Territorial Timeline

Summer Fires Destroyed the Downtown Districts of Seattle, Vancouver, Ellensburg and Spokane

On June 6, 1889, an overturned carpenter’s glue-pot started a fire which destroyed fifty blocks of downtown Seattle, most of its business and commercial district. The fire burned practically every bank, hotel, newspaper office, warehouse and retail establishment in the city. The property damage was in the tens of millions of dollars (1889 dollars). “No other American city has suffered a loss proportionately great,” reported the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
In June of 1889 Vancouver’s business district was largely destroyed when it was struck by a series of fires which were thought to be arson. On July 4th the business district of Ellensburg was destroyed by fire.
On August 4th a fire destroyed thirty blocks of downtown Spokane. It destroyed the Howard Street Bridge over the Spokane River and set log-booms on the river alight. The Spokane Falls Review reported that the people of Spokane called it “The most devastating fire that ever occurred in the history of the world.”