Clarence Dayton Hillman

Clarence Dayton Hillman was born in Birmingham, Michigan in 1870.

He was orphaned early on, and at the age of ten he and his 8 year old brother headed to Chicago to become newsies. After ten years, they had climbed the paperboy ladder. They had their own newspaper stand, and things were not quite so desperate as before. With enough of a nest egg to start their own enterprise, they liquidated their small business and made their way to Seattle in the brand new state of Washington

Upon arrival, they found the city ripe for businessmen with a bit of capital. Hillman bought up old logging land, which, being clear cut, had no value to the lumbermen, but was primed for development. He purchased one tract just south of Seattle, and founded his own town. Hillman City was a hotbed of real estate speculation. He became one of the wealthiest, and most successful business men in Seattle. 

During his time in Seattle, Hillman pioneered a practice of selling lots and land by mail. With prices so volatile, and opportunities so enticing, many out of town speculators were hungry to get in on the Seattle real estate business, and Hillman was happy to sell to them at a premium. The problem in a real estate boom is always the same. There is only so much land, and they aren’t making any more. 

Hillman was a “Real Estate Visionary” and decided this was a great time to pioneer another real estate practice. He would sell the same properties to multiple buyers, leaving it up to them and the courts to untangle proper ownership. He sold lots of land that lay entirely under a nearby lake. He was soon convicted of mail fraud, and though he fought the conviction, when the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear his case, he served 18 months in federal prison.

Upon his release, he moved to Paso Robles, California and began a new real estate enterprise. When he passed away just a few months before his 65th birthday, he was buried in Seattle’s Lakeview Cemetery in the Family plot along with two children who had died in infancy. The Hillman family never supplied a grave marker, so the neighborhood named in his honor placed one in the 1990s.