Downtown Seattle · Pier 57
Come See Where It All Began
In July 1897 a steamship tied up on this waterfront carrying what the newspapers called a ton of gold, and a small port on Elliott Bay became the gateway to the Klondike. Roughly seventy thousand people came through Seattle to buy their outfit before heading north. Five years later, this pier went up on what that boom left behind.
Gold ★ Sixty-eight miners ★ A crowd of five thousand ★ Gateway to the Gold Fields ★ Seventy thousand stampeders ★ A city nearly doubled ★
Before the gold
A Small Port on a Big Bay
Look at Seattle in 1894 and you see a working harbor — masts, sheds, mud, and not much skyline. In 1890 the census counted about 43,000 people, barely half the 1900 total. Nothing in the picture hints at what the next three years would do to it.
Seattle from offshore, around 1894, years before this pier existed. Library of Congress.
July 17, 1897
The Portland Ties Up, and Everything Changes
The steamship Portland came in from Alaska with sixty-eight miners aboard and what the newspapers called a ton of gold. By six in the morning more than five thousand people were standing at Schwabacher’s Wharf to watch it come ashore. Within a day the fever had reached New York, and the rush was on!
On the trail to the Klondike, Sheep Camp, 1898 — a stereograph, the era’s own way of showing people what they had missed. Library of Congress.
What the rush did
Seattle Sold the Shovels
The gold was in the Yukon. The money was in the outfitting, and Seattle went after it with a publicity push that reached the whole country.
Gateway to the Gold Fields
Seattle’s merchants gave the city a slogan and sold it to the whole country. Every prospector needed a year of supplies before the Mounties would let them cross the pass, and this is where they bought it.
Roughly seventy thousand stampeders
About a hundred thousand people set out for the goldfields. Around seventy thousand of them came through Seattle first, and left their money on the counters here.
A city, nearly doubled
Between 1890 and 1900 Seattle’s population nearly doubled, to around eighty thousand. The prosperity that followed ran through King County for more than a decade.
Second Avenue at Yesler Way, early 1900s — the downtown the rush paid for. Library of Congress.
And then, this pier
Built on What the Rush Left Behind
Pier 57 went up in 1902, four years after the rush peaked and paid for by the economy it left behind. It opened as the John B. Agen Dock, numbered Pier 6. Early tenants included the North American Transportation and Trading Company, a big name in the Yukon trade.
The gold did not come ashore here. The boom that followed it built this pier, and that is the honest version — it is also the better one.
The name Miners Landing came much later. It was coined in the mid-1970s, set aside for two decades, and back in use by the time the Great Wheel opened in 2012. It is a tribute to the era, not a survivor of it.
Five miles of Seattle waterfront, about 1907. This pier is somewhere in that row, about five years old. Library of Congress.
The archive
Pier 57 Through the Decades
Pier 57 through the years, from its 1902 opening as the John B. Agen Dock to the Miners Landing storefronts of the 1980s.
Pier 6, the John B. Agen Dock, seen from Elliott Bay, about 1902–09. UW Libraries Special Collections.
Pacific Net & Twine at Pier 6, about 1910. MOHAI.
Milwaukee Pier No. 6 and the McCormick Steamship Co., about 1915. MOHAI.
Railroad Avenue in 1926, with Milwaukee Pier No. 6 behind. Seattle Municipal Archives (CC BY 2.0).
Miners Landing at Pier 57, about 1980. Seattle Municipal Archives (CC BY 4.0).
The Pier 57 medallion and tour booth, 1980s. Miners Landing collection.
On the record
A Landmark, on the City’s Own Account
A designated Seattle Landmark
Pier 57 is a designated City of Seattle Landmark.
The waterfront rebuild
Pier 57 sits on Waterfront Seattle, the city’s rebuild of its Elliott Bay waterfront.
Also true
The Great Wheel has carried a Seahawks-themed gondola, and its LEDs run full shows for holidays and for UW and Seahawks home game nights. The family also wrote The Crab Pot Cookbook — their restaurant’s recipes between hard covers, ISBN and all.
Privately owned
Pier 57 is a privately owned pier on Seattle’s waterfront.