1873: Great Northern Chooses Tacoma

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On July 14, 1873, an expectant throng gathers at Yesler Mill to hear Arthur Denny read a telegram from Northern Pacific Railroad executives R. D. Rice and J. C. Ainsworth announcing, "We have located the terminus on Commencement Bay." The crowd is shocked to learn that the planned transcontinental railroad and its coveted wealth of goods and passengers would serve Puget Sound from Tacoma, then barely a village, not from Seattle.

The summer before, Northern Pacific Railroad officials spent a week touring Puget Sound in a steamboat looking at sites for a terminus. Various towns got into a bidding war over it. Seattle offered the Northern Pacific 7,500 town lots, 3,000 acres of land, $50,000 in cash, $200,000 in bonds and the use of the shoreline for tracks and a depot.

Ainsworth and Rice, charged with locating the terminus, decided on Tacoma, which was scarcely a village, because it was closer to the Columbia River and required the least amount of track to be laid. They delayed making the announcement until they secretly purchased as much of the land at Commencement Bay as they could.

The decision outraged Seattleites. Seattle soon built its own railroad, which extended to the King County coal town, Newcastle. This became the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad, governed by a company whose trustees were some of Seattle's most prominent businessmen, including Arthur Denny and Henry Yesler, among several others.

The Northern Pacific's decision to locate the terminus in Tacoma begins a long, antagonistic struggle between the railroad giant and the optimistic, but still very young city of Seattle.