Street-Smart Naturalist Blog – Page 21

Seattle Map 14 – 1931

Recently I came across an unusual map of Seattle–Frank McCaffrey’s New Dogwood Map of Seattle, published in 1931. The map is a cartoon-style with curious depictions of monuments and locations in the city. Plus, east is at the top of the map. I am guessing that McCaffrey wanted to create a horizontal map but was dealing with a vertical, or at least north-south trending, city.

Frank McCaffrey was long time publisher/printer in Seattle, who owned Dogwood Press. His obituary in the Seattle Times (May 15, 1985) noted, “‘Business has too long been hamstrung by stupid politicians and their mismanagement of the people’s interests,’ McCaffrey asserted in a campaign attack against politicians during his unsuccessful 1936 mayoral bid. But he was undaunted by his loss at the polls. He again ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor in 1946, and failed to win a county commissioner’s seat in 1944 and City Council seats in 1948 and 1961.”

If you are interested in seeing the entire map, copies are available at the University of Washington’s Special Collections and in the Seattle Room at the downtown branch of Seattle Public Library.

A tot and shopping — **Urchins? Wow, that’s a term you don’t see much anymore.**

Newly discovered erratic in Seattle

Okay, my title’s a bit misleading but I did just learn about this erratic, though it has not existed for over 115 years. I was doing some research on the early history of Madison Street when I came across a reference to what some called the “Big Rock.”

The rock was located on the south side of Madison Street at what used to be known as Williamson Street and is now Tenth Avenue. Basically it’s the northwest corner of the Seattle University campus. On October 29, 1892, an article in the Seattle P-I described the rock as measuring 64 paces around and 12 feet high. It was in the news because crews were getting ready to blast it as part of a grading project on Madison. (There used to be another “Big Rock” in Seattle but it suffered a similar though less destructive fate.)

The paper further noted that “this rock has long been a landmark in the city. The names of the streets in the vicinity being only a tradition.” If you wanted to tell someone where to meet, you’d simply say near the “Big Rock,” though you had to be a bit careful as the paper also included several notices about robberies taking place near the Big Rock. Apparently it was also quite the place for a little nineteenth century nookie, or maybe even a bit more, but as the P-I writer noted, “fortunately…the big rock tells no tales.”