Railroad Avenue
There is one more topic of intensified local interest that I will briefly notice. I am now and always have been opposed, not to Railroad Avenue, which extends along the water-front of the city, but to the network of tracks permitted and authorized to be placed thereon. At the foot of Columbia Street, crossing Railroad Avenue to the west line thereof, you cross nine railroad tracks, or eighteen lines of slightly elevated railroad iron. Such are the existing and authorized conditions. I have always been opposed to those conditions; first, because they are unusual, unnecessary and dangerous; unusual, because no city can be named permitting such a nuisance; unnecessary, because one track, or, to be liberal, two tracks, with spurs to the warehouses on the west and the wholesale or commission houses on the east, where the conditions permit it, would be ample, under the control of an intelligent company or management, for all the purposes of trade and commerce; dangerous, as experience has shown: the killed and injured on this interlocked system, intensified by supervening and dense fogs, speak only by groans and death-knells. I have opposed this network of tracks because instead of being an aid to travel and commerce, it is an actual obstruction of them. The idea of doing the commercial business of a million people, or one-half a million, with the accompanying passenger traffic, across nine railroad tracks, carries with it a strong implication of the absurd. In actual operation this implication becomes an irritating reality. The City Council has recognized the fact and prohibited the closing by any railroad company of the mouth of any street for over five minutes; but this is only a partial aleviation, and not the removal of the obstruction or danger. Railroad No. 1 closes it for four-and-a-half minutes; Railroad No. 2 closes it for four-and-a-half minutes; No. 3, for the same length of time. The closing is really continuous. Thus legally you can stand in the street, endure the slush and rain for at least twelve minutes to study the beauties of nature and of an enveloping fog, and enjoy the beneficence of the clouds in dropping their garnered fatness down.
The irritation arising from these causes will intensify with the increase of population and the swelling of the volume of coastwise and ocean commerce. Let the population of West Seattle reach twenty thousand or more; let "the mosquito fleet" be doubled and ocean and coastwise steamers be multiplied, with the consequent enormous, increase of the volume of business—and the demand for the modification, or entire abolition, of this irritating nuisance will become imperative. Some of the railroads have wisely noted the indications of the coming storm and have tunnelled under the city, deeming it cheaper to pay interest on permanent tunnel investments, than to pay damages for slaughter and injury on the avenue. Railroad Avenue is now used, to a great extent, as a train make-up yard, as a switching-ground and as a depot for loaded and empty cars. This will be continued with a constantly increasing exasperation, until the City is compelled to re-purchase at an enormous expense, that which was granted as a free gift.
The Great Seattle Fire
June 6th, 1889, will ever be a memorable day in the history of Seattle—that being the day of the Great Fire which, like a besom of destruction swept out of existence a goodly portion of the embryo city. Brilliant prospects, and glowing anticipations, evanished like the rainbow amid the storm of fire. Nearly all the business houses were reduced to ashes; or, if any portion of their roughly serrated and toppling walls remained, they were a silent and menancing memento of the fierce power of the fire-fiend. The fire originated in a paint shop, on the water front near Madison Street, in the careless upsetting of a flaming pot of varnish. There was a stiff breeze from the northwest, constantly accelerated by the ever-increasing heat. The fire, easily overcoming the heroic efforts of the Volunteer Fire Department, swept south and southeasterly, crossing Second Avenue at the rear end of the Boston Block, burning a large frame building immediately south of, and abutting upon that block; thence, in the same direction southeast nearly on a straight line, thus taking in the Catholic Church; thence onward to the Bay, making a space swept by the fire a large triangle, with an area of from thirty to forty acres.
The Boston Block was saved through strenuous efforts of its tenants; long scantling were carried by them into the hall on the second story. Having raised the windows at the end of the hall, the south end of the frame building burning first, we succeeded by our united strength in forcing the unburned portion over into the consuming caldron of fire to the south. Thus the Boston Block, though somewhat scorched, was saved.
Jacobs & Jenner had their law offices near the north entrance, and during the progress of the fire many persons whose residences or places of business were along its actual or threatened track, presuming on our generosity and permission, brought armloads of portable valuables, snatched by them from the very teeth of the fire, and in an excited manner, placed them against one of the walls in the offices. So doing, they rushed out in the hope of reaching their residences or places of business again; but the surrounding wall of fire, with its intense heat, forbade. Some of them soon returned and dropped into seats, and their countenances were the pictures of sadness, sorrow and despair. I said to one, a noble specimen of physical manhood and latent energy: "Sir, your actions are unmanly; hope, even in your case, has not bidden the world farewell; cheer up, sir—just before dawn the darkness is the deepest." Within a year from that time my admonished friend was worth far more than he was before the fire; and he often reminded me of my rebuke, as he called it.
Being satisfied that the offices, papers, library and furniture were safe, I locked the doors and went up to my residence on Fourth Avenue, where I had a commanding view of the progress of the fire.