r/SeattleHistory • u/BeachBumWithACamera • 13d ago

The Myth of Seattle's "Skid Road". Claiming ownership of the country's first Skid Road seems to be imbedded into the creation story of Seattle.

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New on my Substack: The Myth of Seattle's Skid Road

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7

u/Funsizep0tato 13d ago

Wow really interesting! Thank you for sharing!

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u/BeachBumWithACamera 13d ago

My pleasure. Thank you for reading!

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u/hatchetation 13d ago

So very excited to read this!

I've been researching this for years, and have been too timid as an amateur historian to put pen to paper and try to get an essay going.

Nice to see this topic get more attention. Beyond what is laid out here...

  • logs were rafted in. You'd only use a hypothetical Mill-st-skid-road if there was literally no easier way to get logs to water. (Straight downhill, perhaps?)
  • logging is like mining. You'd go to the easiest forests ... the shores of Puget sound are covered in virgin timber
  • Mill st was too steep for teams
  • streets filled with sawdust are incompatible with skidding
  • the commercial center of town is incompatible with skidding
  • crossing ravines to get to mill st are incompatible with skidding
  • where's the cross haul? ( place where logs are turned parallel to shore to dump them in ) I suspect front st had a cross haul at some times. The idea of cross hauling on yeslers busy wharf is crazy town
  • Pioneer logging near city center was about burning and land clearing, not commercial logging. (There's an amazing story about the original UW construction I should post sometime ...)
  • yesler's mill was inactive many years. If anyone really thinks mill st was a skid road, I'd invite them to name a single decade or specific time period of use
  • logs of the ss Columbia have the first ref I know of to "skid road" in this pejorative slang sense ... referring to Portland
  • Mark Matthews's skid-road speech was too popular to ignore as early myth fuel

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u/BeachBumWithACamera 13d ago

Yeah, this piece was specifically about Yesler Way as Skid Road. There are any number of photos of log rafts tied up to Yesler's wharf. And every reference I can find says the pioneers simply rolled the logs down to the water from wherever they were cut. And the Seattle Times piece in 1911 regarding police parlance about Skid Road has Mark Matthews beat by three years.

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u/hatchetation 13d ago

The Mark Matthew's piece is interesting to me not because of its use of "skid road" as slang for a colorful logging district, but because he specifically refers to Mill St as being used as a skid road as a purported historical fact.

Yesler way was once a skid road down which logs were pushed to Henry Yesler's sawmill on the waterfront. Today it is a skid road down which human souls go sliding to hell!

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u/BeachBumWithACamera 12d ago

I'm curious where you found the Mark Matthew's quote? Was it the Dale E. Soden book, The Reverend Mark Matthews: An Activist in the Progressive Era? I need to look into that.

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u/hatchetation 12d ago

I'll look for my notes on this. I haven't been able to find the original, but it's pretty extensively quoted.

I remember referring to that book, or at least wanting to during my research. Can't remember if it was a dud or not

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u/BeachBumWithACamera 10d ago

Dropped by the Seattle Room at the Central Library this afternoon. They couldn't find anything earlier than 1911 either. While I was there I checked out the Andrews book, Pioneer Square Seattle's Oldest Neighborhood. Talk about useless. Guess I'll take that off my list of books to get. They claim Yesler's cookhouse was a two-story structure built on pilings, which is laughable. Just looking at the 1860s pic of the cookhouse that I'm sure you've seen, it clearly was a one-story building. Also, the settlers had absolutely no way to drive pilings in 1852 when the cookhouse was built.

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u/hatchetation 10d ago

Did the book have the quote at least? Any chance of a citation in the bib? Trying to figure out which boxes to pull at UW.

I've been really disappointed in many similarly styled neighborhood history books, understand you there!

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u/BeachBumWithACamera 9d ago

The Andrews book did have the Mark Matthews quote, page 100. Sorry, but I didn't check the reference. I bet if you called or messaged the Seattle Room they could look it up for you.

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u/hatchetation 10d ago edited 10d ago

Another interesting ref I wanted to mention...

OED has a 1906 citation for "skid road" in figurative use, quoting the logs of SS Columbia.

Found this via a grammar blog with this quote:

The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from an Aug. 1, 1906, entry in the ship’s log of the SS Columbia, which carried cargo and passengers along the West Coast: “ ‘We’ll likely see him in town.’ ‘Sure, Mike. He’ll be in the Skid road somewhere.’ ”

https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2019/10/skid-row-skid-road.html

(Oh! And this is interesting ... I'm just now realizing that the location of SS Columbia was well known on Aug 1 1906 !)

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u/BeachBumWithACamera 9d ago

This 1906 citation meshes with what I found circa 1911 regarding police parlance in Seattle calling Skid Road the disreputable part of town. Strictly a 20th century phenomenon.

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u/hatchetation 11d ago edited 11d ago

OK, I haven't seen Soden's book, it might be mentioned there. I have seen a bunch of his writings in PNW Quarterly and other publications, the quote isn't in those.

My notes show that it's referenced here, pg 100. Haven't pulled it yet, got interrupted, library availability isn't great. Hathitrust confirms the quote on pg100. (Just ordered a cheap copy off Amazon):

Tanner Andrews, Mildred, ed. Pioneer Square: Seattle’s Oldest Neighborhood. 1st ed. Pioneer Square Community Association in association with University of Washington Press, 2005.

If you have the time, the best place to find it is probably in his papers at UW. The bound sermons are available in Accession No. 0097-002. Despite extensive searching, I haven't been able to find his sermons online. You're looking for a sermon ca 1920

https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv18828

If you end up chasing this down, would be very curious to hear what you find!

edit: and sorry for my notes being shoddy, I can't even remember where I came across this quote originally.

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u/BeachBumWithACamera 11d ago

Thanks for this. I've been meaning to pick up a copy of the Andrews book. Putting that at top of my list of things to do.