Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound

“‘Of Mr. Denny it may be said that if others had applied the Golden Rule as he did, he would have been living in his old home in great comfort in this city today.’”

LIFE OF DAVID DENNY

“Fifty-two years and two months ago David Thomas Denny came to Seattle, to the spot where Seattle now stands enthroned upon her seven hills. Mr. Denny, the last but one of the little band of pioneers – some half dozen men first to make this spot their home – has been gathered to his fathers; ‘has wrapped the mantle of his shroud about him and laid down to pleasant dreams.’ Gone is a man and citizen who perhaps loved Seattle best of all those who ever made Seattle their home. This is attested by the fact that from the time that Mr. Denny first came to Elliott Bay it has been his constant home. Never but once or twice during that long period of time did he go far away, and then for but a very short time. Once he went as far away as New York – and that proved a sad trip – and once, in recent years, to California. Both trips were comparatively brief, and he who first conquered the primeval forest that crowned the hills around returned home full of intense longing to get back and full of love for the old home.

“Mr. Denny lived a rugged, honorable, upright life – the life of a patriarch. He bore patiently a long period of intense suffering manfully and without murmur, and when the end approached he calmly awaited the summons and died as if falling away into a quiet sleep. So he lived, so he died.

“Few indeed who can comprehend the extent of his devotion to Seattle. Living in Seattle for the last two years, yet for that period he never looked once upon the city which he helped to build. About that long ago he moved from his home which he had maintained for some years at Fremont, to the place where he died, Licton Springs, about a mile north of Green Lake. Said Mr. Denny as he went from the door of the old home he was giving up for the new: ‘This will be the last time I will ever look upon Seattle,’ and Mr. Denny’s words were true. He never was able to leave again the little sylvan home his family – his wife, sister and children – had raised for him in the woods. There, dearly loved, he was watched over and cared for by the children and by the wife who had shared with him for two-score-and-ten years the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs that characterized his life in a more marked degree than was the experience of any other of the pioneers who first reached this rugged bay.

“Mr. Denny was once, not so very long ago, a wealthy man – some say the wealthiest in the city – but he died poor, very poor; but he paid his debts to the full. Once the owner in fee simple of land upon which are now a thousand beautiful Seattle homes, he passed on to his account a stranger in a strange land, and without title to his own domicile. When the crisis and the crash came that wrecked his fortune he went stoutly to work, and if he ever repined it was not known outside of the family and small circle of chosen friends. That was about fourteen years ago, and up to two years ago Mr. Denny toiled in an humble way, perhaps never expecting, never hoping to regain his lost fortune. Those last years of labor were spent, for the most part, at the Denny Mine on Gold Creek, a mine, too, in which he had no direct interest or ownership, or in directing work upon the Snoqualmie Pass road. He came down from the hills to his sick bed and to his death.

“Mr. Denny’s life for half a century is the history of the town. Without the Dennys there might have been no Seattle. Of all the band that came here in the fall of 1851, they seemed to have taken deepest root and to have left the stamp of their name and individuality which is keen and patent to this day.”

CAME FROM ILLINOIS

“The Dennys came from Illinois, from some place near Springfield, and crossing Iowa, rendezvoused at what was then Kanesville, now Council Bluffs. They came by way of Fort Hall and the South Pass, along the south side of the Snake River, where, at or near American Falls, they had their first and only brush with the Indians. There was only desultory firing and no one was injured. The party reached The Dalles August 11, 1851. The party separated there, Low, Boren and A. A. Denny going by river to Portland, arriving August 22. In September, Low and D. T. Denny drove a herd of cattle, those that drew them across the plains, to Chehalis River to get them to a good winter range. These men came on to the Sound and here they arrived before the end of that month. After looking around some, Low went away, having hired Mr. Denny, who was an unmarried man, to stay behind and build Low a cabin. This was done and on September 28th, 1851, the foundation of this first cabin was laid close to the beach at Alki Point.

“A. A. Denny, Low, Boren, Bell and C. C. Terry arrived at Alki Point, joining D. T. Denny. That made a happy little family, twenty-four persons, twelve men and women, twelve children and one cabin. In this they all resided until the men could erect a second log cabin. By this time the immediate vicinity of the point had been stripped of its building logs and the men had to go back and split shakes and carry them out of the woods on their backs. With these they erected two ‘shake’ or split cedar houses that, with the two log cabins, provided fair room for the twenty-four people.

“During that winter the men cut and loaded a small brig with piles for San Francisco. The piles were cut near the water and rolled and dragged by hand to where they would float to the vessel’s side. There were no oxen in the country at that time and the first team that came to Elliott Bay was driven along the beach at low tide from up near Tacoma.”

SURROUNDED BY INDIANS

“The first winter spent at Alki Point the settlers were almost constantly surrounded with one thousand Indians armed with old Hudson Bay Company’s muskets. This company maintained one of its posts at Nisqually, Pierce County, and traded flintlocks and blankets with the Indians all over Western Washington, taking in trade their furs and skins. The Indians from far and near hearing of the settlement of whites came and camped on the beach nearly the whole winter.

“In addition to the Indians of this bay the Muckleshoots, Green Rivers, Snoqualmies, Tulalips, Port Madisons and likely numerous other bands were on hand. At one time the Muckleshoots and Snoqualmies lined up in front of the little cluster of whites and came near engaging in a battle, having become enraged at one another. The whites acted as peacemakers and no blood was spilled.

“In those days the government gave what was known as donation claims, one hundred sixty acres to a man, and an equal amount to the women. In the spring of 1852 the Dennys, Bell and Boren, came over to this side and took donation claims. Boren located first on the south, his line being at about the line of Jackson Street. A. A. Denny came next and Bell third. Shortly after D. T. Denny located, taking a strip of ground from the bay back to Lake Union and bounded by lines north and south which tally about with Denny Way on the south and Mercer Street on the north. Later Mr. Denny bought the eastern shore of Lake Union, extending from the lake to the portage between Union and Washington.

“Mr. Denny’s first house on this side of the bay, built presumably in the spring of 1852, was located on the beach at the foot of what is now Denny Way in North Seattle. This was a one-story log cabin. It was on the bluff overlooking the bay and the woods hemmed it in, and it was only by cutting and slashing that one could open a way back into the forest.”

MR. DENNY’S FARM

“Some time later Mr. Denny begun his original clearing for a farm at what is now the vicinity of Third Avenue North and Republican Street, and also in the early years of residence here – about 1860 or 1861 – built a home on the site of what is now occupied by modern business houses at Second Avenue and Seneca Street.

“It seems to have been Mr. Denny’s plan to work out on his farm at Third Avenue and Republican Street during the dry summer season and to reside down in the settlement in the winter. The farm at Third Avenue and Republican Street grew apace until in after years it became the notable spot in all the district of what is now North Seattle. After the arrival on the coast of the Chinaman it was leased to them for a number of years, and became widely known as the China gardens. Mr. Denny does not seem to have planted orchard to any extent here, but at Second and Seneca he had quite an orchard. Forming what later became a part of the original D. T. Denny farm was a large tract of open, boggy land running well through the center of Mr. Denny’s claim from about Third Avenue down to Lake Union. This was overgrown largely with willow and swamp shrubs. In ancient times it was either a lake or beaver marsh, and long after the whites came, ducks frequented the place. The house built at Second Avenue and Seneca Street by Mr. Denny was a small one-story structure of three or four rooms.

“In 1871 Mr. Denny built another homestead of the D. T. Denny family at this place. It was, after its completion, one of the most commodious and important houses in the city. This house was built overlooking Lake Union, instead of the bay. The site selected was on what is now Dexter Avenue and Republican Street. This house still stands, a twelve or fourteen-room house, surrounded by orchard and grounds.”

BUILT A NEW HOME

“Mr. Denny lived at the Lake Union home until just after the big fire here in 1889, when he began the erection and completed a fine mansion on Queen Anne Avenue, with fine grounds, but he did not long have the pleasure of residing here. The unfortunate business enterprises in which he soon found himself engulfed, swept away his vast wealth, and ‘Honest Dave,’ as he had become familiarly to be known, was left without a place wherein to rest his head.”

These tributes also recite something of the story of his life:

“He was one of the original locators of donation claims on Elliott Bay, within the present limits of Seattle. The two Dennys, David and his brother, Arthur, now deceased; Dr. Maynard, Carson D. Boren and W. N. Bell, were the first locators of the land upon which the main portion of Seattle now rests. All of them, save Boren, have passed away, and Boren has not lived in Seattle for many years; so it may be said that David Denny was the last of the Seattle pioneers. Of his seventy-one years of life, fifty-two were passed on Puget Sound and fifty-one in the City of Seattle, in the upbuilding of which he bore a prominent part.

“With his original donation claim and lands subsequently acquired, Mr. Denny was for many years the heaviest property owner in actual acreage in Seattle. Most of his holdings had passed into the hands of others before his death. In his efforts to build up the city he engaged in the promotion of many large enterprises, and was carrying large liabilities, although well within the limit of his financial ability, when the panic of ten years ago rendered it impossible to realize upon any property of any value, and left equities in real property covered even by light mortgages, absolutely valueless. In that disastrous period he, among all Seattle’s citizens, was stricken the hardest blow, but he never lost the hope or the energy of the born pioneer, nor faith in the destinies of the city which he had helped to found. His name remains permanently affixed to many of the monuments of Seattle, and he will pass into history as one of the men who laid the foundations of one of the great cities of the world, and who did much in erecting the superstructure.

“In the enthusiasms of early life the ambitious men and women of America turn their faces toward ‘the setting sun’ and bravely assume the task of building homes in uninhabited places and transforming the wilderness into prosperous communities. Those who undertake such work are to be listed among God’s noblemen – for without such men little progress would be made in the development of any country.

“For more than a hundred years one of the interesting features of life in the United States is that connected with pioneering. The men and women of energy are usually possessed with an adventurous spirit which chafes under the fixed customs and inflexible conservatism of the older communities, and longs to take a hand in crowding the frontier toward the Pacific.

“The poet has said that only the brave start out West and only the strong success in getting there. Thus it is that those, who, more than a half century ago, elected to cross the American continent were from the bravest of the eastern or middle portion of the United States. Many who started turned back; others died by the wayside. Only the ‘strong’ reached their destination.

“Of this class was the small party which landed at Alki Point in the late summer of 1851 and began the task of building up a civilization where grew the gigantic forests and where roamed the dusky savage. Of that number was David T. Denny, the last survivor but one, C. D. Boren, of the seven men who composed the first white man’s party to camp on the shores of Elliott Bay.

“It requires some stretch of the imagination to view the surroundings that enveloped that band of hardy pioneers and to comprehend the magnitude of the task that towered before them. It was no place for the weak or faint-hearted. There was work to do – and no one shirked.

“Since then more than fifty years have come and gone, and from the humble beginnings made by David T. Denny and the others has grown a community that is the metropolis of the Pacific Northwest and which, a few years hence, will be the metropolis of the entire Pacific Coast. That this has been the product of these initial efforts is due in a large measure to the energy, the example, the business integrity and public spirit of him whose demise is now mourned as that of the last but one of the male survivors of that little party of pioneers of 1851.

“The history of any community can be told in the biographies of a few of the leading men connected with its affairs. The history of Seattle can be told by writing a complete biography of David T. Denny. He was among the first to recognize that here was an eligible site for a great city. He located a piece of land with this object in view and steadfastly he clung to his purpose. When a public enterprise was to be planned that would redound to the growth and prestige of Seattle he was at the front, pledging his credit and contributing of his means.

“Then came a time in the growth of cities on the Pacific Coast when the spirit of speculation appeared to drive men mad. Great schemes were laid and great enterprises planned. Some of them were substantial; some of them were not. With a disposition to do anything honorable that would contribute to the glory of Seattle, David T. Denny threw himself into the maelstrom with all of his earthly possessions and took chances of increasing his already handsome fortune. Then came the panic of 1893 and Mr. Denny was among many other Seattle men who emerged from the cataclysm without a dollar.

“Subsequent years made successful the enterprise that proved the financial ruin of so many of Seattle’s wealthy, but it was too late for those who had borne the brunt of the battle. Others came in to reap where the pioneers had sown and the latter were too far along in years to again take up the struggle of accumulating a competence. His declining years were passed in the circle of loving friends who never failed to speak of him as the personification of honesty and integrity and one whose noble traits of character in this respect were worthy of all emulation.”

The following is an epitaph written for his tomb:

“David Thomas Denny, Born March 17th, 1832, Died Nov. 25th, 1903. The first of the name to reach Puget Sound, landing at Duwampsh Head, Sept. 25th, 1851. A great pioneer from whose active and worthy life succeeding generations will reap countless benefits.”

“He giveth his beloved sleep.”

The early days of the State, or rather, Territory, of Washington produced a distinct type of great men, one of whom was David Thomas Denny.

Had Washington a poet to tell of the achievements of her heroic founders and builders a considerable epic would be devoted to the remarkable career and character of this noble man.

At the risk of repetition I append this slight recapitulation:

The first of the name to set foot on Puget Sound, Oregon Territory, September 25th, 1851, he then evinced the characteristics more fully developed in after years.

He had crossed the plains and then from Portland proceeded to Puget Sound by the old Hudson Bay trail. He landed at Duwampsh Head where now is West Seattle, and there met and shook hands with Chief Sealth, or old Seattle as the whites called him. He helped to build the first cabin home at Alki Point. He alone was the Committee of Reception when the notable party landed from the “Exact.” He ran the race of the bravest of the brave pioneers.

Beginning at the very bottom of the ladder, he worked with his hands, as did the others, at every sort of work to be found in a country entirely unimproved.

A ready axman, a very Nimrod, a natural linguist, he began the attack on the mighty forest, he slew wild animals and birds for food, he made friends with the native tribes.

He builded, planted, harvested, helped to found schools, churches, government and civilized society. Always and everywhere he embodied and upheld scriptural morality and temperance.

Many now living could testify to his untiring service to the stranded newcomers. Employment, money, credit, hospitality, time, advice, he gave freely to help and encourage the settlers following the pioneers.

He was Probate Judge, County Treasurer, City Councilman, Regent of the University, School Director for twelve years, etc., etc. He administered a number of estates with extreme care and faithfulness.

David T. Denny early realized that Seattle was a strategic site for a great city and by thrifty investments in wild land prepared for settlements sure to come.

After long years of patient toil, upright dealing and wise management, he began to accumulate until his property was worth a fortune.

With increasing wealth his generosity increased and he gave liberally to carry on all the institutions of a civilized community.