For centuries, the Everett area was home to the Coast Salish people until the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855. Most of the land was heavily forested in 1891 when Everett was planned thousands of miles away. Midwestern and East Coast businessmen Hewitt, Colby and Hoyt created the Everett Land Company in New York City in 1890. With John D. Rockefeller, they financed four new industries as anchors to the new planned city: a paper mill, a ship building plant, a nail works, and a smelter. Everett’s first structures went up on the Riverside (east) end of Hewitt Avenue. Development boomed from 1891-1893. The dense forest was cut down and hastily built wooden businesses and saloons sprang up. Several permanent brick buildings along with a number of homes from the era still survive. When Interstate 5 was built in the mid-1960s, the neighborhood was split and many historic buildings razed.
To take this walking tour, visit HistoryLink.Tours.
