Snippets of: Seattle, Part 2

The fire of 1889, recorded in Part 1 destroyed almost the entire city of Seattle. Thirty blocks were utterly demolished.Afterwards, wooden buildings were banned in favor of brick, stone, and iron. One would expect everyone to be unhappy about this devastation, and I am sure they were to some extent. However, the authorities didn’t seem to mind too much.

Now that the city is burned, they said, let’s build it higher. It will solve the sewage problems, of which there are many, and the city will stop flooding every time the tide comes in.

The merchants however, had lost all of their things in the fire. We can’t wait to build the city up, they said, we need to build our buildings now so that we can have money.

Well, said those in charge of the city, we are going to raise the city fifteen feet whether you like it or not. We own the streets.

You may own the streets, said the merchants, but we own the sidewalks, so we are building now.

The result of this was that the city built the streets fifteen feet higher and the sidewalks stayed where they were, fifteen feet below. For the customers who wanted to get to the other side of the streets, ladders were built. No guard-rails were used on the roads, so coaches and people sometimes fell. Sometimes, people fell off the ladders too. These deaths, the court ruled as involuntary suicides.

When the city built the streets higher, they used more dirt than it took to build the Panama Canal. But they still didn’t have enough, so they used, as Northwestcharm.com tells us, “Rubbish from the fire, sawdust, soil, and even carcasses of dead horses.” (Goller) In doing this, they made an insecure foundation.

Just for a minute, let’s look at Seattle as we see it today. Today downtown Seattle’s foundation is still made of this rubbish from the 19th century. The sawdust and other materials that were used in the past cause many of the pothole problems in the streets of Seattle.

The sidewalks were also raised to street level, creating what is now known as Underground Seattle. A few years after the fire, this area, which had only recently been constructed, was condemned due to a bubonic plague which swept the city. This was due to the large amount of rats that lived underneath. A bounty of ten cents was put on the tail of the rat. This, alas, was another mistake.

Rats are hard to catch, especially in the dark. This bounty that was put on rat tails caused people to raise rats to make things easier. They could cut off their tails and still receive the bounty. The rat problem took a long time to get rid of.

And now, in order to round out this history of Seattle’s folly and the era surrounding the Great Fire, let me tell you about one of the first leaders of Seattle.

Seattle has had many corrupted leaders. Of these, many of the crimes committed by the early leaders are now outlawed. This particular leader however however, did not have these laws.

(I once thought that this fallen man was the first mayor of Seattle, Henry Atkins. When I actually went on the Seattle Underground Tour however, it turned out it was someone else. Unfortunately, I can not remember or discover the man's real name and position. It might have been the Seattle Treasurer). Anyway, this man made many errors and he was a man in the position to do the following: It so happened that being a major town leader, he was also a private citizen. In his role as private citizen he sued the city. That is, he sued the town leaders, a prominent one of which just happened to be himself. Then, the town leader, himself, gave the private citizen, also himself, a whole bunch of money straight from the city treasury. This of course, is very wrong to do and there are laws against it.

The city has made some pretty silly mistakes in my opinion. Jesus once told a parable about the spiritual life. He told of a man who built his house on the sand, sawdust in this case, whose house fell down. And then He told the flip side of the story by telling about another man who built his house on the rock, whose house was beaten against, but did not fall. (Matt. 24-27) The example of the town leader's corruptness is just one. The city has always been pretty corrupted. Skid Row for instance. So I guess that, for the most part, the lives of the citizens are made of the same stuff they build the town on. It’s really kinda funny how people build things to look like themselves, (just look at the King of Babylon, he built a statue of himself.) However, Seattle is doomed! Spiritually, it’s corrupt. Physically, its foundation is (very) unsound. And I think Seattle could cave in at any time.

(P.S. Subsequent recent events have taken place. The city of Seattle is about to build a tunnel underneath the city. I hate to think of what will happen when they try to build it in the midst of that weak foundation. Downtown Seattle really could collapse even without an earthquake!)

(This has been: Snippets of: Seattle, Part 2. Look in next time to read: Stories of My Life:__)