On yaHighway, we hold a weekly Road Trip Wednesday, where we ask a writing/reading question and all the contributors answer on our personal blogs. If you want to participate on your own blog, just post the link in the comments section of YAH and we’ll check it out! This week’s question:
If you could travel back to any historical era for research purposes, which would you choose?
Oh so timely. Because I am up to my ears in researching a very specific time in history for my current project. If you have a time machine, lemme in – I want to watch Seattle burn.
What was happening seven blocks down my street, 121 years ago.
I mean, old Seattle. Not the city I live in now, which I love and would be very sad to see reduced to rubble. But the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 is a particularly interesting one.
The short version: A fire started in a shop spread and reduced old downtown Seattle, which was mostly wooden buildings, to nothing. Rather than admit defeat, the city used it as an opportunity to take care of a rather pesky sewage problem that had had citizens wading through crap (literally) to get to work.
They raised the city so that what were first floors became basements and sewage flowed underground where it was supposed to. Then they built new buildings on this new level.
But underground (and I am not trying to be a storyteller here, this is true), some of of old 1880s Seattle remains; bank vaults, saloon entrances, walkways. You can tour it, which I’ve done, twice.
I’ve also spent hours and hours at the library – (and here is where living in the city you’re researching gets super sweet) – talking with a librarian who worked at the library back in the 60′s and helped Bill Spiedel, the man responsible for cleaning up the underground and making it tourable – with his own research on pre-fire Seattle. Now that is just freaking cool.
I digress. Research is great, but actually witnessing such events is different. I’d go back in a heartbeat. Maybe a few days before the fire, just to hang out in a corset and bust through some saloon batwing doors, to see the fire (from a safe distance), then to watch a city built on top of another city.
Then I’d…come back? Nah. I’d hang around for a few more decades. Take a ride in a Ford-T. Protest for worker’s rights. Do the Charleston. Witness the meaning of industrialization. Hear some uplifting jazz that made a depression not so depressing after all.
Maybe witnessing history wouldn’t be so different from just researching it after all. Once you really got into it, it’d be hard to stop.
I obviously need to come to Seattle to be able to tour old underground stuff!
YOU OBVIOUSLY DO.
Hanging out in corsets FTW. I am ashamed to say that though I lived there for 5 years, I never toured the Seattle Underground! I heard it was so amazing though. (Also, I referenced another awesome Seattle event in my post!)
Nice, I’ll come check it out! And next time you visit, you should do the tour. So interesting.
Oh, cool answer! Reminds me of the Great Chicago fire (and its same-day sister fire in my home state, the Peshtigo Fire). Now I’m questioning my own answer!
Reminds me of that too! It’s what happened after the fire here that I’m so interested in.
Ohhhhh. That picture. Totally made me think of scenes from your project!!!
Did you know the ‘underground’ Seattle is supposedly haunted as well? I’m so going to make it out there for that tour in the future!
Hell yes I did! There’s lots of ghost tours in Seattle. And YES YOU SHOULD COME.
Yes, Seattle. But man, that place probably stank. I mean, we’re talking burning sewage here. Still, it’s such a wonderfully seedy history.
Yes, but all the lovely whiskey would dull your sense of smell. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
I’m dying to come do that tour with you.
One day!!!
Oooh… this is an excellent choice! I’ve heard so much about the Seattle underground. One of these days, I’ll have to make the drive up and see what all the talk is about!
It’s pretty cool, Heather! Let me know if you make it up here!
What a cool time period — and now I’m super curious about your WIP. I’ve never been to Seattle, and though I vaguely recall a fire, I didn’t know much about it. Thanks for sharing!
Anytime – thanks for reading!
Oooh… an underground tour! If I ever find myself in Seattle, I MUST do this!
YES. It’s really, really cool!
Sounds like an exciting project you’re researching!
Oh, WANT! I’ve read up about the Great Fire of London for years, but I had no idea Seattle saw this kind of action. What a fantastic time period. Mind if I tag along? I’ll blend right in, I promise!
Aww I loved the post! I’m so fascinated by history that I would find it very hard to choose only one event to witness, should I have such opportunity. There are so many facts that we don’t know about our past, and most of all, routine life!
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