Territorial Timeline

Constitutional Convention met in Olympia

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.