08/08/2021
The American North West economic region.
Since the negotiation of the Oregon Treaty between Britain and the US in 1846, the American North West has developed a unique economic personality. Archaeological evidence points to trading realationships between Indian tribes throughout what is referred to now as the Salish Sea. The Salish sea encompasses Puget Sound and Vancouver Island which were a geographical and cultural entity before an international boundary commission separated Canada . In 1856, the Royal Navy moved its Pacific Coast fleet home port from Valparaiso, Chile to Esquimalt Bay on Vancouver Island. This move was made in response to British participation in the Crimean War. Hospitals to tend wounded troops were set up on the island but Florence Nightingale’s minions never saw action on the Island. South of the border the old Hudson Bay system continued to retain its template transforming economically from hunting beaver and sea otters to agriculture based around Fort Vancouver and Fort Nisqually. There was no US Navy to speak of in the NorthWest in the nineteenth century. The Royal Navy patrolled the Pacific until 1909 when it realigned it’s worldwide fleets in response to the German Naval Race. By this time America has built a fort system integrating howitzers, huge mortars capable of launching solid cannonballs seven miles and guns built into sunken fort emplacements at Fort Werden near Port Townsend on the Kitsap Peninsula. With the advent of aircraft and battleship guns with longer range than fort guns the NorthWest military industrial complex required updating. At Silverdale, a nuclear submarine base was established on the Kitsap Peninsular. It became the most important submarine base on the West Coast. Supplemented with naval repair yards at Bellingham and Bremerton, Puget Sound became home to a diverse merchant and naval fleet serving multifarious needs from crabbing in Alaska to transporting passengers across the Sound. Railways which linked Seattle to the American hinterland from 1893 were another spur for local development as logging increasingly dominated the once pristine landscape. An additional economic spurt was provided by the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 which centered around Seattle for supplies in the rugged Canadian North. By 1900 the Rush was over but the financial optimism generated by the short Guilded Age is best illustrated by the Victorian buildings of Port Townsend which stopped building abruptly in 1898 when logging ended in the area. Today Seattle’s military industrial complex keeps a low profile. Occasionally, a veritable flotilla of naval vessels will clear a nautical path for a nuclear submarine headed for a six month deployment underwater. Across the Sound from Silverdale submarine base are the the military airfields of Whideby Island strategically located to intercept Russian and Chinese ordinance. Boeing with its factories at Bremerton and Renton have become part of the military industrial manufacturing backbone of the NorthWest since the 1930’s. As America sets its sights on Mars, plans for heading off local terrestrial threats, may be subsumed by efforts to colonize new planets as we foul up our own. Vision for Earth’s future will be a responsibility of the Millenial generation. However it pans out, the NorthWest will play a crucial role in any future developments.
