattle's almost non-existent water system
produced only a trickle.
The fire spread quickly,
overwhelming the volunteer firefighters.
The fire chief was out of town,
so nobody was in charge.
It was a raging inferno. Flames leapt high.
Smoke filled the sky, people ran.
Horses stampeded. Chaos.
-The man who started the fire was John Back.
They were going to lynch him if they ever found him.
-John Back was never heard from again.
♪♪
In the end, 30 square blocks burned.
♪♪
Most of the business district, the heart of booming Seattle,
was destroyed in just a few terrifying hours.
♪♪
It was a complete loss.
But Seattleites were tough.
By the next day, the sound of tent stakes
being hammered into the ground filled the air
as a temporary town sprung up.
♪♪
The old wooden city was replaced by brick buildings,
and a new fireproof city emerged in the area
we today call Pioneer Square.
Under Robert Moran's leadership, the fire became urban renewal.
That volunteer fire department was replaced
with full time employees.
Part of the new plan called for a more robust,
reliable water supply.
Everyone voted in favor of it.
-Breaking news this just in.
At 5:27 this afternoon,
President Benjamin Harrison signed a proclamation
declaring Washington to be the 42nd state in the Union.
The pen he used was made from Washington gold.
Celebrations broke out statewide.
Elisha Ferry was elected the state's first governor.
-In the early summer of 1897,
astonishing rumors were flying around Seattle.
Could it be true?
When the steamship Portland chugged into Elliott Bay
on July 6th,
carrying 68 lucky men with more than $1 million
in gold dust and nuggets from Alaska's Yukon River,
the city erupted.
By that evening, everybody had gold fever.
-This is the richest thing ever known.
Everybody here in Seattle is crazy.
-Gold gave people hope for a better tomorrow.
The mid 1890s had been tough,
with falling prices for lumber, coal and fish
causing hardship and unemployment.
After the 1849 California Gold Rush,
prospectors even combed the northwest streams
looking for nuggets of instant wealth.
But even a hint of good fortune
fanned the flames for locals willing to perform
the backbreaking work of panning for gold.
The rewards were huge.
One ounce of gold was worth $16,
about three weeks pay for the average logger.
Nobody was immune from gold fever.
Firemen, cops, fishermen, bankers, bakers, teachers --
everyone raced north to seek their fortunes.
Even the Seattle mayor caught gold fever and resigned,
heading to Alaska.
Local outfitters offered eager miner's supplies and assistance.
Tents, gold pans, hats, gloves, maps, blankets, boots, pickaxes,
anything you need.
While the local bars sold hope and good luck
in glasses of whiskey and beer.
Mining the miners was the retail boom of the century.
It was said the merchants made a lot more money in their stores
than the miners made in the cold, hardscrabble Klondike.
The gold rush changed Seattle from a remote, muddy backwater
into what the Seattle Chamber of Commerce
called "The gateway to the Klondike."
-Step right up and get your gear! Headed north?
We've got everything you need on your road.
-The reality never lived up to the hype.
Perhaps 10% of those who headed to the Yukon were successful.
with wide open gambling and prostitution,
one local observer remarked,
"Seattle is a very wicked city just now."
The Gold Rush began in 1897 and continued for ten years.
In just four years, $200 million in Klondike Gold
landed in Seattle,
and much of it remained in local banks
for business loans and mortgages.
Seattle flourished as the closest major port
and supply depot on the Pacific coast.
More than 70,000 Yukon-bound travelers
streamed through Seattle during the decade,
spending 500 to $1,000 each to chase their dreams.
The Klondike Gold Rush started as a rumor,
but ended up being a game changer for the whole region.
-Emma Ray walked unafraid in the meanest streets of Seattle
because she believed she was a child of God.
She was born in Missouri in 1859,
the daughter of an enslaved woman.
She arrived in Seattle 30 years later,
weeks after the Great Fire had leveled downtown.
Emma Ray began to attend Seattle's
African Methodist Episcopal Church
and found salvation there.
She was overcome with compassion for the lost and the drunkard,
as she put it.
But, determined to make a difference,
the Rays, husband and wife, grew into their work
as evangelists among the poor, addicted, and imprisoned in Seattle.
During and after the Gold Rush, Seattle's poor included
hundreds of homeless, jobless men
who'd failed in the Yukon
and the broken women of the sex trade.
Emma would visit the city's toughest brothels,
bringing a message of redemption.
As one of Seattle's first social workers,
she celebrated her family's freedom from slavery
by helping to liberate those shackled
by addiction and prostitution.
-Though Seattle had a massive growth spurt
after the turn of the century,
many still viewed it as a backwater frontier town.
Seattle wanted to be somebody, a town with class and culture
that attracted businesses and visionary leaders.
To help change the perspective, in 1903, the city hired
the renowned Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm,
designers of New York's Central Park,
Stanford University, Duke University,
and many others
for a master plan for a 20 mile linked park system.
The Olmsted Brothers designs included Woodland Park
and Volunteer Park,
and they capitalized on shorelines
to highlight the natural beauty.
In 1906, Olmsted was also hired to design the grounds
for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition,
and it is arguably still the best part of the university's
spectacular 700-acre campus.
For the city, Olmsted's envisioned a series
of interconnected parks and boulevards
starting at Seward Park
and following Lake Washington clear across to Puget Sound.
It was dynamic and innovative,
capturing amazing views of the lakes, mountains,
and waterways throughout the city.
In addition to Olmsted's master plan,
Seattle pushed ahead with other city enhancements.
The Pike Place Market, new theaters and museums,
schools and playgrounds, electric streetcars.
A long needed makeover.
Through vision, determination, and creative genius,
Seattle built amazing parks and public spaces
that transformed a muddy frontier town into a modern,
forward thinking city.
-On his first day in Seattle in 1903,
landscape architect John Olmsted took city planners
to the Grand Lookout atop the King County Courthouse.
"I do not know of any place where the natural advantages
for parks are better than here," he said.
Olmsted's work included redesigns
of Volunteer and Woodland Parks,
lowering and landscaping Green Lake,
and developing Ravenna and Lake Washington Boulevards.
Within a decade, he created the Seattle park system
that other cities envied.
Olmsted was celebrated for capturing
the most spectacular views from the natural environment.
When people walk the UW campus to the Drumheller Fountain
and rave about the Mount Rainier backdrop,
that, too, was an Olmsted vision.
The centerpiece of his Alaska-Yukon-Pacific
Exposition design in 1909.
Olmsted's goal was a park within a half mile of every home
and a play field within every mile.
Today, with Seattle's 227 parks, that vision is largely realized.
-In early Seattle history,
perhaps no year was as city changing as 1907.
Prior to 1907, Seattle was a town more than a city,
with outlying communities scattered in all directions.
On January 7th, 1907,
all that changed when the city annexed the neighborhoods
of Seward Park, Mount Baker, Beacon Hill,
and a portion of Rainier Valley.
Eight days later, Ravenna was annexed to the north.
Columbia City, South Park, and Ballard joined in May,
and West Seattle came on board in July.
In less than a year, the city tripled in size.
These annexations added to Seattle's diversity in many ways.
Communities like Ballard brought in Scandinavian workers
who labored in shake and lumber mills.
Rainier Valley and South Park had large numbers of Italian
and Japanese farmers.
Beacon Hill was home to many Asians,
and African Americans lived throughout southeast Seattle.
These communities had grown
and prospered thanks to a robust trolley system
that moved people to all the distant communities.
The trolley system was just one
of the visionary accomplishments at that time.
Others included the opening of the Pike Place Market,
the Seattle Public Library,
the founding of the Mountaineers Club,
plus numerous theaters and organizations
for music and the arts.
The founding of Children's Orthopedic Hospital
and the Caroline Kline Galland Endowment
to help the sick and elderly.
Visitors who saw the before and after
were amazed by the transformation.
But Seattle was only getting started.
The best was yet to come.
-As the 20th century began, Seattle was changing quickly.
It wouldn't be until 100 years later, in the 2010s,
before Seattle would see this type of growth,
thanks to the tech boom.
From 1900 to 1910,
the city's population soared from 80,000
to nearly a quarter million people.
Boomtown was booming.
Timber, railroads, salmon, and coal still drove the economy,
but Seattle's economic base began to diversify.
Shipbuilding and trade took off, as did manufacturing jobs.
A tiny shipping company named UPS started in 1907
and grew into a giant.
A small shoe store called Wallin and Nordstrom
opened downtown at Fourth and Pike.
Voters approved the formation of Seattle City Light in 1902,
and the first hydroelectric plant on the Cedar River
opened two years later.
The Cedar River watershed also supplied the city's drinking water.
To celebrate the success,
Seattle boosters determined that hosting a World's Fair
would be the best way to showcase the region's wealth,
resources, and advantages.
A 260-acre portion of the University of Washington campus
was chosen for the site, due to its proximity to downtown
and its breathtaking views of the Cascades,
the Olympics, and Lake Washington.
Beginning in 1907,
land was cleared and millions of trees and flowering plants
were cultivated to beautify the landscape.
The plan for the World's Fair
was developed by the Olmsted Brothers,
and it transformed the forested campus
into an international destination.
This set the stage for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909,
Seattle's introduction to the world,
and the beginning of one of the most amazing
transformations in history.
-In just over 50 years,
Seattle had evolved from an isolated,
rain-swept settlement
into a real city.
It was ready to claim its place on the world stage.
Through booms and busts,
gold rushes and fires, sparkling summer days
and gloomy gray winters,
the innovative and visionary citizens had prevailed,
and with luck and courage,
created a city out of the forest.
As you will see, Seattle was just getting started.
[ Lightning crashes ]
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-Funding for "Seattle: A History in Short Stories" provided by --
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