Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
with and destruction of this iconic megafauna. 28 Like rain, salmon per-
vades the identity of Seattle, producing a hybrid conception of the city as
defi ned by and through nature.
The Allure of Nature in the Pacifi c Northwest and Seattle
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Pacifi c Northwest was a
place of geographic isolation; indeed, the region has had appreciable Anglo
settlement for only the past century and a half. 29 San Francisco became
the closest link to civilization; the 1849 gold rush and Pacifi c Northwest
towns served as principal trading outposts throughout the remainder of
the 1800s. Settlement of the region began after the Civil War but contin-
ued to be relatively unpopulated until the 1880s and 1890s, when settlers
came en masse following the 1883 completion of the Great Northern
Railroad. 30 Railroad marketing campaigns characterized the region as
the Great Northwest and the Great Pacifi c Northwest to lure settlers and
vacationers with the romance of experiencing the last region to be settled
in the continental United States. 31
A signifi cant element in marketing the Pacifi c Northwest to newcomers
was its intrinsic natural beauty. The region was spared the ravages of the
Civil War and rapid industrialization that decimated the landscape in other
parts of the country; Raban argues that Anglo populations began to settle
the Pacifi c Northwest just as the notion of the Romantic Sublime came
to dominate environmental thought. 32 The region was an ideal place to
conceive of how the landscape should look, with iconic features reminis-
cent of the Swiss Alps, the German Forest, and the English Lake District.
Raban writes, “It was a quickly established convention that Northwest
water was suffi ciently still to hold a faithful refl ection of a mountain for
hours at a time” and historian Robert Bunting adds that “if America was
'Nature's Nation,' no place looked upon itself more self-consciously as
'Nature's Region' than the Northwest.” 33
With respect to Seattle, early twentieth-century historian Welford Bea-
ton sums up the allure of the city to early residents as follows:
We who live here are persuaded that nowhere else on earth is a city favored such
as ours. With every facility for great commerce by land and sea, we combine an
aesthetic perfection that no other commercial center on the globe can match. Over
hills and across valleys the city stretches, and from every doorstep there is a view
of mountain and water. Roses, which pay scant attention to the calendar, climb
over the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the artisan. From behind
the Cascade Mountains the sun comes up each day and at night falls beyond the
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