The City Under Seattle
Seattle, WA
If you love all things “Old West” then you will not want to miss a tour through Seattle’s underground city.
Seattle was named for Chief Sealth of the Indian tribe Duwamish, and is on the west side of Elliott Bay. The pioneer town was established in the early 1850s and is perhaps best known as the gateway to Alaska’s Klondike Gold Rush.
It was a time of saloons, whisky, horses and women of ill- repute. It is also a place where two of the city’s founding fathers could not agree on how the streets should be laid out — which means you will need a map.
As soon as the railroad reached them, the citizens solved their one-man homeless problem by buying him a one-way ticket to the east coast. A fire in 1889 consumed 25 square blocks of buildings.
They had fire wagons, but no water pressure and the tide was out, so all they could do was watch it burn. As long as they had to rebuild, they decided to raise the city streets and pave them to avoid past problems with tide water seepage, not to mention the rain. Shop owners quickly built another floor atop their old street level stores and for the most part abandoned the bottom floor, display windows, teller bank bars, old sidewalks and all. Then most everyone forgot about it.
The city/town was rebuilt just in time to welcome all those gold seekers, and business boomed. So did stories of barroom brawls, gunslingers, toilets and, of course, women of ill-repute.
Open to the public in 1965, tour guides delight in telling these great stories and for that alone, a visit to the city under Seattle is well worth the trip. Be sure to check tour schedules as the tours are not year around. While there, visit Seattle’s Space Needle, ride a ferry across the bay, drive to Mount Rainier and go even farther south to see what is left of Mt. Saint Helen after its volcanic eruption.
By Marti Talbott
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It Happened in Seattle: Remarkable Events That Shaped History (It Happened In Series)
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Seattle’s Pioneer Square (Images of America)
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