Mill Town Trail self-guided tour

This web page is in work.

If you have a Google account, this map may work well on your computer or smart phone. Click an icon on the map to see vintage photographs from the Mill Town era. Mill Town Trail map

Everett was known in the early days as the "City of Smokestacks", and "Pittsburg of the West". Industrialists from New York City, working with John D. Rockefeller, along with the Ruckers that had land here, created Everett. The city started with four large industries:

A smelter for the ores, at first from Monte Cristo 40 miles east in the Cascade Mountains.

A barge works, making "whaleback steamers", designed by Captain Alexander McDougall, a close friend of Charles Colby.

A nail works.

A pulp mill.

And the Great Northern Railroad, led by James J. Hill, forged its way from the east to what local folks hoped would be the western terminus in Everett. Eventually Seattle became that terminus, most of the first industries failed in the 1893 economic bust, and the new city became Mill Town. Rich with giant trees all around, Everett was one of the largest cedar shingle mill towns in the world. In later years, pulp and paper, and lumber reigned as the entire peninsula was ringed with mills. But the trees ran out, and nearly all the mills are gone.