Explore Snohomish: 1890 Bird's-Eye View
Explore Snohomish: 1890 Bird's-Eye View
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This map was drawn by Augustus Koch (1840-1899), a Prussian immigrant who served as a draftsman in the Union Army’s Engineering Office.
After the war, Koch found employment as a traveling artist, known for detail and accuracy in his panoramic “bird's-eye view” maps.
Between the 1840s and 1920s, bird’s-eye maps were a popular marketing tool commissioned by civic leaders and real estate agents. The vibrant, exaggerated cityscapes advertised a town’s commercial and residential potential.
Advancements in lithographic technology made prints cheap and easy to distribute, but the hand-drawn maps still involved a painstaking amount of work. Since airplanes and drones did not yet exist, artists like Koch imagined their bird's-eye view from plat and survey maps, then spent days walking through town sketching buildings and landscape features.
ORIGINAL MAP PRINTED BY THE SUN PUBLISHING COMPANY 1890
COLORIZATION & PRODUCT DESIGN BY TAYLOR RUSSELL © 2021
A PROJECT OF @SNOHOMISHWALKS
1. A.M. BLACKMAN'S BUILDING 913 FIRST STREET
Built 1890 by architect J.S. White for Arthur M. Blackman’s dry goods store, the largest in 19th-century Snohomish. It was a furniture store & pool hall before becoming a tavern in the 1940s.
2. FERGUSON BUILDING DESTROYED
Built by town-founder E.C. Ferguson for Lafayette “Lafe” W. Barnes’ & Frank M. Evans’ photography studio. It was specially equipped with a rooftop glass window to allow for natural light. (See how it worked here!)
3. L. WILBUR STORE 1201 FIRST STREET
Built 1889 by architect J.S. White for the county’s first drug store, run by Lot Wilbur and his wife Jennie. The oldest brick building still existing in Snohomish County.
4. AULT'S BLOCK DESTROYED
Built by John B. Ault, a Canadian immigrant, merchant, and lawyer. It was the office of The Daily & Weekly Sun, the publishers of this map. The Sun would eventually become the Snohomish Tribune.
5. RESIDENCE OF W.M. SNYDER 1012 FOURTH STREET
Built 1888 with an impressive “22-rooms.” Homeowner William M. Snyder was the cashier at the First National Bank of Snohomish.
6. G.G. ENGLAND'S BLOCK DESTROYED
Built by George Gordon England, a Quebecois immigrant. He ran a grocery store in Snohomish in the 1870s and married Laura Reeves in 1880.
7. BLACKMAN BLOCK DESTROYED
These two buildings were built in 1888 but were lost to a fire in 1911. The Penobscot was the first hotel in town to offer rooms with heated stoves. A large front room cost 75 cents, plus 25 cents for dinner.
8. J.E. FRANK, PROPRIETOR DESTROYED
The Snohomish Exchange Hotel was built in the 1870s by Isaac Cathcart. At the time this map was made, it was operated by John E. Frank, who moved to Seattle in 1899 and found success in the saloon industry.
9. RESIDENCE OF C.F. JACKSON DESTROYED
Home to Charles F. Jackson, a “logging king” from Penobscot, Maine who followed the Blackman family west. The property was acquired by the Atheneum Society in 1901 and used as the site for the 1910 Carnegie Library.
10. BLACKMAN BROS' MILL DESTROYED
Opened 1884 to produce “shingles, sash, doors & mouldings” from timber sourced nearby at the Blackman Lake logging camps. In 1887 the mill produced 10 million shingles, most shipped to the East Coast. It burned down in September 1889 but was quickly rebuilt.
THIS DESCRIPTIVE TEXT APPEARED BELOW THE ORIGINAL MAP:
THIS DESCRIPTIVE TEXT APPEARED BELOW THE ORIGINAL MAP:
"This town and the country in its vicinity was first settled in 1859. No families came here before 1864. It was made the county seat of Snohomish County in 1861. The first settlers were all single men. Before 1872 only some three or four families lived here. All the really valuable buildings have been put up since 1870. The first school was taught here in 1869. Since 1872 improvements have gone steadily forward and population has increased, until a year ago over 1,000 people resided in this place and its immediate vicinity. The building of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad from Seattle, the metropolis of Puget Sound, to this place last year, started a genuine boom. Property advanced from 200 to 300 per cent in value, and last fall the population was over twice as great as the spring before. During the past winter many newcomers found permanent homes in the surrounding country. Now immigrants are coming in rapidly, and the town population is steadily increasing. The population of the town proper is nearly 2,000. In Snohomish Precinct, which includes the town and the region of country in its immediate vicinity, there is now a population of nearly 3,000 people. For its size and age this is the best built town in Washington. Should the great immigration expected really reach us, it would not be surprising to find 3,000 people in the town, 5,000 people in Snohomish Precinct, and 10,000 people in Snohomish County, before January 1st, 1890.
"Now, what has built up this town? What is here to maintain a large population? What are the interests and resources of the place? Besides being the county seat of a prosperous, growing county, it is the center of immense timber interests and extra fertile and productive farming lands. Yet more valuable lumber interests center at this place than at any other point in Washington; while the town is the center of more extra fertile bottom land than any other town on Puget Sound. For many years the logging interests took the lead, the cost of clearing and improving the farming lands having made such improvements slow at first. Now that stage is past, and farming is a leading interest, and farm improvements are rapidly being made.
"Each year, for nearly 20 years past, many valuable buildings, for both residence and business purposes, have been erected; but last year and this a veritable building boom has been going on. During the past 15 months 100 residences and business houses have been built. Since January 1st some 40 residences and nearly a dozen business buildings for stores and manufactories have been put up, some of them very valuable buildings. Should present plans be carried out, there will be over $200,000 worth of improvements made during the current year.
"The manufacturing interests have also made good progress. During 1889, the total value of all local manufactured products, as lumber, shingles, sash, doors and blinds, furniture, wood and iron work, will amount to about $400,000 in value. About 200 men find employment here, at present, in the mills and shops, and as carpenters, masons, painters, and skilled mechanics generally. Many more are actively engaged as teamsters, in teaming, freighting, etc. About 500 men work in the woods as lumbermen, in regions tributary to this town, most of whom claim Snohomish as their home. Others are employed in clearing land, grading, and in making other improvements in this vicinity. There is also a constant demand for farm laborers, at good wages. This great amount of labor, continuously expended from year to year, cannot fail to produce a great effect in opening up and improving the country.
"Snohomish is located on the north bank of the Snohomish River, 15 miles from its mouth. It is 25 miles, in an airline, northeast from Seattle; by steamboat the distance is 50 miles and over the railroad the distance is 35 miles. It is expected the main line of this road, going east over the Cascade mountains, will start from this place, making the junction here with the branch now built seven miles northward from this town, and which may this season be extended in British Columbia, connecting there with the Canadian Pacific Railway. For fear a junction might not be made here this season, a local company has been organized, locating a railroad from here to the summit of the Cascade mountains. This guarantees direct communication from here eastward, by railroad, at no distant day. The distance from here to the summit will probably be about 75 miles, through a productive region, containing great agricultural, lumbering, and mining interests, all tributary to Snohomish.
"This place is also the head of tidewater navigation on Snohomish river. An active steamboat trade is down this river, to Puget Sound, and up this river on smaller steamers, some fifty miles or more, on the Snohomish and Snoqualmie rivers, nearly to Snoqualmie Falls. These falls are 280 feet high, 113 feet higher than Niagara, and present a beautiful and sublime object, perhaps the finest in Washington, and excelled by few of Nature’s works anywhere in America. Puget Sound steamers of 400 tons burden can readily come to Snohomish, up Snohomish river, on the tide from the Sound. $50,000 properly extended on this river would secure a depth of 16 feet at high tide, so that ocean steamers of 1,000 tons could be made to come and go from this place, opening to the business interests of this place a worldwide commerce, without the necessity of reshipment. This improvement will be made at no distant day."
- ELDRIDGE MORSE
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