Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad

The Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad was the first railroad in Seattle. Construction began on May 1, 1874, at Steele's Landing in Georgetown--the present-day intersection of E. Marginal Way S. and S. Lucille St.--which was then at the mouth of the Duwamish River. Twelve miles of track had been completed by October of that year. The line reached Renton in February 1877 and eventually made it as far as Newcastle. (It never came anywhere near the city of Walla Walla from which it took half its name.)

The Seattle & Walla Walla was bought by Henry Villard's Oregon Improvement Company in 1880 and renamed the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad. It was incorporated into the Pacific Coast Railroad Company in 1916, which itself became a subsidiary, in 1951, of the Great Northern Railway (now part of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe).