Term Paper on "Location of Schools"

Term Paper 12 pages (3531 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Location of Schools

Seattle Pacific University, a Christian university focusing on liberal arts, sciences, and the professional fields, is located on the northern slope of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. It was founded in 1891 by the Oregon and Washington Conference of the Free Methodist Church as the Seattle Seminary. In 1913, it became the Seattle Seminary and College in 1913. In 1915, it was renamed Seattle Pacific College, and sixty years later, it opened its doors to graduate students, becoming Seattle Pacific University in 1977.

By contrast, the University of Washington, which earlier came to the shores of the Puget, is a state University whose location is more a product of funds and state auspice than the free will of an ardent religious movement. It has seen one relocation and the development of other campuses, all at the behest of the state. Its power for self-governance is little; it is geographically situated in the Seattle city limits as a marketing tool for the state.

Far from the excitement of the city is Western Washington University, oblivious to the urban problems that affect institutions located in a metropolis. Its geography is due entirely to the path of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The Northern Pacific not only moved goods in and out of Washington state, but it moved settlers in, who, in some cases, took it upon themselves to create centers of life, intellect, and positive movement forward, by settling not only their homes in communities surrounding the railway, but also there establishing great intellectual centers for the greater good.

Study Area

The area for this geographical research is limited to the Pacific Northwest of Washington State, where the University of Washington, Seattle Pacific University, and Western Washington University are located. Western Washington, unlike its two urban predecessors, inhabits a remote location of Bellingham, Washington, where it sits as a result of the Northern Pacific Railway. The other two universities are both located inside the city limits of modern Seattle, with University of Washington rooted to the city center, and the Seattle Pacific University atop the Queen Anne Hill.

Methods

The geographical location of these schools is contingent upon their singular occupation of land; each has rights to the terrain where it sits with historical significance. To understand the geography of their location, it is critical to analyze the history that brought about the universities in the first place. The University of Washington is rooted in the marketing schemes of a well-organized state and city government, eager to create zoning laws that provide a good image of the state of Washington and the city of Seattle. Seattle Pacific is born of the history of the Free Methodists in Washington, who sought seclusion of the Queen Anne Hill. The Western Washington University was developed as a result of the railroad that came through Bellingham, its hometown. The analysis of these histories is limited to primary and secondary sources, including g the archival documents of the Universities themselves, the governing powers of the cities they occupy, the historical societies that document them, and the academics who have studies their histories as revealed in scholarly journals.

Discussion

WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: BELLINGHAM and the NORTHERN PACIFIC

Western Washington University, still young in its early hundred years, was founded in 1893 and is located in Bellingham, Washington. Its relatively remote location owes its more basic dues to the school's early establishment as a teachers' college. Bellingham is the last major city before the Washington coastline meets the border of Canada. It is the county seat of Whatcom, located 90 miles north of Seattle and 45 miles south of Vancouver. The University, a major institution in the city's life, overlooks the Bellingham Bay and part of the San Juan archipelago.

Bellingham owes its roots to the Northwesterly spread of the railroad industry. Northern Pacific Railway was founded by Josiah Perham, Asa Whitney, Isaac Stevens, and Edward Johnson, the first men to lay rail across the state of Washington. They traced the land explored by Lewis and Clark, and laid their first tracks in May 1804, ninety years before the founding of Western Washington. President Lincoln signed a Federal Charter granting Perham the responsibility of laying his own railroad in December, 1864; this tiny line would become the great Northern Pacific Rail, bringing settling life to the cold Northwest.

Perham worked for two years ceaselessly on the rail line, but his failing health and increasing debt caused him to let another group assume his line in July of 1866. Under the leadership of Gregory Smith, this new group paid off Perham's $102,000 debt, but managed to find their own efforts for the railroad fiscally thwarted. They were able to get Federal extension for the deadline of their project and its date for operation, and it finally opened on Jul 4, 1877, twenty years before the founding of the teachers' college in Bellingham.

Tacoma was established as the Western Terminus for the line, but soon, endangered finances threw the project again into tepid tribulation. On September 18, 1873, Jay Cooke singly handedly led the Northern Pacific into the Financial Panic of 1873, and things did not improve the next year, when money was still short, and supplies with which to build the rails were even more lacking. In 1874, Frederick Billings took the reigns in an attempt to slowly lead the rail line out of its debt, but by 1878, the steps were still too slow for any noticeable growth.

In 1879, the Northern Pacific faced the daunting task of building its line over the Missouri River. The river, frozen with ice, was crossed only by a temporary bridge. The engineers layered long ties, three inches by twelve, directly onto the frozen surface until the other side was reached. They continued this practice until 1882, when technology improved.

The Northern Pacific continued to edge northwesterly, and it soon entered the territory of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The Oregon, owned by Henry Villard, engaged in corporate negotiations in 1879, concluding with the agreement to allow Northern Pacific use of its rail. Northern Pacific was allowed to use the Oregon tracks through the northwest until they reached Tacoma, indicative of the equitable and helpful relationship between the two powers of this isolated portion of America.

Unlike the rest of the country, those in the remote Northwest maintained the early settler temperaments of help and utility; they were forced to work together, a fact that remains true in the public sentiment still today. In February 1881, Villard formed the now-famous Blind Pool; it contributed $8.5 to the fundraising efforts of the railway, and helped Northern Pacific through the cadre of legal challenges the next year would bring. The Board of Directors launched into a popularity struggle between Villard and Billings, unsteady about who was at the helm of the railway leadership. Ultimately, Villard was elected as the unquestioned head of Northern Pacific, and he immediately raised sixty million dollars that brought manpower and money to the railroad, ensuring its timely completion within the next two years.

Man, material, and money brought not only the railroad to the state of Washington, but also people. Bellingham, one of the earliest stops on the railroad, was an exemplary city for this comparison; its population burst around the railroad, and soon, a teachers' college was erected to serve not only the area of Bellingham but all of greater Seattle with teachers aplenty. The addition of the teachers' college changed the face of this small Washington town; the institution served as a magnate for all involved in higher education, and as Cascade Switchbacks and Stampede Tunnels came to be familiar words in the colloquial lingua of the native Washingtonian, it was not without the work of Bellingham.

Bellingham was an ideal for those associated with the railroad to stay. Samuel Wilkeson, an ex-newspaper man who worked as a secretary for the Northern Pacific, noted with praise the whole region of the Seattle area, but with special qualification glamorized the area of Bellingham.

The climate here is unsurpassed. Sickness is almost unknown. In winter, the south-east winds prevail, bringing the warm air of the south of the day, sweeping in the tonic sea-air of the Pacific, which dies away at sundown and is followed by the cool air from the eternal snows of Mount Baker. This enables the weary laborer to enjoy refreshing sleep under a pair of blankets during the hottest time of the yaer, while the inhabitants of the interior and Eastern States are panting for a breath of cool air... Breathing such air and using such water as is here - springs cold as ice and clear as crystal - with temperate habits, in the absence of hereditary disease, sickness is impossible."

As was the trend with all major academic institutions in the last century, the University was begotten of the tiny teachers college, and maintained its early location because of its convenience to the railway, access for all students, teachers, and visiting… READ MORE

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