The Colonial Economy of the Pacific Northwest
The Natural Resource Economy of Washington and Oregon prior to WWI
The Pacific Northwest's Colonial Economy
A colonial economy is one in which the natural resources of the colonized area is used to support the industries of the colonizer. This was certainly true of the Pacific Northwest prior to World War I. The first natural resource to be taken from the region was the furs and skins of animals, sea otters, beavers and to a lesser extent other animals. “The fur trade era in the Pacific Northwest lasted about sixty years—from the 1780s until the late 1840s” (Schwantes 79). As historian Carlos Schwantes pointed out the fur trade revealed “attitudes and patterns that were to be replicated in the future and with far greater impact upon the regions’ natural resources.” (Schwantes 79). Just as the Northwest was exploited for its furs it would also be later exploited for its fish, its mineral deposits, and its forests.
The Fish Resources of the Pacific Northwest
Salmon was an important product of the Northwest’s fisheries. Five varieties were caught along the Pacific Ocean and within Puget Sound and the Columbia River. Salmon was used as a food for the settlers but it was also caught and canned for exportation back to the “colonizing country”. The first cannery opened on the Columbia River in 1864 and by 1883 there were fifty canneries operating along the Columbia and its tributaries. Other fish were also caught and canned including “oysters, clams, shrimp, halibut and dozen of other edible forms of marine life, not to mention production of fish oil, fertilizer and algae.” (Schwantes 202)
Weyerhaeuser, Logging and Lumber Mills
Logging is another economic activity often associated with the Northwest which could be described as colonial in nature as the logs were shipped to the market in San Francisco and other places where wood was needed. Lumber was big business in Washington and in “1910, when Washington was the number one lumber-producing state, 63 percent of its wage earners depended upon the forest products industry for jobs.” (Schwantes 215). Large sawmills were built in the most strategic locations to harvest the wood and many towns were built around logging camps. By 1909 three hundred sawmills were in operation in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. Big money came into the Northwest from the Midwest and further east to build the mills and harvest the logs. In 1888 a group of Minnesota business men build the St Paul and Tacoma Lumber Company to harvest and produce wood from the eighty thousand acres of timberland it owned. Frank Weyerhaeuser, a wealthy mid western businessman who was also a neighbor of Northern Pacific executive James J. Hill, purchased nine hundred thousand acres of Douglas fir forest land from Northern Pacific in “one of the largest private land transfers in American history.” (Schwantes 219). By the early twentieth century Weyerhaeuser and his more than ninety affiliated companies owned 26 percent of the timber land in Washington and nearly 20 percent in Oregon. (Schwantes 219). The Logging operations were built entirely with outside capital and the primary market for the lumber was also outside markets. Local sawmills easily supplied the needs of the Northwest settlers.
Precious Metals and Mining
Another example of natural resources industries which were dependent on outside capital and markets was the precious metal market, not so much gold, which could be mined by one minor with a pan and a lot of patience, but the silver industry and other industries which required large machinery and deep pits to find the metal. The Coeur d’Alene River’s Canyon Creek produced a lead-silver claim followed by another lead-silver claim by Noah Kellogg at a place later called Bunker Hill. Unlike gold, silver and lead required expensive machinery to mine and thus the mine had to be financed. Two Spokane attorneys, George Foster and William Ridpath, joined with partners George Turner, another attorney and previously a Washington State Territorial Supreme Court Judge, and later a U. S. Senator, along with Valentine Peyton and others to purchase the LeRoi mine for $30,000.00. $84,000 worth of silver was removed from the mine in one day “while its stock rocketed from .25 cents to $7.50 a share.” (Fahey 179). The attorneys soon sold out for $5,000,000 and invested their money into Spokane construction. Ridpath build a hotel, Peyton an office building, and Turner the Columbia Building.
Agriculture in the Pacific Northwest
Agriculture was also an export business in the Pacific Northwest. Farmers purchased their lands from the railroad or land speculators or homesteaded parcels under federal laws. Since the railroad had a forty mile wide grant and the Union Pacific transcontinental road came through Spokane and Cheney, half of the land within this area was railroad lands. Railroads also financed the purchase of land to farmers. Once the first harvest came in the farmers had to not only paid any loans they received for their equipment, save enough to get them through the first winter, but also had to pay their land payments. Of course the railroads were financed with outside capital as were many of the banks which opened in the early days of settlement. Once the farmer harvested his crops he was dependent on the railroads and other forms of transportation to get his crop to market.
Sources:
Carlos Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest; An Interpretive History, (Revised edition 1996)
James Fahey, The Inland Empire, The Unfolding Years, 1879-1929, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986)
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