"Introduction 

 It is impossible to tell the story of the Camlin hotel, without telling the story of Seattle.  These two stories are intertwined.   

 Early history of Seattle 

 The founding of Seattle is usually dated from the arrival of the Denny Party in 1851. The next April, Arthur A. Denny abandoned the original site at Alki in favor of the better protected site on Elliott Bay that is now part of downtown Seattle. Around the same time, David Swinson ""Doc"" Maynard began settling the land immediately south of Denny's. 

 When Henry Yesler brought the first steam sawmill to the region, he chose a location on the waterfront where Maynard and Denny's plats met. Thereafter Seattle would dominate the lumber industry. 

 The logging town developed rapidly into a small city. Despite being officially founded by the Methodists of the Denny Party, Seattle quickly developed a reputation as a wide-open town, a haven for prostitution, liquor, and gambling. Some attribute this, at least in part, to Maynard. 

 Real estate records show that nearly all of the city's first 60 businesses were on, or immediately adjacent to, Maynard's plat. 

 Seattle was incorporated as a city on December 2, 1869. At this time, the population was approximately 1,000. 

 Railroad Rivalry with Tacoma 

 On July 14, 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway announced that they had chosen the then-hamlet of Tacoma over Seattle as the Western terminus of their trans-continental railroad. The railroad barons appear to have been gambling on the advantage they could gain from being able to buy up the land around their terminus cheaply instead of bringing the railroad into a more established Pacific port town. 

 Seattle made several attempts to build a railroad of its own or to get one to come. The Great Northern Railway finally came to Seattle in 1884, but it would be 1906 before Seattle finally acquired a major rail passenger terminal. 

 Seattle in this era was an ""open"" and often relatively lawless town. Although it boasted newspapers and telephones, lynch law often prevailed (there were at least four lynching in 1882), schools barely operated, and indoor plumbing was a rare novelty. Potholes in the street were so bad as to cause at least one fatal drowning. 

 The history of labor in this period is inseparable from the issue of anti-Chinese vigilantism. In 1883 Chinese laborers played a key role in the first effort at digging the Mountlake Cut to connect Lake Union's Portage Bay to Lake Washington's Union Bay. In 1885-1886, whites and Indians, complaining of overly cheap labor competition, drove the Chinese settlers from Seattle, Tacoma, and other Northwest cities. 

 In an era during which the Washington Territory was one of the first parts of the U.S. to (briefly) allow women's suffrage, women played a significant part in ""civilizing"" Seattle. 
 In the 1880s, Seattle got its first streetcar and cable car, ferry service, a YMCA gymnasium, and the exclusive Rainier Club, and passed an ordinance requiring attached sewer lines for all new residences. It also began to develop a road system. 

 The relative fortunes of Seattle and Tacoma clearly show the nature of Seattle's growth. Though both Seattle and Tacoma grew at a rapid rate from 1880 to 1890, based on the strength of their timber industries, Seattle's growth as an exporter of services and manufactured goods continued for another two decades, while Tacoma's growth dropped almost to zero. The reason for this lies in Tacoma's nature as a company town and Seattle's successful avoidance of that condition. 
 The fire 
 
 The early Seattle era came to a stunning halt with the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889. The fire burned 29 city blocks (almost entirely wooden buildings; about 10 brick buildings also burned). It destroyed nearly the entire business district, all of the railroad terminals, and all but four of the wharves. 

 The city rebuilt from the ashes with astounding rapidity. A new zoning code resulted in a downtown of brick and stone buildings, rather than wood. In the single year after the fire, the city grew from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, largely because of the enormous number of construction jobs suddenly created. 

 Still, south of Yesler Way, the open city atmosphere remained. 

 Leader of the Northwest: 1900  1915 

 The gold rush led to massive immigration. Many of Seattle's neighborhoods got their start around this time. Downtown Seattle was bustling with activity; as quickly as previous inhabitants moved out to newly created neighborhoods, new immigrants came in to take their place in the city core. 

 Once the obvious extensions of downtown had been made along the flatlands to the north and south, streetcars began providing transportation to new outlying neighbor