Seattle History

Native Peoples of Seattle

Archaeological excavations confirm that the Seattle area has been inhabited by humans for at least 4,000 years. At the time of the arrival of the first Europeans to the area, at least seventeen villages of the Duwamish Tribe had been established around Elliott Bay.

The Duwamish villages were diffuse: the tribes people dispersed in the spring to forage for fruits and vegetables and to hunt deer and elk, congregated for the salmon runs in the summer, and wintered in village longhouses.

The Founding of the City of Seattle

In late September, 1851, a party led by Illinois natives Arthur and David Denny claimed the land at Alki Point, located on the western edge of Elliott Bay. Their first winter was difficult and hard, and in the spring they relocated across the bay and founded the village of Duwamps on the site of present-day Pioneer Square.

A year later, David Maynard, one of the founders of the village, urged the settlers to rename the village in honor of Chief Seattle of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. The name was adopted, and it appears on official Washington Territory papers dated May 23, 1853, when the first plats for the village were filed.

In early 1865, the Legislature of Territorial Washington incorporated the town of Seattle with a board of trustees given the responsibility to manage the city's affairs. Four years later, the town was re-incorporated, this time with a Mayor-city council governmental structure.

From the time of its founding, Seattle was a logging town. The area was densely forested with old growth trees, and the calm, safe bay proved ideal for transshipment of the area's resources.

In 1852, Henry Yesler began construction of the first steam-powered mill in the Pacific Northwest. Interestingly, the term "Skid Row" was derived from this era, as logs were hauled or skidded down the hill to Yesler's mill. The bars and saloons in the area of the mill, where prostitution and gambling were rife, provides the modern connotation for the term.

Chief Seattle

The Iron Horse and the Great Seattle Fire

The Northern Pacific Railway was completed in 1883, providing a direct link from Chicago. Its rails stretched across the northern Plains states, then into Oregon and up to Tacoma. Five years later, the railroad completed a tunnel under Stampede Pass in the Cascade mountains, allowing the railroad to avoid the dip into Oregon.

Seattle benefited greatly from the railroad, as well as from the maritime shipping routes that took its timber resources south to San Francisco.

On June 6, 1889, a fire erupted that would engulf the downtown area and the city's wharves. The fire proved to be particularly damaging, in that all of the downtown buildings were constructed of wood. Undaunted, the city weathered the disaster and emerged stronger than before. A new Seattle was built with brick and stone, and the economic impact was mitigated by the large number of construction jobs that were created by the rebuilding of the city. Seattle hired the Olmstead brothers' landscaping firm, developers of Central Park in New York City, to create a park system for the city.

The financial company Washington Mutual was founded in the immediate aftermath of the fire.

The Klondike Gold Rush of 1896

The panic of 1893 hit Seattle hard, and the area suffered a great recession. But just three years later, gold was discovered in the Klondike region of Canada. In 1897, the steamship SS Portland, laden with its famed "ton of gold," docked in Seattle's reconstructed harbor. Seattle became the main transport and supply point for the miners in Alaska and the Yukon.

The Klondike Gold Rush brought thousands of people to Seattle, and flooded the city with reconstruction money.

The gold rush boom lasted well into the early part of the 20th century and funded many new Seattle companies and products. Just as the Levi Strauss Company grew and prospered during the California Gold Rush of 1849, Seattle's clothing merchants became prominent during the Klondike Gold Rush. The clothier Eddie Bauer and merchant Nordstrom can trace their roots to this period. So can UPS, which was incorporated in Seattle as the American Messenger Company.

The Gold Rush era culminated in the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, which is largely responsible for the layout of today's University of Washington campus.

Seattle in the First Half of the 20th Century

A shipbuilding boom in the early part of the 20th century became massive during World War I; the subsequent retrenchment led to the Seattle General Strike of 1919, the first general strike in the country. Seattle enjoyed mile prosperity in the 1920s, but it was particularly hard hit in the Great Depression, experiencing some of the country's harshest labor strife in that era. Violence during the Maritime Strike of 1934 cost Seattle much of its maritime traffic, which was rerouted to the Port of Los Angeles.

William Boeing, the founder of the Boeing Aircraft Company, set up shop in Seattle in 1916. By 1938, Boeing had become a world leader in aircraft design and manufacturing. During World War II, Boeing built the fabled B-17 and B-29 bombers, making nearly 350 planes a month at its zenith. The company became the city's largest employer, attracting huge amounts of capital and labor to the city.

The war's end saw nearly 70,000 employees lose their jobs overnight as the U.S. Government cancelled all pending contracts. But the job losses proved to be short-lived, as the Korean War and Cold War conflicts led to increased military spending, and civil aviation gradually replaced the railroad as the preferred way to travel.

Seattle in the Second Half of the 20th Century

In the early 1960s, Seattle celebrated its restored prosperity and made a bid for world recognition with the Century 21 Exposition, the 1962 World's Fair. The theme of the Fair was "space, science, and the future," developed in the context of the success of the Soviet's Sputnik and other space initiatives. Over ten million people attended the Fair.

Remnants of the Fair can still be seen in Seattle. The iconic Space Needle was the Fair's symbol, and the monorail remains in operation. What is now Seattle Center was the exhibition area for the Fair.

However, as a result of the Oil Crisis and the recession in the early 1970s, the economy went into another major nosedive, layoffs were rife at Boeing, and many people left the area to look for work.

The lower cost of doing business in Seattle as a result of the downturn in the economy of the area, combined with the educational resources of the University of Washington, attracted a number of companies to the area. Seattle natives Bill Gates and Paul Allen moved their Microsoft Corporation from Albuquerque to Seattle in 1979. Other technology companies were subsequently founded in the area, including Amazon.com, RealNetworks, Voicestream, HeartStream, Heart Technologies and Immunex.

Starbucks and Costco are but two of the Seattle-based companies that have gone national and then global with their retail success.

Grunge rock, a musical genre that was highly influential in the 1990s, emerged from the Seattle club scene and made the band Nirvana world famous.

Today's Seattle

Into the 21st century, Seattle has survived the dotcom bubble and continue to thrive. A 2009 report from the consulting firm Mercer ranked Seattle 50th worldwide in quality of living.

The vision of the future as seen from the 1962 World's Fair never came to pass. But a much more resilient Seattle has emerged over the past 50 years. Seattle will continue to thrive into the 21st century.