The rush ended the depression overnight for Seattle. A publicity campaign engineered largely by Erastus Brainerd told the world of the Portland's "ton of gold," started the Klondike gold rush, and established Seattle as its supply center and the jumping-off point for transportation to and from Alaska and the gold fields of the Yukon. Among the chief priority was the federal government's sudden desire for tens of thousands of planes a year, and Boeing was positioned to provide them. Much of the ambiance of Seattle today derives from this project. Seattle is a major port city that has a history of boom and bust. Following the vision of city engineer R.H. Thomson, who had already played a key role in the development of municipal utilities, a massive effort was made to level the steep hills that rose south and north of the bustling city. Matthews was the most influential clergymen in the Pacific Northwest. [citation needed], Although no longer the economic powerhouse it had been at the turn of the century, Seattle first began seriously to be an arts center in the 1920s. Commercial Airplane Group, by far the largest unit of Boeing, went from 83,700 employees in 1968 to 20,750 in 1971. METRO came back, scaled down to a sewage treatment and transport organization; METRO was eventually merged into the King County government. (May 2, 2015). 1 : 34500 Anderson, O.P. [23] As a result, between 1940 and 1950, Seattle's black population grew 413 percent, from 3,789 to 15,666. Other notable village sites include the birthplace of Chief Seattle, which was located near the current footprint of the King Street Station. To accommodate the war effort, the U.S. military also annexed McChord Field in Tacoma, prompting that city to plead with the Port of Seattle to develop Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at Bow Lake -- midway between the Sound's two major cities. John Caldbick, "King Street Station (Seattle)", Benjamin Romano, "New Map Shows Expanding Seattle Tech Universe", Learn how and when to remove this template message, World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999, "CHAPTER ONE 'By-and-By': The Early History Of Seattle", "Prefontaine, Father Francis Xavier (1838-1909)", "Chapter 5: Interpreting the Klondike Gold Rush", "Harbor Island, at the time the world's largest artificial island, is completed in 1909", "HistoryLink: U.S. Army flyers land at Sand Point Airfield to complete first aerial circumnavigation of the globe on September 28, 1924", Port of Seattle North Bay Project DEIS: Historic and Cultural Resources, "Swing the Door Wide: World War II Wrought a Profound Transformation in Seattle's Black Community", "Battle at Boeing African Americans and the Campaign for Jobs 1939-1942", "The Boeing Company, Boeing: History -- Beginnings - Growing Pains", https://news.yahoo.com/may-day-march-seattle-turns-violent-three-police-034406128.html;_ylt=AwrC1C3t2kRVCzkAKwPQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBydDI5cXVuBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwM2BHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--, "Lake Washington Ship Canal -- A Snapshot History", University of Washington Libraries: Digital Collections, Photographic collections grouped by subject, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Seattle&oldid=998620695, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2007, Articles needing additional references from December 2013, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2013, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Taylor, Quintard. [11] The 1911–1917 construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal included two major "cuts" (the Montlake Cut and the Fremont Cut), four bascule bridges, and the Government Locks (now Hiram M. Chittenden Locks). From these beginnings, Seattle's population grew to over 80,000 by 1900, tripled in the following decade, and expanded to about 550,000 people by 1960, a number that has remained relatively stable to the present. Despite Seattle’s enormous growth, it still maintains a high level of social and public services, excellent schools, and abundant parks and greenbelts, which have earned it the sobriquet “the Emerald City.” It is consistently rated one of North America’s most livable cities, and, despite the vagaries of a highly volatile information-technology economy, its fortunes seem to be ever on the rise. Please select which sections you would like to print: While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. [15], Seattle trumpeted and celebrated its rise with the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, but the city's rapid growth had led to much questioning of the social order. [12], All of the expansion was happening without zoning, leading to "different land uses and economic classes everywhere [being] mixed."[13]. Rail baron James J. Hill, addressing Seattle business leaders in 1909, noted and regretted the change. While many of those in the streets, and most of those in the suites, were from out of town or even out of country, much of the groundwork of Seattle hosting both the event and the protests against it can be attributed to local forces. The shipyard site is now the location of Carillon Point, a residential-commercial development. Areas of great natural beauty, including the densely forested Olympic Peninsula and the Cascade Range, surround the city. Updates? Its urban centre, dominated by tall skyscrapers that overlook Elliott Bay and enhanced by the city’s abundant parks and neighbourhoods, also offers a handsome prospect. Others, largely outside the city centre, are showcases for the opulence wrought by Seattle’s booming high-technology sector. A seawall containing spoils (dirt) sluiced from the Denny Regrade created the current waterfront. The first bathtub with plumbing was in 1870. "[16], Religion was less of a force in Seattle than in eastern cities, but the Protestant Social Gospel movement had a national leader in the Rev. In an era during which the Washington Territory was one of the first parts of the U.S. to (briefly) allow women's suffrage, women played a significant part in "civilizing" Seattle. The city was settled on November 13, 1851, at what is now West Seattle. The metropolitan area, loosely defined, has grown to embrace once far-outlying satellites such as Everett and Renton. People could take the streetcar to Greenwood and catch the interurban railway north to Everett and other outlying towns. Seattle was incorporated as a town January 14, 1865. The unused plan had at its heart a grand civic center in Belltown and the Denny Regrade connected to the rest of the city by a rapid transit rail system, with a huge expansion of the park system, crowned by a total conversion of 4,000-acre (1,600-hectare) Mercer Island into parkland. The city is densely populated. "Blacks and Asians in a white city: Japanese Americans and African Americans in Seattle, 1890-1940. All of this occurred against a background of sometimes rocky relations with the local Native American population, including a nominally pitched battle, the Battle of Seattle, January 25, 1856. ", This page was last edited on 6 January 2021, at 07:01. Then the boundary line took a “jog” down to NE 65th Street. Until 1954, the beer joint was just a few blocks over the Seattle city limits. and Co. Seattle 1 : 62500. [22], The war also attracted tens of thousands of workers from across the country, as the greatly expanded wartime production quickly exhausted local labor pools. The World's Fair arguably reenergized the downtown of Seattle, and was generally a smashing success, even finishing with a profit. The efficient new system allowed Seattle to expand after 1945 with the Sea-Tac airport, and enabled Seattle to become one of the first Pacific Coast ports to move to containerized shipping and thus expand business with Asia. Corrections? Seattle City Clerk's Geographic Indexing Atlas. Seattle Annexation Map. Seattle mayor Ole Hanson became a prominent figure in the First Red Scare, and made an unsuccessful attempt to ride that backlash to the White House in an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for the presidential election of 1920. Seattle stopped being the place of explosive growth and opportunity it had been for two consecutive decades. [26] Seattle's Japantown, once the 2nd largest in the nation, was emptied. Vaudeville impresarios Alexander Pantages, John Considine, and John Cort (the last also involved in legitimate theater) were all based in Seattle in this era. Shoreline is a city in King County, Washington, United States.It is located between the city limits of Seattle and the Snohomish County border, approximately 9 miles (14 km) north of Downtown Seattle.As of the 2010 census, the population of Shoreline was 53,007, making it the 20th largest city in the state; by 2020, the population had risen to an estimated 57,497. (See Seattle Center Monorail.) Other models of urban growth make Seattle part of a conurbation called “Pugetopolis,” which extends southwest along Puget Sound as far as Olympia. BOLA Architecture + Planning & Northwest Archaeological Associates, Inc., Quintard Taylor, "The great migration: The Afro-American communities of Seattle and Portland during the 1940s. [20] During the Maritime Strike of 1934, Smith Cove was nearly a battle zone; shippers were scared, to the point where Seattle lost most of its Asian trade to Los Angeles. A billboard appeared near the airport:[28]:303–304. Old maps of Seattle on Old Maps Online. Starting in the late 1950s, Seattle was one of the centers of the emergence of the American counter-culture and culture of protest. This is the main article of a series that covers the history of Seattle, Washington, a city in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America. Creating an elaborate park system was probably the furthest thought from their minds when the Denny party arrived at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. This photo shows what the Greenwood business district looked like around 1932. However, the result, known as the Bogue plan, was never to be implemented. Victoria Cavaliere et al. In 1883 Chinese laborers played a key role in the first effort at digging the Montlake Cut to connect Lake Union's Portage Bay to Lake Washington's Union Bay. It also began to develop a road system. ", Taylor, Quintard. Quite unlike Boeing, Microsoft has served as a catalyst for the creation of a whole realm of industry. Speed is the critical factor in the frequency and severity of crashes. [1] The site was abandoned in approximately 1800, for unknown reasons. The Great Northern Railway finally came to Seattle in 1884, winning Seattle a place in competition for freight, though it would be 1906 before Seattle finally acquired a major rail passenger terminal. Most African American workers came to Seattle as shipyard employees, and by summer 1942, the National Youth Administration brought to the city the first group of blacks to work for Boeing. Local grocers and the Pike Place Market lost the bounty of hundreds of Japanese American truck farms, including the 55 families who had produced famed strawberries in Bellevue. The name and logo, which derived from racist caricatures of African Americans, was a galling reminder of segregation and discrimination for black Seattleites. Seattle in its early decades relied on the timber industry, shipping logs (and later, milled timber) to San Francisco. With 10,000 members, his was the largest Presbyterian Church in the country, and he was selected the denomination's national moderator in 1912. Even the newsboys unionized in 1892, followed by more organizing, mostly of craft unions. The founding of Seattle is usually dated from the arrival of the Denny Party scouts on September 25, 1851. After the war, the University of Washington also took a step forward, finally fulfilling the promise of its name under university president Charles Odegaard. https://www.britannica.com/place/Seattle-Washington, Official Tourism Site of Seattle, United States, CRW Flags - Flag of Seattle, Washington, United States, Official Site of the City of Seattle, Washington, United States, Seattle - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Seattle - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Charlie Terry sold out Alki (which, after his departure barely held on as a settlement), moved to Seattle and began acquiring land. He attempted a voter initiative to build the Seattle Commons, a huge park in South Lake Union and the Cascade District, and even offered to put up his own money to endow a security force for the park, but it was defeated at the polls. [22], Puget Sound-area shipyards constructed an unbelievable number of war vessels. Contributing Editor, Encyclopædia Britannica; Literary Critic. Though both Seattle and Tacoma grew at a rapid rate from 1880 to 1890, based on the strength of their timber industries, Seattle's growth as an exporter of services and manufactured goods continued for another two decades, while Tacoma's growth dropped almost to zero. The years 1945 to 1955, from the end of World War Two until the Wedgwood neighborhood came completely into the city limits of Seattle, were years of rapid change. The Pike Place Market, arguably Seattle's most important tourist attraction, gained its modern form in the aftermath of the Boeing crash. The official borders of Seattle get a little crazy down south, and I haven't found a very useful online map, so I've tried my best to replicate the borders here. Geographic Indexing Home; Full City ; List of Neighborhood Terms; About the Atlas Civilian use of Boeing Field was greatly curtailed to accommodate the production of thousands of Boeing bombers. He did get a football stadium for the Seattle Seahawks through a successful statewide ballot initiative, and founded the Experience Music Project (originally intended as a Jimi Hendrix museum) on the grounds of Seattle Center. That charter was voided January 18, 1867, in response to questionable activities of the town's elected leaders. In the low mudflats where much of the city was built, sewage was almost as likely to come in on the tide as to flow away. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. At the Seattle yards, 22,000 employees built 46 destroyers and three tenders for the United States Navy, plus other vessels. Seattle Special 1 : 62500. Seattle mined the miners.[9]. [21], Following Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. entered World War II and the whole Puget Sound region was full on rolling in the nation's war effort. The streets were potholed, to the point where there was at least one fatal drowning. On the negative side, racial tensions increased, both black and white residential areas deteriorated from overcrowding, and inside the black community there were angry words between "old settlers" and recent arrivals for leadership in the black communities. Moreover, the 4,000 black soldiers and sailors stationed at Fort Lawton in Seattle and other military installations nearby contributed to the new employment diversity of the African American population. Area 83.9 square miles (217.3 square km). Prefontaine raised the money by holding fairs around the Puget Sound area. The city was settled on November 13, 1851, at what is now West Seattle. Bird's eye view of the city of Seattle, Puget Sound, Washington Territory, 1878. It owes its name to the Native American leader Seattle, chief of the Duwamish, Suquamish, and other tribes of the Puget Sound area. The history of labor in the American West in this period is inseparable from the issue of anti-Chinese vigilantism. Due to the simultaneous decline in Vietnam War military spending, the slowing of the space program as Project Apollo neared completion, the recession of 1969-1970,[28]:291 and Boeing's $2 billion in debt as it built the 747 airliner,[28]:303 the company and the Seattle area greatly suffered. ", Taylor, Quintard. His bishop, Augustin-Magloire Blanchet, whose cathedra was in Vancouver, Washington, gave Fr. I-5 neatly cut off Downtown Seattle from Capitol Hill and First Hill. More spoils from the Denny Regrade went to build the industrial Harbor Island at the mouth of the Duwamish River, south of Downtown. A coalition of educators, agency staff members, and environmental advocates formed the “Salmon Education Alliance” (SEA) to administer the program throughout King County and some schools in adjacent counties. [32], Seattle today is physically and demographically similar to the Seattle of the 1960s. Pop. Real estate records show that nearly all of the city's first 60 businesses were on, or immediately adjacent to, Maynard's plat. In 1882, Seattle printers formed the Seattle Typographical Union Local 202. Old maps of Seattle Discover the past of Seattle on historical maps ... City Of Seattle And Environs. Retrieved May 2, 2015. Instead, the city became the site of the first great street confrontation between the anti-globalization movement and the World Trade Organization on November 30, 1999. By the early 21st century some 200,000 workers commuted to downtown Seattle from neighbouring communities, creating heavy traffic and disruptions on interstate and regional highways. The internment of the Japanese Americans from Seattle during World War II had hit the market particularly hard, since 80% of its "wet stall" vendors had been ethnically Japanese. The metro area population of Seattle in 2020 was 3,433,000, a 0.79% increase from 2019. Of the five million rural southern African-Americans migrating to the industrial North and West during the second wave of the Great Migration, an estimated 45,000 went to the Pacific Northwest, of which 10,000 moved to Seattle. History of Seattle, Washington In 1851, a group of immigrants from Illinois, led by one Arthur Denny, arrived at Alki Point on the eastern shores of the Puget Sound. The project was wildly successful in spite of intense opposition by the Seattle Establishment, and today the Pike Place Market pulls in nine million visitors each year. A similar story occurred with Pioneer Square. Towle-Wilcox house in the Central District; 1891 Railroad rivalry and encroaching civilization, C. Allyn Russell, "Mark Allison Matthews: Seattle Fundamentalist and Civic Reformer.". To build their case for lower speed limits, Seattle DOT (SDOT) staff compiled two documents. The conjoined Cowen Park and Ravenna Park is located at a southwest corner of Ravenna-Bryant, reaching from beyond the source of Ravenna Creek beside nearby Brooklyn Avenue and Ravenna Boulevard, under the 15th Avenue bridge to 25th Avenue NE. Seattle’s districts have a comfortably prosperous but not ostentatious feel, characterized by neat family homes and townhouses occupied by industrial workers, artists, academics, professionals, and that odd class of technology workers whom the novelist Douglas Coupland branded “microserfs.” The city is more closely connected to its downtown area than most of its counterparts in the American West, and considerable effort has been given to promoting the city centre as a place in which to live and work. Seattle has on several occasions been sent into severe decline, but has typically used those periods to successfully rebuild infrastructure. Seattle, with Mount Rainier in the background. In 1900, Seattle had 106 miles of streets. Mark A. Matthews (1867-1940) of Seattle's First Presbyterian Church. Paul Allen, whose fortune was made through Microsoft though he had long since ceased to be an active participant in the company, was a major force in Seattle politics. Microsoft remains and now supplemented by Amazon; the high tech leaders have spawned many startups. Despite being officially founded by the Methodists of the Denny Party, Seattle quickly developed a reputation as a wide-open town, a haven for prostitution, liquor, and gambling. A listing of Seattle annexations is also available. Much of the content of this page is from "Seattle: Booms and Busts", by Emmett Shear, who has granted blanket permission for material from that paper to be reused in Wikipedia. exists on the Port of Seattle Terminal 107 site, located on the Western bank of the Duwamish River. However, the plan was defeated by an alliance of fiscal conservatives who opposed such a purportedly grandiose plan on general principles and populists who argued that the plan would mainly benefit the rich. Each unemployed Boeing employee cost at least one other job, and unemployment rose to 14%, the highest in the United States. At the combined Todd Shipyards/Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding operation, 33,000 men and women worked in Tacoma to build five freighters, two transports, 37 escort carriers, five gasoline tankers, and three destroyer tenders. On January 4, 1954, the City of Seattle annexes a 10-square-mile area north of N 85th Street to N 145th Street and between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Loaded coal wagons near Spokane Street Bridge, 1919 In 1979, Bill Gates (1955–) and Paul Allen (1954–2018), founders of Microsoft, moved their small company from New Mexico to the suburbs of their native Seattle. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Cascadia’s commercial importance continues to grow substantially each year. The current metro area population of Seattle in 2021 is 3,461,000, a 0.82% increase from 2020. AA's also found work as non-military government employees. The Industrial Workers of the World played a prominent role in the strike. Seattle Parcel Data Use this search tool to find parcel information, including a simple parcel map, for a selected parcel within the Seattle city limits. Perhaps it's not surprising that a company known for doing so many things at a grand scale won't confine its headquarters to city limits. Bandleader Vic Meyers and others kept the speakeasies jumping through the Prohibition era, and by mid-century the thriving jazz scene in the city's Skid Road district would launch the careers of such luminaries as Ray Charles and Quincy Jones. Search by Address Australian painter Ambrose Patterson arrived in 1919; over the next few decades Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Irving Anderson, and Paul Horiuchi would establish themselves as nationally and internationally known artists. Like other western cities in the United States, Seattle commands the resources of a broad hinterland, one that extends far east to the Great Plains of Montana. [31], Seattle's bid for the world stage by hosting the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 did not play out as planned. This was a significant action in support of our Vision Zero efforts to end traffic deaths and serious injuries. A new zoning code resulted in a downtown of brick and stone buildings, rather than wood. Started by a glue pot, the fire burned 29 city blocks (almost entirely wooden buildings; about 10 brick buildings also burned). The metro area population of Seattle in 2019 was 3,406,000, a 0.8% increase from 2018. Building a home was far more important than building a place to play. However, this period of stagnation soon ended with the rise of the jet aircraft and Boeing's reincarnation as the world's leading producer of commercial passenger planes. Coon Chicken Inn: North Seattle’s Beacon of Bigotry by Catherine Roth. Seattle grew rapidly at the end of 20th century, aided in its expansion by the arrival of workers—many of them highly skilled and educated—from around the world but also from recession-prone southern California. [14], As a major port Seattle depended heavily on its waterfront. Not only the labor left, but also progressives calling for "good government" challenged the hegemony of the captains of industry. Many of Seattle's neighborhoods got their start around this time. The reason for this lies in Tacoma's nature as a company town and Seattle's successful avoidance of that condition. He either owned or partially owned Seattle's first timber ships. The town marshal and deputies enforced this law. Gold was discovered in August 1896 in the Klondike region of Canada.