Preparing the Groundwork for a City: The Regrading of Seattle, Washington

In the fall of 1851 a little band of pioneers landed on a point of land between Elliott Bay and Puget Sound. With the optimism of the adventurer they promptly christened their new settlement “New York”. They spent the winter crowded into one small log cabin and having for neighbors nearly a thousand Indians. Their time was chiefly occupied in exploration. Before determining their future course, and not being in possession of the charts made by Captain Wilkes in 1841, they made a hydrographic survey of Elliott Bay, their instruments consisting of a clothes-line and two horse-shoes. When the shoes failed to reach the bottom, they knew they had ample depth for ships. In the spring of 1852, the majority of these pioneers removed to the east side of Elliott Bay. One of the reasons impelling their removal was that the steeper slope of the shores on that side made possible much shorter wharves than the long flat slopes of “New York”. One of their number, Carson D. Boren, built the first cabin in Seattle near the intersection of Second Avenue and Cherry Street, where the Hoge Building now stands. By 1853 they had constructed a saw-mill near the foot of Yesler Way and laid out and platted the new town site.