Nettle Creek, Seattle 1978

Obviously, this history of Seattle is for the historically interested classes, only. And the book itself is history if you consider that it was first published in 1978 by an author, who died in 1988 at the age of 76.

But he seems to have been a local celebrity just like Doc Maynard was in the 1850s when he founded “the Queen City of the Pacific Northwest”. His ambition was, unashamedly, to make Seattle “the greatest city on earth”, and at least for the inhabitants of Seattle he seems to have reached his aim. Speidel makes this sufficiently clear. He tells his story of the settlement of the northwest with great passion and without any literary ambition. Yet it is a moving story. You feel like sitting in a bar with Speidel and over a couple of beers he gets into talking about Doc Maynard, getting carried away but always coming back to the great accomplishments of these fearless early settlers.