February 16, 1870, was a nice day in Seattle. In early afternoon, it was 55 degrees with clear skies—not bad for midwinter. Not that there were many Seattleites there to enjoy it; in 1870 there were just over a thousand people living in a city that had yet to be shaped by the Great Fire of 1889, the Denny Regrade, the Klondike Gold Rush, or a world’s fair. Or statehood, for that matter.
But James E. Whitworth, 30 years old, measured the temperature at his home at what’s now Yesler and Third Avenue, writing it on a form he’d send to the Smithsonian. The report was Seattle’s first official
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