Bellingham Then & Now: A Look Back

Hi everyone, Tiffany here. I’m the word-count-happy writer behind the slew of words we publish here on the blog. Over the last weeks of writing this series, I noticed something that made me curious: a lot of sources reference an economic boom in the late 1800s, that propelled the formation of Bellingham out of several smaller towns or communities. So this week, while I worked on the blog about the investor who built Wardner’s Castle, I decided to dig further into that question. 

The Gold Rush of the 1840s is a standard pillar event in American history classes; we read stories of gold miners and railways, immigrants and the invention of Levi’s jeans. We know about the flood of people it brought to the West Coast, and how towns sprang up (San Francisco grew from about 5,000 to 50,000 within a decade) and either faded away into ghosts, or lived to form the backbone of West Coast cities today.

Big cities made up of cheap, easy-to-build wooden buildings (especially when they also have raised wooden sidewalks) are easy to burn. San Francisco was almost destroyed by fire seven times over the course of three years, from 1849-1851. In 1851 fires likely caused by arsonists “destroyed three-fourths of the city” (source).

Enter Henry Roeder and Russell Peabody. Longtime Californian business partners, the two traveled north to Portland in 1852, exploring options in the fishing industry. But economic opportunity lay instead in the timber business. 

“In the early 1850's, a tremendous amount of building took place in California (after the San Francisco fire) and lumber became scarce. Word of dense stands of Douglas fir brought California miners Roeder and Peabody north, to Bellingham Bay. An impressive and strategically located waterfall, referred to by the Lummi Indians as What-Coom, meaning noisy, rumbling water provided Roeder and Peabody an ideal lumber mill site, and a name for the area's first permanent town.”  (source)

The founders gained a fortune early on, but ended up selling most of the timber in this region. They built key relationships with lumber yards in the Victoria region, rather than shipping all the way south to California. And with the development of steam power, the growing local industry could build mills “away from streams and closer to the timber stands themselves. The enormous Bloedel-Donovan Lumber Mill processed timber right along the shores of Lake Whatcom” (source). 

At the same time, a parallel coal industry developed. The Sehome mine of the 1850s was 

“for a time the largest employer in the Territory, and the town that grew up around it contained a company store, miners' houses, saloons, and boarding houses.” (source)

In the 1880s, there was plenty of development in Fairhaven by investors hoping to win their hometown as the terminus of the transcontinental Great Northern Railway. During these boom years, several of the major players built homes in the area, like the Gamwell House and the Wardner Castle. 

But while this was a time of economic growth for sure, it doesn’t seem to have lasted long. Fairhaven lose the bet for the Great Northern Railway, crushing the high hopes of local boosters. Development slowed further due to the the Depression of 1893, an economic downturn that affected local economies nationwide. 

It seems from the sources I read that this expansion from 1852 to 1893 served as the foundational groundwork for a more significant period of growth after the turn of the century. 

The Port was developed, smaller railways connected Bellingham to the transcontinental hubs in Seattle and Tacoma, and salmon canneries were built, and staffed by Japanese and Filipino immigrant workers. Growth of industry, especially around the docks and downtown, led to the growth of something else: the red light district. There’s plenty more history to unfold from this area, and stories to hear, and for those, I recommend you check out the walking tours hosted by Bellingham’s Good Time Girls.

Hey, it’s me again. So it looks like my question was sort of answered - the economic buzz of the late 1880s in this area seems to be due to a group of investors trying to make the area attractive to the railway. What I haven’t been able to discover is if some of the other components - timber, coal, fishing - were also major, or if they served as the foundation upon which this speculation happened.  Who’s to say what would have emerged as the dominant force if the Depression of 1893 hadn’t swept through just a few short years later? 

Previously on Bellingham Then & Now:  Wardner’s Castle was home to a tycoon who bought up dozens of lots in Fairhaven.

Next up on Bellingham Then & Now: Montague Manor has a haunted reputation.

Main Sources

Lieb, Emily. (2006) “Bellingham - Thumbnail History.” HistoryLink. Link.

“People Who Helped Shape Bellingham: Henry Roeder”. WWU. Link.

“Whatcom County Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy”. (2015) PDF. Link.

“Whatcom County History.” Whatcom County website. Link.

Individual quotes and minor sources are linked directly in the text.

Images

Gamwell House. WWU MABEL Archives. Link.

Robert Morse House. WWU MABEL Archives. Link. 

Wardner’s ‘Castle”. City of Bellingham. Link.

Blog copy by Tiffany Holden