King county's sources of revenue are varied and extensive. Its
lumber industry, growing out of the vast forests within its borders
not only, but from the cutting of logs brought in from other sections
of the state, is immense.
Its agricultural lands are not surpassed in fertility by any, and
include not only the alluvial deposits in its river bottoms, but
great areas of shot clay and other soils splendidly adapted to
fruit culture.
Its mining industries include not only very great acreage of coal
measures, which have been producing coal for commercial purposes for
local and foreign trade for thirty years and are scarcely scratched
as yet, but also fissure veins of the precious metals--gold, silver, lead,
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copper, antimony, arsenic, and also iron, asbestos, fire clays,
kaolin, granite, sandstones, lime ledges, and others.
Its fishing industries in its own waters and from the ocean give
employment to a large number of men and its fish are shipped even
as far east as Boston, Massachusetts.
Its power capacity, in addition to its wood and coal, includes
great falls and rapids and many large streams which are already
harnessed, but only in part, and driving vast quantities of machinery
in this and adjoining counties.
In commercial possibilities King county is unrivaled. Its combination
of lakes, rivers and salt water harbors have no superior on the
globe, and the fact of its supremacy is demonstrated by the tabulated
statistics of state officers, which show that King county possesses
one-fifth of the population of the state and has more than one-quarter
in value of taxable property of the state, and pays one-fourth of
taxes collected within the state borders.
In scenery, which is no mean asset of the county, it is also
unsurpassed. Vast ranges of mountains, sheets of fresh and salt
water, rivers, hills and plains, forests, and grassy fields combine
and interlace in a thousand directions to entrance and delight
the artistic eye.
In game, including bear, deer, mountain goats, cougar, grouse,
pheasants, quail, mountain trout, salmon and other fishes, make
many a paradise for the sportsman.