Quote:
Originally Posted by Capsicum
It has a good climate, sunny and mild by Canadian standards, doesn't it? Couldn't it be a good place to have an agricultural settlement, perhaps to grow crops that require or benefit from lack of cold weather that it provides, and also export to the nearby mainland.
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The Fraser Valley as a river delta is a million times better for farming than Victoria. Especially if we also had the Bellingham side of the valley, which is much larger than most Vancouverites realize, and the area around Burlington (Skagit river delta).
I suspect current Vancouver would still be a decent sized city if the Columbia River was the border, but Seattle would be almost nothing. Apparently it was near collapse when it was saved by becoming the departure point for American gold rush miners going north by boat. They were legally required to buy a shitload of supplies before they could depart, so they wouldn't freeze/starve to death. That's how the Seattle Underground tour guides tell it anyway.
They also say Seattle was a profoundly stupid place to settle, and toilets used to regularly overflow with the tide before they built on top of the old, burned down city by knocking down part of the enormous hill to the east. That hill is still quite enormous, so I can't imagine what a pain a walking commute would have been like in the 1800s.
Tacoma would have suffered by never being chosen as the northwest rail terminus, too.