Leaves of Knowledge/Chapter 16
SEATTLE, THE CITY OF DESTINY
CHAPTER XVI.
Seattle, the City of Destiny.
Seattle, the metropolis of the State of Washington, is situated on Elliott Bay, on the eastern shore of Puget Sound. Its population has doubled in the last five years, caused by the wonderful influx of Alaska gold, as it is the headquarters for outfitting, and controls the trade of Alaska and the Yukon territory, and is also the base of supplies for the Puget Sound navy yard. It has the best navy dry-dock on the Pacific Coast and the largest dry-dock in the United States. The battleship Nebraska is now under construction here for the American government.
More than seventy steamers are engaged, this being the center of the Sound steamship traffic, besides lines of steamships to Japan and the Orient. The great transcontinental railroads meet the ships of the world in the commerce of the Pacific, being the shortest route between New York and the Asiatic harbors.
There are extensive flour mills here. It is the center of the lumber industries and leads in shipbuilding in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle is the base of supplies for the salmon and deep sea fisheries and is surrounded by a great number of valuable coal mines.
Some of the towns near here are very important, the principal ones being Issaquah, Black Diamond, Newcastle and Roslyn, east of the Cascade mountains. The largest lumber mills in the United states are at Port Blakely, which has an extensive foreign trade. At Port Gamble and Port Ludlow are immense saw milling plants. Near Port Orchard is Bremerton, the United States naval station. The City of Ballard has numerous saw mills and is the greatest shingle producing city in the world.
A government canal will connect Puget Sound with Lakes Union and Washington, at Seattle, providing fresh water harbors.
The army post, Fort Lawton, is at Magnolia Bluff.
Seattle has every reason to be proud of her school system. In addition to her public schools is the magnificent university, endowed by the state. The city is blessed with a delightfully even climate, grand scenery, with a fine natural harbor, protected from storms, and the largest vessels afloat can come into its docks at all stages of tide.
On going up and down the streets and seeing the crowds of people, each one attending to his or her line of business, with such a rush and stir, trains coming and going in all directions, crowded with passengers from every nation, and laden with freight from its own and central states for shipment to foreign countries, vessels being continuously loaded and unloaded at its numerous docks and wharves, and busily plying back and forth on that immense inland sea, both for the local and the Oriental trans-Pacific trade, with lumber, coal, fruit and fish at its command, backed by its enterprising citizens, one must exclaim that nature has thus evidently marked out the city of exalted destinies.