Junius Rochester, whose family has shaped the city for many generations, is an award-winning Northwest historian and author of numerous books about Seattle and other places.
Historian Samuel Eliot Morison rhapsodized: “Astoria might well be called the Plymouth Rock of the West -- for the opening up of the Oregon country is a close parallel, almost a reproduction of the process by which the Thirteen Colonies were founded by England.”
Commercial activity picked up, boosted by new electric trolleys rolling along tracks on Broadway, later removed to accommodate more maneuverable electric trolley buses and cars. Starting in 1909, Broadway became “Automobile Row.”
Cable cars rode up James and Madison Streets to Broadway, then headed east, as Paul Dorpat writes (2001), “through a patchwork of forests and stump fields – the latter surmounted by real estate signs promoting convenience of cleared lots placed close to the tracks. A fourth electric line ran north and south along Broadway connecting the three hills north to south, Capitol, First, and Beacon – topographically three sisters in the same ice-age ridge.”
Hood River Blackie had this tribute: “No group in American history ever roamed as far across this great land as did the hobos, so let’s salute them just once as they follow the steam locomotive into history. Let’s remember them as they truly were the last pioneers; for when they are all gone – as soon they must be – this world will not see their like again.”
Sam’s reach extended well beyond Maryhill and Seattle. He initiated and paid for the Canadian Border Peace Arch at Blaine, Washington. He was the financial sponsor of Chief Joseph’s burial monument on the Colville Indian Reservation. He helped finance the first Quaker meeting house in Seattle (Friends Memorial Church).
The Federal Writers’ Project provided over 10,000 jobs for Americans during the Depression. Those workers found, recorded and revitalized much American history.
Following outbreak of the Civil War this dream of a separate West Coast nation was revived. Newly arrived Southerners were among the enthusiastic supporters of this secessionist idea for starting over with a clean slate.
Captain Charles Wilkes, who led the scientific expedition in 1841, observed the bird-like shape of the Bainbridge Island harbor, giving it the name Eagle Harbor. He added Bill Point and Wing Point to complete the avian image.
“Green Lake and Lincoln Parks were developed entirely by [Umlauff],” a rare early notice observed. “Woodland, Volunteer, Seward, and lesser parks were transformed and improved vastly under his direction.”
