The Secret City
Beneath Seattle’s Pioneer Square lies a hidden relic from the past—an entire city left to fade into history. Known today as the Seattle Underground, it was once simply “Seattle” before the 1889 fire reshaped everything.
It Was Made Of Wood
The original Seattle, now buried beneath the city, was built in a less-than-ideal location. Plagued by frequent floods and constantly at risk of devastating fires, it was a city always on the edge of disaster.
Ronincmc, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
It Went Up In Flames
It was only a matter of time before 19th-century Seattle faced disaster, and it came in 1899 with the Great Seattle Fire—but from the ashes, city planners decided to fix the glaring problems with the Emerald City’s layout.
Seattle photographs collection, Picryl
They Buried The Past
They came up with an extremely ambitious plan, and in doing so, they created the Underground, an eerie remnant of the city as it once was.
Seattle photographs collection, Picryl
The Wood Rush
Seattle was established as a key hub for shipping the rich lumber of the Pacific Northwest southward to California. Surrounded by vast forests of towering conifers and blessed with a natural harbor, it was an ideal location for a port. But as for building a city? That was a whole other challenge.
Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) Seattle, Picryl
Yeslerville
Henry Yesler built a lumber mill between Puget Sound and Lake Washington in 1852, effectively putting Seattle on the map. But it wasn't exactly the kind of land where you'd want to build a city. It was barely above sea-level.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
It Flooded Constantly
While Seattle's location wasn't necessarily a bad thing for shipping lumber, it came with some major problems: most notably, the floods that frequently swept through the fledgling city.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
The Buildings Leveled Up
In early Seattle, many buildings were raised on wooden stilts, a necessary safeguard against the frequent floods that swept through downtown.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
When Life Gives You Wood...
Like the lofty stilts, almost everything in pioneer Seattle was made of wood. When life gives you lemons, and all that… Wooden buildings, wooden walkways, wooden bridges—they even hollowed out scrap logs and used them for sewage and water pipes.
Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) Seattle, Picryl
It Was A Matter Of Time
Seattle was essentially built out of kindling. It was only a matter of time before it went up in flames—and that day came on June 6, 1889.
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Picryl
Safety Last
An apprentice carpenter put a pot of glue on the stove and promptly forgot about it. The glue eventually boiled over and caught fire…in a room full of sawdust, woodchips, and turpentine. The building went up in flames in minutes.
University of Washington, Wikimedia Commons
He Made It Way Worse
When the apprentice noticed the blaze he’d started, he panicked and threw a bucket of water on the flames. Turns out, it was the worst thing he could have done.
The Flames Spread
It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but all the water did was thin out the turpentine. As the turpentine spilled into the room's nooks and crannies, the fire spread alongside it.
University of Washington, Wikimedia Commons
They Laid Out The Red Carpet
On that fateful day, the vulnerability of pioneer Seattle became painfully obvious. The wooden boardwalks—designed to keep pedestrians above the constant floodwaters—proved to be the perfect pathway for the fire, allowing it to rapidly leap from building to building.
University of Washington, Wikimedia Commons
Things Kept Getting Worse
It seemed like everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The city’s fire chief happened to be out of town that night, so he wasn’t on hand to direct firefighting efforts.
John P. Soule, Wikimedia Commons
They Had No Clue What They Were Doing
Rather than professionals taking charge, inexperienced volunteers attempted to use too many hoses at once, draining all of the water pressure. They might as well have been squirting the flames with a water pistol.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
It Burned All Night
The Great Seattle Fire raged all night, finally coming under control on the morning of June 7. By that time, 25 city blocks were in ashes. The business district, four wharves, and all of the city's railroad terminals were destroyed. The damage was estimated to be around $20 million (around $560 million today).
University of Washington, Wikimedia Commons
It Got Rid Of The Rats
On a brighter note, the loss of life was surprisingly minimal compared to the property damage. Only one person, a young boy named James, was killed in the fire. In an odd twist, it's estimated that the blaze wiped out over a million rodents, effectively erasing Seattle's pest problem. Small victories, right?
They Had A Big Plan
When leaders planned the city's new infrastructure, they kept their past mistakes in mind. This time, they weren’t going to make their city a tinderbox. But why stop at fireproofing? The destruction of Seattle also gave them room to fix the city’s serious flooding problem. Two birds. One stone.
University of Washington, Wikimedia Commons
Seattle Levelled Up
First, city planners mandated that all new buildings be built out of brick and stone, but more importantly, they were going to regrade the entire area destroyed by the fire to be above sea-level. This was no small change. All of the streets were to be raised about 12 feet, though it could be up to 30 feet in some particularly low-lying spots.
John P. Soule, Wikimedia Commons
It Was A Strange Place
The massive regrade of Seattle would take time, making the city a bizarre place to live for a few years. For a while, streets and walkways were at the “new” ground level, while shop entrances remained 12 feet below. This meant entering a building often required climbing down a ladder from the sidewalk—just one of the quirks of life in a city undergoing such a radical transformation.
University of Washington, Wikimedia Commons
It Wasn't Great For Window Shopping
Shop owners and landlords also knew that the second floors of their new buildings would eventually be the ground floor. They mostly left the first-floors completely unadorned, while thoroughly decorating the second-floors. For a while, you’d approach a building and it would seem like its storefront hung 12 feet up in the air.
Postdlf, CC-BY-SA-3.0, Wikimedia Commons
They Abandoned The Underground
Once the regrade was done, owners abandoned the first floors of their buildings and the city paved over the walkways in front of them, officially creating the Seattle Underground.
Ronincmc, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
They Sealed It Off
Though remnants of the old ground level were still used for a couple of decades, by 1907, the Underground was condemned, feared to be a breeding ground for the bubonic plague. Left to decay, it became a forgotten relic, slowly fading into obscurity.
Ronincmc, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Seattle Had A Literal Underbelly
As with many abandoned spaces in cities, the Underground morphed into the haunt of people outside of Seattle’s polite society. It quite literally became the city’s seedy underbelly.
Ronincmc, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Even That Disappeared
For years, the Seattle Underground was home to many flophouses, opium dens, gambling halls, and speakeasies, though eventually, even these faded into memory.
Ronincmc, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
It Collected Dust
As the years went by, the Seattle Underground was abandoned and largely forgotten. That is, until the 1960s, when a local eccentric named Bill Speidel recognized the hidden potential of the eerie, buried streets and buildings, sparking a renewed interest in this long-forgotten part of the city.
Ronincmc, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Bill Speidel Revived The Underground
In 1965, Speidel created “Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour,” reigniting interest in this bizarre piece of Seattle’s history.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
He Cared About Seattle
Around this time, much of Pioneer Square (the neighborhood that houses the underground), was under threat of development, and Speidel saw the Underground as an opportunity to preserve the beloved streets and buildings.
Eventually, he helped get half a million signatures to save Pioneer Square.
Postdlf, CC-BY-SA-3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Go Visit!
Speidel was successful in his preservation efforts. Pioneer Square and the Seattle Underground are still there today, serving as a major draw for tourists. Speidel’s tours are still going, giving tourists a glimpse into this particular quirk of Seattle's history.
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