History of Everett

From; Washington, A Guide to the Evergreen State printed in 1941 and compiled by the workers of the Writer's Program of the Woks Projects Administration in the State of Washington.

The city of Everett is the county seat of Snohomish County, and is a lumbering center, seaport, and distributing point for a fertile agricultural and dairying area, which lies on a promontory between the sluggish Snohomish River, with its muddy delta, on the east and north, and Port Gardner Bay, an arm of Puget Sound, on the west. In the business district, near the center of the city, substantial middle-aged buildings border broad avenues that run east-west across a ridge extending southward from the river to the high bluffs of Rucker Hill.

Noticeable among the older structures are a few newer, more modern buildings. On the hill and along the bayside to the north are attractive residences, surrounded by broad, close-clipped lawns, brightened in season by daffodils, rows of irises, blossoming shrubs, roses in profusion, beds of flaming gladioli, and golden autumn leaves; even the somberness of winter is broken by the sheen of laurel leaves and the orange and red berries of thorn and holly. Between these residential districts and the business and industrial areas are scattered sections where the mass of the population lives.

The industrial life of the city centers in the area along the bayside and the river front. Here, fringing the city, are factories and mills with their stacks and burners, smoking volcanoes by day and glowing infernos by night. Except when a holiday or curtailed production brings a temporary lull, the air reverberates with the whine of saws, the strident blasts of whistles, the hiss of steam, and the clank of wheels as engines shunt cars of freight on the sidings.

Moored along the docks are freighters, their strong booms swinging incoming cargo to the docks and outgoing cargo, mostly lumber and lumber products, to the decks and into the holds. Quickly the gangs of longshoremen load and unload the slings, expertly using their claw-like hooks, and alert to the hazards of snapping cables and shifting cargo. Trucks rumble over the docks, which vibrate on supporting pilings. Dotting the bay are numerous pleasure craft, trawlers, sturdy tugs with rafts of logs in tow, and rowboats, in which fishermen drift for hours with the tide or row, face forward, with the peculiar skill and ease acquired only through years of practice.

The prevailing westerly winds are usually brisk and occasionally become gales that whip the slate-gray waters of the bay into whitecaps. Sometimes a pall of fog settles over the area, and then foghorns moan their warnings to shipping. The salt air is charged with the pungent odor of seaweed from the brine-soaked tidelands, the resinous tang of newly cut lumber and of smoke from the burning slabs and sawdust, the clean odor of tar from nets and creosoted pilings, and the musty smell of rotting logs, heavy with barnacles.

At night the low, musical throb of diesel engines and the impatient chugging of gasoline motors float across the water, or the whistle of a train, clear and resonant, echoes through the moisture-laden air. Here is registered the heartbeat of Everett. When mills and factories are running and wages are steady, customers crowd the local stores, bills are paid, houses are painted or re-shingled, and old cars are exchanged for new ones. But when the pulse is weakened by curtailed production and consequent unemployment, not only does local business diminish, but the neighboring farming area, which finds a market for its produce in the city, also suffers.

The first European to leave a record of discovery of the bay along which rise today the smokestacks of Everett was Captain George Vancouver, whose ship furled its sails at Possession Sound on June 4, 1794; he took possession for Britain, changing the name of the entire region from New Albion to New Georgia, in honor of King George III. Two other place names commemorate Vancouver's visit; Port Gardner Bay and Port Susan. Not until 1862 did the area around Port Gardner Bay become of interest to settlers.

In that year, for reasons not ascertainable from the records, Dennis Brigham, who had been listed in the census of 1860 as living in House No. 67, Whidbey Island, age 50, left the comparative comfort of his island home for the Port Gardner peninsula. He then cleared a bit of land along the bay near the point which today marks the foot of California Avenue, built a small shack, and planted a few apple trees. In 1860 a trading post had been established at Elliott Point at Mukilteo, as the Indians called it, to the south of Port Gardner Bay, and to the east the small settlement of Snohomish had become the seat of the newly created county.

By this time, too, the Indians in the environs of Port Gardner Bay had sealed their fate by signing the treaty of 1855, under the provisions of which they retired to the Tulalip Reservation. But until Brigham cleared his little patch of land, the promontory of Port Gardner Bay had remained a dead center in the eddies of settlement that swirled around it. In the 1870's and 1880's, a few settlers trickled into the area; a telegraph station was set up on the top of the bluff, and a combination hotel, store, and saloon was opened.

But conditions that were to lead to the establishment of a new town on Port Gardner Bay were developing. News of the wealth of timber in the Northwest had been carried down the coast to San Francisco and had even sounded in the ears of more astute and farseeing promoters in the East. The industrial expansion following the Civil War had ushered in a period of railroad building; it was only a matter of time before the existence of a market for lumber and of necessary transportation facilities led to the development of lumbering in the Snohomish Valley.

In 1889, Bethel J. Rucker and his brother, Wyatt J., made a reconnaissance of the area and apparently appreciated its industrial and commercial possibilities. Here was a vast forest reached by means of the Snohomish River and its many tributaries, down which logs could be floated for miles to sawmills accessible to ocean-going vessels. Further, rumors were afloat that the western terminus of the Great Northern might be located on Port Gardner Bay. Soon the Rucker brothers and other men, who also perceived the speculative possibilities of holdings in this area, acquired large tracts of land.

The Ruckers, prompted to action by rumors that different interests were eager to acquire control, filed in 1890 the 50-acre townsite plat of Port Gardner, only to withdraw it in the same year in order to re-file, under the name of the Everett Land Company, with Henry Hewitt, Jr., and eastern capital represented by Colby, Hoyt, C. W. Wetmore of the American Steel and Barge Company, Rockefeller, and others. The town was re-platted and named Everett in honor of the son of Charles L. Colby.

This announcement was followed by a rush for the choice locations; the pot of gold was seen in real estate, trade, timber, and commerce. Extra steamers brought in promoters, laborers, land agents, bartenders, merchants, cooks, and engineers by the hundreds. Some of the newcomers hastily constructed shacks and log cabins, but many were forced to live in makeshift shelters or in tents. So much in demand were places to sleep that, according to accounts, John T. Rogers found his coffins more in demand for bunks than for funerals.

Bars were constructed from a few planks and a bit of canvas. With as much dispatch as possible, patches of land were cleared of trees and underbrush; the nights were bright with the glow of burning stumps, and smoke hung heavy and pungent over the new settlement. A few rutty roads and trails served as streets, along which settlers cautiously picked their way by day or stumbled through mud holes by night. Rain fell steadily, but it could not drown the high hopes and visions of wealth born of rumors that a projected factory, a barge plant, a pulp mill, and other industrial ventures would soon make the jumble of tents and shacks into a thriving and populous city.

The town grew rapidly. By 1891 it had a population of 3,555, a fire department, a schoolhouse, a bank, and three newspapers. In 1892 the city's first department store was erected by John Hudson Clark, of Wisconsin; it stood in a "stump patch" so far from town that a free bus was used to attract customers. The Puget Sound Wire Company had opened and was furnishing light and power to a number of business establishments and homes; the Puget Sound Pulp and Paper Company (now known as the Everett Pulp and Paper Company), the first such mill in the State, had begun to operate with a daily capacity of 15 tons; the Sumner Iron Works, a smelter and reduction plant, a tannery, a few small shingle mills, six banks, numerous real-estate offices, several stores, and telephone service had been established.

By this time, too, development of the Monte Cristo silver holdings by the Rockefeller interests was well along, and many saw Everett as a mining center as well as an industrial city. Regular government not yet having been organized, a self-constituted law enforcement agency, the Committee of Twenty-One, was formed to combat lawlessness, which ran from rowdiness and drunkenness to robbery and murder. On April 27, 1893, the town was incorporated.

But the dreams of becoming an industrial center could come true only if ready access to markets were provided by means of transcontinental railroad connections. Even before the town was platted, Hewitt and the Ruckers had envisioned the coming of the Great Northern Railway; Hill's announcement that he would make the town the terminal was the stimulus to further expansion. The last spike was driven early in 1893, and on June 15, 1893, the first through train left Minneapolis for the West. Now, with rich natural resources and land and water transportation, the future of Everett seemed assured.

Scarcely was the boom well under way before the new town was his by the nation-wide depression and panic of 1893. Hundreds were thrown out of work. Everett was not hit so hard as were many other towns; nevertheless, conditions were bad. Through the winter of 1893, the jobless filled the streets by day, and at night slept in hovels or flophouses or kept warm in saloons. The slight upturn in the summer of 1894 was not maintained, even though the first whaleback barge was launched with much fanfare on October 24,1894.

The only bright spot in 1895 was the construction of the Bell-Nelson Sawmill, and the same year saw the first bank failure, with attendant hardships. The depression continued through 1896. By this time the barge works and the nail factory were admitted failures, and the Rockefeller mining venture at Monte Cristo was bogging down. Then came the disastrous floods of 1897, when the river, swollen with unusually heavy rains, inundated hundreds of acres, swept bridges away, and washed out a section of the tracks to the Monte Cristo mines. Within a short time this venture shut down permanently.

Before the turn of the century, the rough edges of town life were beginning to be worn off. Women had arrived in increasing numbers, and their coming meant the stabilizing of community life through the establishment of family groups. This change in social structure was accompanied by an increasing emphasis on schools and churches, and by agitation for better living conditions, and against saloons and drinking, gambling, prostitution, and other forms of vice.

The coming of women also meant an increase in social life. Theatricals, tableaux, and dances became frequent occurrences, the Firemen's Ball being one of the leading social events of the year. For quieter evenings at home, charades and the stereoscope offered diversion. The talking machine had made its appearance in 1897, when a local drugstore offered with every 10 cent purchase the privilege of listening to a record. Excursions up the river on the little stern-wheelers, bicycling up the road toward Snohomish to the Bicycle Tree, berry picking, fishing, and hunting were popular forms of amusement in summer.

Holidays were great events, with canoe, sack, and egg races. Theaters had been established, the naughtiest and liveliest being the Casino. These were the days of the hack and the surrey, of leg-of-mutton sleeves, of cuspidors, blacksmith shops and rock candy and rye whisky for colds. Social affairs began to be more elaborate for those whose incomes were sufficiently large, but simple and inexpensive amusement, picnics for the family or a bucket of beer from the corner saloon for the men, were about all that a mill worker's family mold afford.

For the floater, who came to town on Saturday night to enjoy a few riotous days after the hazards of daily work and the brutal life in vermin-infested camps, there were numerous saloons and brothels, where his wages were extracted from him in short order. During the first ten years of the town's existence, considerable building had been done. In 1896 the main thoroughfare was Hewitt Street, the bayside area and Rucker Hill still being largely undeveloped. Along the river were the low sprawling buildings of the "old" town, while upon the ridge the newer business blocks were being erected. Some of these buildings are still standing, dark and gloomy, with narrow windows set in deep recesses.

By 1900 the population had reached 7,838, the main thoroughfare had been planked, and board sidewalks were laid along many of the streets. During the hot, dry months the streets were dusty and the boards of the walks warped in the sun, while wet weather turned many streets into seas of mud. Residences of relatively affluent families were ornate, with cornices and scrollwork; those of the workers were still largely makeshifts. The open country was within walking distance, and cows were occasionally pastured within the limits of the city.

Here as elsewhere in the United States, the expansion of industry was accompanied by considerable unrest. The hard times of the 1890's, with consequent unemployment or sometimes inadequate pay and long hours, led to a growing movement for labor organization. In 1900, the Everett Central Labor Council was formed. Within 6 months, 27 trade unions were organized, and for the first time Everett celebrated Labor Day. Wages at this time averaged from $1 to $2 a day for a 10-hour shift; the monthly wage was seldom much more than $60.

Layoffs were frequent, and, particularly in the sawmills, hazards were many. The shingle weavers demanded a 10 cent an hour increase; other unions demanded a 9-hour day. No concrete gains seem to have been made, but labor was beginning to feel the need for united action. Moreover, the increasing size of plants and the increasing influence of eastern capital made a definite cleavage between the employers and workers. 

Various social issues were also assuming importance. As early as 1900, the conflict between the wide-open-town advocates and the anti-vice and anti-alcohol forces had begun. By 1901, at least 29 saloons were doing a lively business. The new Washington Brewing Company, established in 1900, was finding a good local market for its output. By 1904 the number of saloons had risen to 34, one of the most elaborate being Feeney's. Opposing the open-town forces were most of the church groups and the International Order of Good Templars and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, two organizations that were finding considerable support among the more sedate and steady elements in the population, particularly the Scandinavians.

In the early 1900's, the glamorous vision of Everett as an industrial center was beginning to fade. The barge works, after the single abortive venture that revealed the un-seaworthiness of the whaleback craft, was out of the picture. The brave venture in the manufacture of nails also proved to have overlooked certain practical features, such as the distance from the source of supplies and the limited demand for this product. The smelter remained, but its days, too, were numbered.

New enterprises, however, had been launched, stimulated partly by the growing local demands and partly by the demands from outside markets. A tile works, brick-yards, machine shops, and a flour mill were all in operation; and the Sumner Iron Works was active, having launched with great pride in 1900 the Telegraph, generally considered the fastest sternwheeler afloat at the time.

At the opening of the twentieth century, the role that lumber was to play in the growth of the city was clearly seen by some promoters. Already the waterways were bordered by 10 shingle mills and 8 sawmills, and the pulp mill was operating. The city's destiny, at least as long as timber could be cut in the hinterlands or towed in, was certain Everett was to be a sawmill town. The dominance of lumber was indisputably established by the advent of the Weyerhaeuser lumber interests; actually as early as 1893 they had been reaching into the region in preliminary surveys, but not until 1902, when they purchased the Bell-Nelson Mill, did they enter into active operation.

The groundwork for the Weyerhaeuser expansion in the area was laid by the provisions of the Forestry Reservation Act of 1897, by which a system of forest reservations was established, with the provision that owners of land taken into the reserve should be allowed to select a like amount of acreage elsewhere. This provision led in 1899 to the acquisition by the Northern Pacific Railway of big stands of timber, which were sold to the Weyerhaeuser interests for $6,000,000, the company thus acquiring a vast domain of 40,000,000,000 feet of timber.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the mills of the city were operating full blast; tugs with rafts in tow were working 24 hours a day; the whine of saws often sounded day and night. Over 250,000,000 feet of lumber were cut in 1902. Mills continued to expand their plants and to increase in number. By 1904 two more lumber mills and two more shingle mills had been built. Farther and farther inland the lumber camps went, with their ox teams to snake the logs out on skidroads and float them down the river.

By night the sky along the river glowed from the light of the burners, and smoke hung heavy over the lowlands or swept inland with the brisk winds from Puget Sound. Some 3,000 workers answered the whistles. Timber had indeed become the recognized first resource of Everett and the adjacent valley regions, and only a few prophetic individuals shook their heads in apprehension as they saw the big trees, source of so much local pride, crashing by thousands under the impact of the logger's ax. Still to be seen in Clark Pit is a relic of this decade, the "Tree-House," constructed from the base of an enormous tree, which was exhibited at the World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904-5.

In 1906-7 another big enterprise, the Canyon Lumber Company, built a huge mill on a 52-acre tract on the Snohomish River at the foot of Everett Avenue. These were years of considerable prosperity for the owners of the mills; lumber prices had advanced and demands had increased. Wages averaged $1.75 to $2 a day, and employment was steadier, thus insuring a higher annual wage.

The early years of the twentieth century saw an influx of immigrants to the West; about 50,000 came to Washington, and many settled in Everett, attracted there by the publicity of the Great Northern Railway and by the opportunities for employment in sawmills, fisheries, factories, logging camps, and railroad shops. Most of these newcomers were unskilled laborers. Many were Scandinavians from their homeland or the Middle West, thrifty, hard-working, serious-minded people, who were seeking a better life for themselves and for their children and who contributed a stabilizing element to Everett.

As in most cities, some of the more interesting spots were known in Everett only to a few. Such a place was Adam Hill's Bookstore, where, amid a jumble of books, an assortment of people gathered to talk about politics, pioneer days, and philosophy, as well as about homelier bread-and-butter affairs; and to swap tall tales and loggers' yarns. Here were books of all kinds: romances, adventure stories, and yellow-backed thrillers; dull-covered scholarly tomes; and volumes by Jack London, Robert Ingersoll, Tom Paine, Morris Hillquit, Upton Sinclair, Gustavus Myers, and Voltaire. The browser was as welcome as the customer, and, whatever were the tastes or preferences, a person usually could find what pleased him.

A premonition of the panic of 1907 was seen in the tremors of the financial market, which were felt early in the spring as far as the Pacific Northwest. But activity continued throughout the summer. Then in the fall the panic broke with dramatic suddenness. A week before the crash, burners were glowing and all the town was busy. Industries were booming, and not enough workers could be found to fill the demand. Wages, too, were at record high levels.

Two weeks later, however, the bottom had fallen out of everything. Industry had simply stopped, and while the market gamblers rubbed their bruised financial heads and considered methods of recouping their fortunes, armies of unemployed, appearing as if by magic, marched the streets in broken ranks, looking for jobs that did not exist and eating and sleeping where their few dollars would stretch the farthest or where charity handed out its rations. No banks closed in Everett, but the city was hard hit and did not entirely recover for years.

By 1910 Everett had reached the 10,000 mark in population. The Ballinger scandal had broken. River steamers were disappearing, although a few stern-wheelers and an occasional four-master were still to be seen. Livery stables and four-in-hands were giving way to garages and automobiles; the interurban to Seattle was running on an hourly schedule. Men were taking to golf, although fishing and hunting were still the most popular forms of recreation.

Moving pictures were in, and an attempt had been made to stop the showing of the Johnson-Jeffries fight pictures. At this time most of the streets of the residential districts were unpaved, and hazel bushes and blackberry vines still grew prolifically in the suburbs.

Local agitation for temperance and prohibition came to a head in 1910, when the local "dries" won a victory at the polls. For a number of years the battle had been waged with moral, economic, and political arguments. Militant reformers, many of them women, had noted with anxiety the number of saloons and their flourishing business; they had visualized the primrose path that stretched before the small boys who were to be seen, occasionally, carrying home a pail of "suds." More and more frequently temperance groups made themselves audible. Their victory was forecast in the Sunday-closing his was passed by the State legislature in 1909. A final campaign led to triumph at the polls the next year, a triumph, however, of brief duration; the local-option law was repealed by a narrow margin in 1912.

Although labor unions had existed in Everett since 1892, and agitation for shorter hours, job security, higher wages, and better working conditions had been growing stronger, there was little organization until the closing years of the first decade of the twentieth century. Workers in logging camps were corning to be largely migratory laborers, who traveled by brake rods, blind baggage, or boxcar, carrying their rolls of bedding from camp to camp, often a dirty, vermin-infested, and disease-ridden place.

Partially because of their migratory tendencies, the loggers found in the I.W.W. the type of organization best-suited to their needs. Formed in 1905, the I.W.W. had become very active in the second decade of the century. During these years, increasing pressure from the workers and resistance to their demands on the part of employers and operators led to intermittent clashes, accompanied sometimes by violence. However, the increased demand for lumber at higher prices, as a result of World War I, brought steadier employment, higher wages, and general improvement in working conditions. At the same time, the I.W.W. ceased to be a factor of importance.

Everett prospered throughout the war years and in the period that followed. In 1918 the municipally owned Port of Everett was established to serve the commercial and industrial growth of the city, now nearing the 30,000 population mark. In 1921, however, when the lumber market cracked and prices dropped from $31 a thousand board feet to $13.50, Everett, like other cities dependent primarily upon the lumber industry, fell upon dull times. Wages declined, employment dropped off along with the decline in production, and stores and service trades, supported mainly by the pay rolls of industry, felt the pinch; some trouble between employers and employees resulted, with violence flaring spasmodically.

By 1923, increased efficiency in industry permitted greater individual output, the nation-wide building boom had started, and wages began to rise. Locally, a period of construction followed, comparable to that of the 1890's; fireproof business and hotel structures, two schools, two hospitals, a new labor temple, many churches, and a modernistic city hall were constructed. This period terminated in 1929 with Black Friday and the depression.

Everett was in transition, as the factors that led to its growth diminished in importance and new ones appeared. Railroad payrolls were no longer significant, and the partial depletion of timber resources in the surrounding area had brought considerable unemployment. Snohomish County had an estimated pulpwood stand of 10,000,000,000 feet, and Everett, with two of its mills adapted to the handling of pulpwood, hopefully looked to pulp production for the solution of some of its more pressing industrial problems. An iron works, a shipyard, a brick and tile kiln, plywood factories, and wood-processing plants added to the volume of local industry and commerce. Fishing still was an important industry, and the surrounding agricultural area was contributing more and more to the stability of the city.

Everett in 1940 was a brisk industrial city and had a fine school system (including a high school and two junior high schools), many churches, various cultural and social organizations, a daily newspaper, several entertainment centers, and, what was perhaps most significant for its future, an energetic and progressive citizenry.

In 1941 a new Army airport was under construction at a cost of several million dollars, It was to be the base for the Fifty-fourth Pursuit Group and the Thirty-fourth Air Base Group consisting of 180 officers and 1,800 men. It was begun by the county in 1936, on elevated land exceptionally free from fog, about seven and one-half miles southwest of Everett. The Civic Auditorium, on Colby Avenue, completed early in 1940, was an expression of strong community interests and cultural development. Here the Everett Civic Symphony gave its concerts, and audiences of 3,000 or more gathered for the Snohomish County May Music Festival.