Seattle's First Map

As maps go, it is not terribly spectacular. No gilt margin, terra incognitum, or fanciful sea monsters. The cartographer has included two ships but they look more like pea pods than anything sea worthy. Drawn in pen on paper, the map depicts less than a square mile, with land making up about half the map, water about a third, and the title, legend, and white space the rest. Thomas Phelps, in service on the navy sloop of war U.S.S. Decatur—one of the pea pods—drew the map to illustrate the events of January 26, 1856, Seattle, Washington Territory.

Original version of Phelps’ map.

Within the dab of habitation, Phelps drew in Henry Yesler’s mill, Seattle’s first startup business, and largest employer. Like many more modern startups, Yesler employed a mix of locals, or Native people, and newcomers, or settlers. Behind the mill, low, flat land was where Yesler’s employee, Dutch Ned, dumped wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of sawdust from the mill, and where Yesler built a small house. South of the Sawdust the “Neck” connects to the broad side of a lemon-shaped peninsula, where the majority of the town’s buildings stand, including what may be Seattle’s first hen house.

Carefully drawn in the center of the peninsula is a grid of streets, which looks a bit like a pitch for a planned community. A lone building lurks on the southwestern edge of the street grid. Phelps has labeled it as Madam Damnable’s, a reference to a boarding house that he later wrote was run by “a terrible woman, and a terror to our people, who found her tongue more to be dreaded than the entire Indian army recently encamped in our front.” Reputation holds that the building was thronged with women of ill repute. No other buildings on the street merited a name.

L: Best known version of map, updated by Clarence Bagley to include street names. R: Little known version by Robinson and Jackson. Now, I know (see the comments) what it was done by Hewitt Robinson Jackson!

I cannot get this singular map out of my head. It shows my hometown in a manner unlike any I know, or even imagined. The map is the first that shows Seattle, not just the land that would become the city, but the layout of the infant village, of what would become the area that modern inhabitants know as Pioneer Square and First, Occidental, and Second Avenues, and Main and Jackson Streets. Like most people, I am used to the modern map of my hometown and its infrastructure. I see the roads that I regularly bike and drive, the home I now live in and the one I grew up in, the bridges that carry me over lakes and canals, and the parks where I run and walk. I see restaurants, theaters, bookstores, and places I have worked. I see where we spread my father’s ashes, where I kissed my first girlfriend, and where my wife and I regularly walk.

Each of these layers forms the map of my home. It is a multidimensional picture made not simply of the visual aspects of the urban infrastructure but also of memories, aromas, sounds, and emotions. I neither see nor can imagine any of this in Phelps’ map. When I look at the scattering of buildings in that tiny dot of Seattle, it makes me think of seeds in a garden. And like a seed, there is no guarantee that it would grow and thrive. We know from writings of the Denny party that they thought it was their destiny to establish a town that would develop into greatness, but how many other specks of urban optimism on large maps had the same aspirations?

In 1856, there would have been little reason to think Seattle would survive. An earlier cartographer had labeled the lands above what would become the settlement “Thickly Timberd.” Dominated by towering conifers, and an impenetrable understory, the timbered land stretched for hundreds of miles to the north, south, and east, making one of the greatest and densest forests in North America. The nearest city of any size, Portland with around 2,500 people, was eight days away by schooner. The one positive aspect was that Seattle was located on the water, with a good harbor for shipping the great timber that engulfed it.

Phelps’s map illustrates another threat to Seattle’s long term survival. What Phelps cannot show but what early Seattleites describe, is that the peninsula where most of them lived periodically became an island. At very high tides, water would cover the Neck and completely isolate the high ground of the peninsula from the mainland. But the settlers’ optimism and drive overcame their topographical and hydrological challenges. They covered up, cut down, and filled in the undesirable, and unprofitable, parts of the city, creating a landscape that would be good for business, and a landscape where the past was little present. In doing, they also started to erase the signs of those who have lived here for millennia and have long held a very different view of the place. To the Native people, the land provided and continues to provide an abundance of food and resources for shelter, as well as good transportation routes.

Seattle’s earliest citizens brought a far different set of expectations and desires. The city they envisioned was one of straight and level streets, large homes filled with non-local luxuries, abundant industries, and trade with a world wide network. All of which would require change. They were so successful that little remains of the landscape illustrated by Phelps.

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This essay is modified from my book Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography.

If you or anyone you know is going to be in Port Townsend next weekend, I have the honor of speaking at the Friends of Fort Worden State Park annual meeting on Friday, April 12.

And, for the first time in many months, Liz Nesbitt and I will be together to speak about Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales on April 20 at 2pm at the Seattle Central Library.