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About this City Journal

This journal focuses on the fictional Pacific Northwestern town of New Market and it's neighbors as they grow into a metropolis. This is an historical CJ, based on realistic growth and...

Entries in this City Journal

cemaphon
With the end of the Great Depression, and the WWII and postwar economic boom, New Market has grown by leaps and bounds. Here we are in 1952: This map shows the 1935 borders in red, and the expanded borders in blue. Most of the blue area is postwar residential single-family housing to fill the demand of the returning GIs and their growing families in what is beginning to be recognized as a "baby boom." As you can see, the downtown has developed considerably. While still a small city by most standards, it is...
cemaphon

In the Navy

By cemaphon,

After the Pearl Harbor disaster, the United States Navy decided to relocate to the Pacific Coast. While the Navy Headquarters ended up in San Diego, the protected harbors of Puget Sound were a natural place to establish a number of secondary bases. Here is Fort Hugo in 1948: While the fort is mainly designed for local security and naval operations facilities, there is a drydock for the repair of capital ships. Here is the USS Mitchell. There is also a submarine pen, as the strategic implications of a...
cemaphon

Smalltown USA

By cemaphon,

Now we come to a quick look at a few of the smaller towns in the region. First we have the town of Arlington: As the economy and development picked up in the Nisqually River towns, many farmers found themselves priced out of those neighborhoods. So in the true pioneering spirit, a group of them settled on the edge of the farmland to the east of Whitman. Almost all of the town is small residential development - Students are bussed to the schools in other towns. There is a small commercial strip on the edge...
cemaphon

A few maps

By cemaphon,

Here is the region as it currently looks. I still have a bit of detail work in a few places, but this is pretty close to how it looks by 1936. Note that the urban and industrial areas are largely confined to waterways. Also, the farmland only exists in the flood plains of the rivers, as the soil isn't very suitable elsewhere (either too marshy and brackish in the NE area, or stripped of nutrients from Ice Age glaciation and flooding) The rivers flow into the natural harbor of Olympic Bay, which opens up...
cemaphon
Back again after a bit of a break from Sim City. In 1916, some hunters up on a ridge above Bitter Lake discovered an exposed coal seam. It was soon discovered to be a very high quality low-sulphur coal, and a railroad spur along the New Market-Tacoma line was built. Here is the south end of Bitter Lake (a very neat looking body of water that is unfortunately spread between a few tiles. Need to do some region shots soon). Coal veins run all through the ridge to the south of the lake, and mines were built...
cemaphon

Whitman

By cemaphon,

Whitman is the final town along the Nisqually River, and is the second-largest town in the area. The town itself is largely residential, with only a small commercial strip near the river: It also has a brand-new elementary and high school which were recently expanded to service the nearby towns of Sultan and Arlington, as well as the local kids. The major industry for the area (as with the other river towns) is agriculture. While only a few of the town residents work on the farms anymore, most are employed...
cemaphon

Nisqually

By cemaphon,

The second town along the Nisqually River is Nisqually itself. It is situated in the middle of an S-bend in the river Nisqually really began in 1882 when Ivar Hansen realized that the bend in the river would be a perfect place for a river crossing. (at the time, the only bridge was the rail bridge near the mouth of the river). He quietly bought up the land on both sides of the river from homesteaders, then turned around and mortgaged them to finance a bridge. This quickly attracted settlement and...
cemaphon

Jefferson-Crook's Bend

By cemaphon,

The rich volcanic soil and clean, fresh water along the Nisqually River is well-suited to farmland, but the remoteness of the area and the small local population has made large scale farming unprofitable until recently. A group of local business and civic leaders from the towns along the river, armed with some investment capital from San Francisco formed a railroad company and built a spur off of the main Northern Pacific line along the river. As a result, the towns and farmland have expanded dramatically....
cemaphon
Across the Olympic Bay from New Market, is a small peninsula containing the Richmond Beach State Park. It is a pretty remote location for a park, but it contains the oldest structure in the whole region: Soon after the British exploration of Puget Sound under George Vancouver's expedition, the Hudson Bay Company petitioned the Crown to build a fort and dock to protect their claims in Puget Sound from natives, Spaniards and Russians. However, soon after it was built the whole territory came under joint...
cemaphon

Lakewood

By cemaphon,

Just up the White River from New Market is the small logging town of Lakewood. Unlike New Market, Lakewood has not managed to diversify its economic base, and remains rather poor and small. It does have a certain "Wild West" charm though, with some of the oldest buildings in the whole region. As the logging for the Holden Sawmill moved upriver, the growing distance demanded the creation of some permament infrastructure. This location was chosen due to its proximity to a good sized lake that fed the White...
cemaphon

New Market

By cemaphon,

When we last saw the town of New Market, it was a small, hardscrabble frontier town reeling from a devastating fire. But thanks to the sawmill (which survived intact), the new railroad line, and several waves of gold rushes on the Fraser River and the Yukon, the town soon grew even larger than before. Here is New Market in 1935: Here is the (amended) town incorporation map, showing the main legal organization of the town. 1) The small brown square is the original pre-fire borders of the town 2) The large...
cemaphon

Introduction

By cemaphon,

This journal is an historical account of the Pacific Northwestern town of New Market and it's surrounding area. New Market was settled near the south end of Puget Sound where the Nisqually River drains into the natural harbor of Olympic Bay (Many names are taken from real places in the area, but it is a fictional location and geography rather than a recreation) It is located near where the city of Olympia is in real life, and its history is sort of an amalgam of Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia. My favorite...
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