My team took the Underground Seattle tour last week. When it was over I was a bit sad it was so short – a sign of a good time.
The thing that’s amazing about the tour and Seattle history how quickly things changed. In 45 years the city was founded, burned down, regraded, and built the Smith Tower.
The city was incorporated (the 2nd time) around 1870 with around 1000 residents. 20 years later (1889) almost 30 blocks worth of building went up in flames.
Since the buildings were leveled, the city thought: why not the hills too? I haven’t found a summary of the regrade projects (there appear to be between 3 and 100, depending on who you ask), but two of the major regrades were completed between 1889 and 1911.
There seem to be a lot of sites on this:
- Regrading Seattle (Wikipedia)
- Denny Regrade (History Links)
- Rare Historical Photos (from the same)
- Seattle moves a mountain (YouTube)
- Regrade Disasters (Historic Seattle.org)
Once things were flattened out they built Smith Tower, finishing in 1914.
Going from City to Cinders, from Mud flats & Mounds to Skyscrapers in such a short time seems incredible.
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