Historical U.S. Market

I love markets. Markets are the very basis of civilization. It is where the opportunity for people to participate in a place to where contribution is collateralized through the very items merchants want to sell to consumers who use their income in kind.

Human nature has never made anything as amazing as the market.

And if there ever was a place where one can witness how wonderful the real market - of real things that real people want and need - it is Pike Place in Seattle. Pike Place Market opened August 17, 1907, and is one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers' markets in the United States.

The creation of this market came to fruition on behalf of the typical arbitraging middle men do controlling the commercial retail locations of exchanges. Most farmers, due to the amount of time required to work their farms, were forced to sell their produce on consignment through the wholesalers on Western Avenue in a three block area called The Lot. The farmers would sell to the middleman on commission, as most farmers would often have no time to sell direct to the public. In some cases, the farmers made a profit, but just as often found themselves breaking even, or getting no money at all due to the business practices of the retailers.

As consumers and farmers grew increasingly vocal in their unhappiness over the situation, Thomas P. Revelle, a Seattle city councilman, lawyer, and newspaper editor, took advantage the precedent of an 1896 Seattle city ordinance that allowed the city to designate tracts of land as public markets. The area of Western Avenue above the Elliott Bay tideflats and the area of the commission food houses had just been turned into a wooden planked road, called Pike Place, off of Pike Street and First Avenue. Through a city council ordinance vote on August 5, 1907, Thomas had part of Pike Place designated temporarily as a public market for the "sales of garden, farm and other food products from wagons...”

The rest is history...