I found this map of early WA territory and the place names are really interesting, especially the transliterated ones from Salish languages.

The Tolt River, which today supplies Seattle's water, is "Tolthu", and flows into the "Snoquatmoo" river.

Mount Si was named "Mount Filzhugh"

Mount "Reinier" (though the Oregon town Rainier already had the "a")

Gray's Harbor is wetland.

"Seatl", "Dwamish", "Skywhamish", "Bellevue or San Juan Island", "Juan de Fuga", "Olimpia Range", "Quinaiuth River", "Skookum Chuck"

I'd kill to find a high res of this map

Neat stuff. I’d read that when Vancouver named all the stuff he “discovered”, he and his crew only considered the area south of the Tacoma Narrows to be the Puget Sound. Looks like that’s reflected in this map, and the name is crammed into that small area.

Were you able to click on it to open a new tab and zoom in? You should be able to see all details and place names that way.

This is just from a photo and eventually I want to make a high res scan.

"Tolthu" is probably closer to the Lushootseed, which does have a rounded "kwuh" sound at the end (tultxʷ). The Tolt-Carnation-Tolt-Carnation naming yoyo is a fun story if you weren't familiar

"Orcus Island" is a clue to the fact it has nothing to do with the whales; it's just a shortening of one the explorer's patrons named Horcasitas.

Also fun to see the original landscape of the city. No Harbor Island, no "Duwamish Lake" canals. The fanciful Dungeness Spit.

Apparently the Surveyor General James Tilton who signed this has an interesting story too.

A couple years after this survey in 1860 his 12 year old slave Charles Mitchell was contacted by free black people in Victoria (still under British control), after which he stowed away on a ship. When discovered, he was arrested but two days later was granted freedom. James Tilton protested and was featured in newspapers as far away as San Francisco.

Tilton later worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. and was supposedly the first to summit Denny Mountain at Snoqualmie Pass. Perhaps the first Euro-American to do so, since people have been in the region since at least the early Holocene epoch.

That totally makes sense. Thanks for the link-- I was aware because I grew in Carnation, and my dad worked for Carnation Farms for 30 years haha.

Petition to rename Lake Washington to Lake Duwamish

Any idea about puget the person? I met a person visiting from Australia who kept saying puggit sound. And it took me a few hours to understand they had only read the word, and never heard anyone pronounce puget.

Washon's Island instead of Vashon Island. I wonder if there is German history there.

Available from the Washington State Archives.

No homicide required.

That is so cool. Thanks for sharing.

>Any idea about puget the person?

Peter Puget was a British naval officer and colleague of Captain George Vancouver (who named Puget Sound after Puget) who explored and surveyed the Pacific North American coast, from the Columbia River to Alaska.

Interesting that the map shows an island that doesn't exist, just east of Vashon off shore of what is now Normandy Park. I would suspect that somehow represents three tree point but the point is definitely not an island and I would be surprised if it was at the time this map was drawn.

So cool

Wow, amazing. Not sure how I haven’t seen this one before.

Interesting detail, assuming this wasn’t updated after 1857: The Snoqualmie Wagon Road, or Road #7 (7th road ever built in King County) can be seen on this map. The road documentation that I have shows that the Renton-Issaquah (or back then Black River-Squawk) portion was constructed just before 1860. The rest of the road (up to modern Fall City and Snoqualmie) was built in the early-late 1860s.

Since it isn’t a solid black line like the other proper roads, this seems to suggest that much of the route already existed as a trail prior to actual construction. Assuming that, it probably would have tied in nicely with the Cedar River trail, which (as far as I remember) in the 1850s as used by settlers, but I am also pretty sure it was an indian trail beforehand. Even if it weren’t a trail (it’s marked as one according to the legend), it would be an unimproved road.

Thanks for sharing! This is great stuff. Definitely will help with my research. As far as I can conclude right now, this seems to suggest the route was in existence in some form (indian trail, military trail? probably not used by settlers until proper road construction) all the way back in the 1850s.

Glad to share it. What is your focus of research?

“Tulalup” instead of Tulalip, Vancouver’s Island, Olympia Range

Pretty wild that down near Astoria there was “Pacific City”. Pretty big name for present day Ilwaco.

Thanks for sharing!

Is someone going to shoot the pig already

Point Roberts has that name even back then

White river is 'Cedar'?

Local history here on the eastside, but more specifically, logging and early settlement/roadbuilding.

Vashon Washon

Stalakwamish River! That’s prolly a better spelling that Stillaguammish!

So Lake WA used to drain through the Black River to the Green and so to the Duwamish…. The Cedar flowed into the Black… Today, the BOEING runway in Renton is the old Black River bed…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_River_(Duwamish_River_tributary). The story is both sad and interesting IMHO, but when they built the ship canal, it dropped the water Level in Lake WA and the Black River mostly dried up… there are remnants….

Used to work on Cedar Watershed, River valley was an old trail up to Yakima Pass… which is lower than Snoqualmie and on the Watershed fwiw. Story is (was?) that it was a pretty well used route…. grew up less than a mile west of the Old Milwaukee Road track along the River too.

Yep. Was also used by settlers in the Puget Sound to get to the (1853?) gold rush in NE Washington. A fascinating trail for sure.

Crossposted to r/WashingtonHistory

Cedar is north of the Green… IIRC, the White used to flow into the green and was called the White as it flowed into Duwamish… but a flood changed that… here is the story… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_River_(Puyallup_River)

My first thought was: confusing to not have them connected but then I remembered that the lie has been changed. But we also live in a state named for a president because “Columbia was too confusing”. Now we have a river of Columbia and nomenclature of dc being the other Washington

when I was a kid in the 70s we had a “visit WA” ad that said something like “Visit Washington (the State!)

Crazy to see Everett is basically completely undeveloped. If Wikipedia is to be believed this map predates settlement of the area almost entirely.

Ohhhh that's why it's called Meridian!

Washookal Cr. instead of Washougal Cr.

Neat map! here is a link for a website where you can view a ton of maps from various different years. Pretty fun to explore

Wow. I am flight training at the Renton airport. I didn’t know this!

Saw your username. My family is from New Baden. Well, Old Baden, too. Hi, Bayer.

Whoa, thank you for sharing this. Super awesome; super interesting. You are my hero for the day.

Hey I can see my house from.... Oh wait my houses landmass doesn't exsist...

Fun stuff I see:

• White Pass listed as “Cowlitz Pass”
• Hood Canal is “Hoods Canal”
• Dungeness Spit looks like a Dr Suess drawing
• Port Angeles labeled as “False Dungeness”
• Longview is “Monticello”
• lack of lakes/reservoirs from dams. No Lake Cushman, Baker Lake, Mayfield Lake, Alder Lake…
• Many major natural lakes unmapped. No Spirit Lake, Lake Crescent…

Interesting stuff from http://columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/ilwaco.html

PACIFIC CITY: Abandoned settlement and former county seat within Cape Disappointment military reservation on Baker's Bay / Columbia River. In the fall of 1849 missionary Elijah White (who styled himself "Dr.") took a Donation Land Claim on Baker's Bay, subdivided his holdings, and advertised the availability of lots in the settlement he called Pacific City. About the same time, White was also trying to convince the federal government that his property should be part of the military reservation on the Cape. White was ultimately successful in both promotions. He sold most of his subdivided property to unsuspecting settlers and was undoubtedly compensated for the loss of his DLC when the government announced the land was government property in 1852. During the intervening years Pacific City developed into a busy town with a sawmill, hotel, store, and dozens of houses. A post office was established December 26, 1850, and shortly afterwards residents successfully petitioned the Oregon Territorial legislature to create Pacific County on February 3, 1851. Pacific City was named the county seat. Commissioner's meetings were held in any available building because there was no courthouse. Residents moved away from Pacific City after the government announced their property was within the boundaries of the military reservation in 1852. The last County Commissioner Journal entry was made at Pacific City December 7, 1852. The county seat was moved to Chenook / Chenookville. The post office was finally closed November 3, 1856. By 1858, a Coast Survey report showed there were only two or three houses and a sawmill left standing in the settlement. In 1860 a new post office was established at Whealdon's home on Baker's Bay (outside the government reservation) and the name Pacific City was retained at Whealdon's home for sentimental reasons until 1865."

And then there was Captain Puget, who had a kids TV show on KOMO.

Is that "Eshoch River"? Which is that supposed to be, Carbon?

Flood changed it and then they filled the old channel connection to make it permanent under a state law in the late 1800s/early 1900s is my limited understanding. I'm working on a habitat restoration project in the LDW and found the history of land use in the basin particularly interesting. I'll spend a minute tomorrow to find the references/citations I used in explaining this in the report, but I'm pretty sure the best stuff is all King County, they have loads of freely available information and research about the Duwamish-Green watershed going back decades.

“Olimpia.”

Was it actually spelled that way back then or was that a mistake?

There was a distant place that made airplanes and had a pointy tower surrounded by clouds about that time in pop culture. Then Seattle started to be known. Now that I live in spokane, I’m always surprised people know where it is (and that it’s the only Spokane)

Oh? I grew up in Portland.

False dungeness cracked me up, then I saw the shape of dungeness spit and lost it.

It is also interesting that port crescent is one of the only named places on the north Olympic coast. It was once a booming little logging port. Now it is a private gated community next to a nice surf break.

Looks like they hadn't figured out dakobed quite yet. Such a hidden gem!

I like it better that way, to be fair.

Admiralty Inlet!!

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River now.

Love it. The town where my grandparents and parents grew up is on the map (settled 1846, name changed in 1851, incorporated 1907) but where I grew up (incorporated 1924) wasn't even a city yet, but the area (settled 1849) is named on the map.

That's actually more a Tribal Politics charged move then you may think.

Its worth noting that the Duwamish, under the direction of Chief Seathl, where the only tribe to come to the aid of the city that bore his name during the Battle of Seattle (1856).

The Duwamish divided into two different groups back in the late 1850's with the significant majority banding together with the Buklshuhls and many other tribes on the reservation to become what we call the Muckleshoot; that group inherited the rights as signers of The Treaty of Point Elliott. The other smaller group eventually banded together (or stayed together, the records of their leadership during that time are pretty much non existent) today call themselves the Duwamish, but are not a federally recognized, as the Muckleshoot are viewed as the direct political successors of the Duwamish (1855) that signed the Treaty.

One thing that I think is really interesting is that within, what, 70 years of their discovery, the San Juans had already been broken up into their current multi-ethnic naming conventions - a combination of the original Spanish voyage circa 1791 (San Juan, Orcas, Lopez, etc) and the subsequent English exploration undertaken by Vancouver and co in 1792 (Shaw, Sinclair, Blakely, etc) with one or two native names maintained (have always wondered how Lummi Island managed to hold on to a Salish name considering how large it is - only one up here other than Samish Island, which is essentially a peninsula, at least as far as I know)

You referring to the black(?) river? When the gov't changed that river, it was devastating to the native tribes.

I actually talked about the Black River as part of the Duwamish system in a different comment on this Map’s thread…. It was absolutely devastating to the natives.

Historically, The White actually was the key river in the old Duwamish system.. like instead of the Green flowing into the Duwamish, the river was called the White. a flood actually changed the course of the White and pushed it into the Puyallup…

I grew up on the Cedar in Maple Valley and then got to work on the Watershed for three summers as a young woman…. The Cedar used to flow into the Black, and the Black also drained Lake Washington…. and all of it flowed into the Green/White over by SouthCenter, and it all flowed into the Duwamish….

I went to the Worlds Fair in 1974. I was born in Moses Lake, WA… I mot definitely know where Spokane is!!!

Thanks kind Redditor! I’ve walked through the Black River Riparian area a few times, https://www.rentonwa.gov/cms/One.aspx?pageId=8838326&portalId=7922741 when I’ve visited my dad - its beautiful…. The story though is sad…. there were Natives in the area who lost their whole food supply…. their lives and their heritage were destroyed.

Nice info, love it. I have deep roots here, but grew up elsewhere. But now live here. ..lol...It has close family ties and all for me. So I'm curious why that map has the cedar mapped, it could be they actually walked over there, and that's the simple answer. But I'm now curious what its historic impact truly was. I'm also curious now about this 1906 flood that was so massive it altered a river's course.

Ooo fun. I should have specified I meant when I’m in far away states

Ooo fun. I should have specified I meant when I’m in far away states

Thank you! I’ve started collecting, rasterbating, and printing interesting maps!

According to Google Translate, “orcas” means “killer whales” in both Spanish and English, “horcas” is the Spanish word for “gallows”, and “horcasitas” is the Spanish word for “little forks”. So that’s interesting!

Also, there is a concert pianist named Juan Pablo Horcasitas. Given what I have just learned, I can’t look at his photo without imagining he has tuning forks on hand to be absolutely positively thoroughly certain the piano is perfectly tuned immediately prior to each of his performances. 😄