Boeder and Bussell V. Peabody, whom he met at Olympia. Boeder was of German birth but brought up in the United States, while Peabody was from Ohio. They had been in California together, and now determined, after hearing Pattle's account of the country, to go to Bellingham Bay, and erect a saw-mill, which they did, on Whatcom Creek. They also took donation claims, on one of which coal was found in 1854, sixty-five tons of which were sent to San Francisco to be tested, and found merchantable. From that time until the Seattle Mines were opened this was the only coal mined in Washington. About 1869 the mine caught fire and was flooded, since which time it has lain idle.
The town of Whatcom was laid off on Boeder's land while the Fraser River mining excitement was at white heat, in 1857, and at one time contained ten thousand people, but an order of Governor Douglas turning traffic to Victoria caused it to be deserted, and all the better buildings to be removed to that place, which acquired thereby a very American growth and appearance for an English town. A single brick house remained, which was converted to county purposes.
Whatcom remained uninhabited, except by its owners and the coal company, until 1870, when the Northern Pacific, looking for a terminus, purchased all the land which could be obtained fronting on the bay,—however, not including Whatcom.
In 1882, a Kansas colony numbering six hundred fixing upon this locality, the owners of the town-site agreed to donate a half-interest in the town if the colony would settle there, but subsequently refused to make good their contract, when the colonists laid off a town for themselves called New Whatcom, or Bellingham, while others settled at Sehome, between the two.
The population of the three places continued to be insignificant until 1889, when Fairhaven was taken in hand by a company of which Mr. Nelson Bennet, the contractor who constructed the Northern Pacific's great tunnel through the Cascade Mountains, was president, and C. X. Larrabee, of Montana, vice-president.
I cannot refrain from quoting from a monograph published by the Fairhaven Chamber of Commerce, describing the methods pursued in founding new cities, and particularly Fairhaven:
