KING COUNTY
King county is distinguished by having Seattle for its county seat. The county is an empire in itself, stretching from the shores of Puget sound to the peaks of the Cascade mountains, and containing more than 2,000 square miles of territory. It also includes Vashon, one of the large islands of the sound.
RESOURCES.
King county's sources of revenue are varied and extensive. Its lumber industry, growing out of the vast forests within its borders not only, but from the cutting of logs brought in from other sections of the state, is immense.
Its agricultural lands are not surpassed in fertility by any, and include not only the alluvial deposits in its river bottoms, but great areas of shot clay and other soils splendidly adapted to fruit culture.
Its mining industries include not only very great acreage of coal measures, which have been producing coal for commercial purposes for local and foreign trade for thirty years and are scarcely scratched as yet, but also fissure veins of the precious metals—gold, silver, lead, copper, antimony, arsenic, and also iron, asbestos, fire clays, kaolin, granite, sandstones, lime ledges, and others.
Its fishing industries in its own waters and from the ocean give employment to a large number of men and its fish are shipped even as far east as Boston, Massachusetts.
Its power capacity, in addition to its wood and coal, includes great falls and rapids and many large streams which are already harnessed, but only in part, and driving vast quantities of machinery in this and adjoining counties.
In commercial possibilities King county is unrivaled. Its combination of lakes, rivers and salt water harbors have no superior on the globe, and the fact of its supremacy is demonstrated by the tabulated statistics of state officers, which show that King county possesses one-fifth of the population of the state and has more than one-quarter in value of taxable property of the state, and pays one-fourth of taxes collected within the state borders.
In scenery, which is no mean asset of the county, it is also unsurpassed. Vast ranges of mountains, sheets of fresh and salt water, rivers, hills and plains, forests, and grassy fields combine and interlace in a thousand directions to entrance and delight the artistic eye.
In game, including bear, deer, mountain goats, cougar, grouse, pheasants, quail, mountain trout, salmon and other fishes, make many a paradise for the sportsman.