Seattle Lushootseed: dᶻidᶻəlal̕ič
City
Downtown Seattle skyline with Mount Rainier in the background Space Needle and Climate Pledge Arena, with the Olympic Mountains in the background Seattle Great Wheel Pike Place Market Amazon Spheres
Flag Seal Wordmark
Nickname(s):  The Emerald City, Jet City, Rain City
Motto(s):  The City of Flowers, The City of Goodwill
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Coordinates: 47°36′35″N 122°19′59″W / 47.60972°N 122.33306°W / 47.60972; -122.33306
Country	United States
State	Washington
County	King
Founded	November 13, 1851 (1851-11-13)[a]
Incorporated as a town	January 14, 1865 (1865-01-14)
Incorporated as a city	December 2, 1869 (1869-12-02)
Named for	Chief Si'ahl
Government
• Type	Mayor–council
• Body	Seattle City Council
• Mayor	Bruce Harrell (D)
Area [1]
• City	142.07 sq mi (367.97 km2)
• Land	83.99 sq mi (217.54 km2)
• Water	58.08 sq mi (150.43 km2)
• Metro	8,186 sq mi (21,202 km2)
Elevation [citation needed]	175 ft (53 m)
Highest elevation	520 ft (158 m)
Lowest elevation	0 ft (0 m)
Population  (2020)[2]
• City	737,015
• Estimate  (2023)[2]	755,078
• Rank	58th in North America 19th in the United States 1st in Washington
• Density	8,775.03/sq mi (3,387.95/km2)
• Urban [3]	3,544,011 (US: 13th)
• Urban density	3,607.1/sq mi (1,392.7/km2)
• Metro [4]	4,018,762 (US: 15th)
Demonym	Seattleite[5] or Seattlite[6]
GDP [7]
• Seattle (MSA)	US$517.803 billion (2022)
Time zone	UTC−8 (PST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−7 (PDT)
ZIP Codes	ZIP Codes[8][9] 98101–98119, 98121–98122, 98124–98127, 98129, 98131, 98133–98134, 98136, 98138–98139, 98141, 98144–98146, 98148, 98154–98155, 98158, 98160–98161, 98164–98166, 98168, 98170, 98174–98175, 98177–98178, 98181, 98185, 98188, 98190–98191, 98194–98195, 98198–98199
Area code	206
FIPS code	53-63000
GNIS feature ID	1512650[10]
Website	www.seattle.gov
ASN	3401

Seattle (/siˈætəl/ ^ⓘ see-AT-əl) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2023 population of 755,078^[2] it is the most populous city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America, and the 19th-most populous city in the United States. The Seattle metropolitan area's population is 4.02 million, making it the 15th-largest in the United States.^[11] Its growth rate of 21.1% between 2010 and 2020 made it one of the country's fastest-growing large cities.^[12]

Seattle is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington. It is the northernmost major city in the United States, located about 100 miles (160 km) south of the Canadian border. A gateway for trade with East Asia, the Port of Seattle is the fourth-largest port in North America in terms of container handling as of 2021^[update].^[13]

The Seattle area has been inhabited by Native Americans (such as the Duwamish, who had at least 17 villages around Elliot Bay) for at least 4,000 years before the first permanent European settlers.^[14] Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers, subsequently known as the Denny Party, arrived from Illinois via Portland, Oregon, on the schooner Exact at Alki Point on November 13, 1851.^[15] The settlement was moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay in 1852 and named "Seattle" in honor of Chief Seattle, a prominent 19th-century leader of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. Seattle currently has high populations of Native Americans alongside Americans with strong Asian, African, European, and Scandinavian ancestry, and, as of 2015, hosts the fifth-largest LGBT community in the U.S.^[16]

Logging was Seattle's first major industry, but by the late 19th century the city had become a commercial and shipbuilding center as a gateway to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. The city grew after World War II, partly due to the local Boeing company, which established Seattle as a center for its manufacturing of aircraft.

Beginning in the 1980s, the Seattle area developed into a technology center; Microsoft established its headquarters in the region. In 1994, Internet retailer Amazon was founded in Seattle, and Alaska Airlines is based in SeaTac, Washington, serving Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, Seattle's international airport. The stream of new software, biotechnology, and Internet companies led to an economic revival, which increased the city's population by almost 50,000 in the decade between 1990 and 2000.

The culture of Seattle is heavily defined by its significant musical history. Between 1918 and 1951, nearly 24 jazz nightclubs existed along Jackson Street, from the current Chinatown/International District to the Central District. The jazz scene nurtured the early careers of Ernestine Anderson, Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, and others. In the late 20th and early 21st century, the city also was the origin of several rock bands, including Foo Fighters, Heart, and Jimi Hendrix, and the subgenre of grunge and its pioneering bands, including Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and others.^[17]

History

Archaeological excavations suggest that Native Americans have inhabited the Seattle area for at least 4,000 years.^[14] By the time the first European settlers arrived, the Duwamish people occupied at least 17 villages in the areas around Elliott Bay.^[18][19][20] The name for the modern city of Seattle in Lushootseed, dᶻidᶻəlal̓ič, meaning "little crossing-over place", comes from one of these villages, which was located at the present-day King Street Station.^[21][22]

In May 1792, George Vancouver was the first European to visit the Seattle area during his 1791–1795 expedition for the Royal Navy, which sought to chart the Pacific Northwest for the British.^[23]

19th century

In 1851, a large party of American pioneers led by Luther Collins made a location on land at the mouth of the Duwamish River; they formally claimed it on September 14, 1851.^[25] Thirteen days later, members of the Collins Party on the way to their claim passed three scouts of the Denny Party.^[26] Members of the Denny Party claimed land on Alki Point on September 28, 1851.^[27] The rest of the Denny Party set sail on the schooner Exact from Portland, Oregon, stopping in Astoria, and landed at Alki Point during a rainstorm on November 13, 1851.^[27] After a difficult winter, most of the Denny Party relocated across Elliott Bay and claimed land a second time at the site of present-day Pioneer Square,^[27] naming this new settlement Duwamps.^[28]

Charles Terry and John Low remained at the original landing location, reestablished their old land claim and called it "New York", but renamed "New York Alki" in April 1853, from a Chinook word meaning, roughly, "by and by" or "someday".^[29][30] For the next few years, New York Alki and Duwamps competed for dominance, but in time Alki was abandoned and its residents moved across the bay to join the rest of the settlers.^[31]

David Swinson "Doc" Maynard, one of the founders of Duwamps, was the primary advocate to name the settlement Seattle after Chief Seattle (Lushootseed: siʔaɫ, anglicized as "Seattle"), chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.^[32][33][34]

The name "Seattle" appears on official Washington Territory papers dated May 23, 1853, when the first plats for the village were filed. In 1855, nominal land settlements were established. On January 14, 1865, the Legislature of Territorial Washington incorporated the Town of Seattle with a board of trustees managing the city. The Town of Seattle was disincorporated on January 18, 1867, and remained a mere precinct of King County until late 1869, when a new petition was filed and the city was re-incorporated December 2, 1869, with a mayor–council government.^[27][35] The corporate seal of the City of Seattle carries the date "1869" and a likeness of Chief Seattle in left profile.^[36] That same year, Seattle acquired the epithet of the "Queen City", a designation officially changed in 1982 to the "Emerald City".^[37]

Seattle has a history of boom-and-bust cycles, like many other cities near areas of extensive natural and mineral resources. Seattle has risen several times economically, then gone into precipitous decline, but it has typically used those periods to rebuild solid infrastructure.^[38]

The first such boom, covering the early years of the city, rode on the lumber industry. During this period the road now known as Yesler Way won the nickname "Skid Road", supposedly after the timber skidding down the hill to Henry Yesler's sawmill. The later dereliction of the area may be a possible origin for the term which later entered the wider American lexicon as Skid Row.^[39] Like much of the U.S. West, Seattle experienced onflicts between labor and management and ethnic tensions that culminated in the anti-Chinese riots of 1885–1886.^[40] This violence originated with unemployed whites who were determined to drive the Chinese from Seattle; anti-Chinese riots also occurred in Tacoma.

Seattle had achieved sufficient economic success when the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 destroyed the central business district. However, a far grander city center rapidly emerged in its place.^[41] Finance company Washington Mutual, for example, was founded in the immediate wake of the fire.^[42] The Panic of 1893 hit Seattle hard.^[43]

The second and most dramatic boom resulted from the Klondike Gold Rush, which ended the depression that had begun with the Panic of 1893. In a short time, Seattle became a major transportation center. On July 14, 1897, the S.S. Portland docked with its famed "ton of gold", and Seattle became the main transport and supply point for the miners in Alaska and the Yukon. Few of those working men found lasting wealth. However, it was Seattle's business of clothing the miners and feeding them salmon that panned out in the long run. Along with Seattle, other cities like Everett, Tacoma, Port Townsend, Bremerton, and Olympia, all in the Puget Sound region, became competitors for exchange, rather than mother lodes for extraction, of precious metals.^[44]

A September 1870 engraving of Seattle published in Harper's Magazine

20th century

The boom lasted into the early part of the 20th century, and funded many new Seattle companies and products. In 1907, 19-year-old James E. Casey borrowed $100 from a friend and founded the American Messenger Company (later UPS). Other Seattle companies founded during this period include Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer.^[42] Seattle brought in the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm to design a system of parks and boulevards.^[45]

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.^[46]

A shipbuilding boom in the early part of the 20th century became massive during World War I, making Seattle somewhat of a company town. The subsequent retrenchment led to the Seattle General Strike of 1919, an early general strike in the country.^[47] A 1912 city development plan by Virgil Bogue went largely unused. Seattle was mildly prosperous in the 1920s but 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.^[48]

The Great Depression in Seattle affected many minority groups, one being the Asian Pacific Americans; they were subject to racism, loss of property, and failed claims of unemployment due to citizenship status.^[49]

Seattle was one of the major cities that benefited from programs such as the Works Progress Administration, CCC, Public Works Administration, and others.^[50][51] The workers, mostly men, built roads, parks, dams, schools, railroads, bridges, docks, and even historical and archival record sites and buildings. Seattle faced significant unemployment, loss of lumber and construction industries as Los Angeles prevailed as the bigger West Coast city. Seattle had building contracts that rivaled New York City and Chicago, but also lost to Los Angeles. Seattle's eastern farm land faded due to Oregon's and the Midwest's, forcing people into town.^[52][53]

Hooverville arose during the Depression, leading to Seattle's growing homeless population. Stationed outside Seattle, the Hooverville housed thousands of men but very few children and no women. With work projects close to the city, Hooverville grew and the WPA settled into the city.^[54]

A movement of women arose from Seattle during the Great Depression, fueled in part by Eleanor Roosevelt's 1933 book It's Up to the Women; women pushed for recognition, not just as housewives, but as the backbone to family. Using newspapers and journals Working Woman and The Woman Today, women pushed to be seen as equal and receive some recognition.^[55]

The Great Depression did not impact the University of Washington negatively. As schools across Washington lost funding and attendance, the university actually prospered during the time period as they focused on growing their student enrollment. While Seattle public schools were influenced by Washington's superintendent Worth McClure,^[56] they still struggled to pay teachers and maintain attendance.^[57]

Seattle was the home base of impresario Alexander Pantages who, starting in 1902, opened a number of theaters in the city exhibiting vaudeville acts and silent movies. He went on to become one of America's greatest theater and movie tycoons. Scottish-born architect B. Marcus Priteca designed several theaters for Pantages in Seattle, which were later demolished or converted to other uses. Seattle's surviving Paramount Theatre, on which he collaborated, was not a Pantages theater.^[58]

War work again brought local prosperity during World War II, centered on the production of Boeing aircraft. The war dispersed the city's numerous Japanese-American businessmen due to the Japanese American internment. After the World War II, however, the local economy dipped. It rose again with Boeing's growing dominance in the commercial airliner market.^[59] Seattle celebrated its restored prosperity and made a bid for world recognition with the Century 21 Exposition, the 1962 World's Fair, for which the Space Needle was built.^[60]

Another major local economic downturn was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when Boeing was heavily affected by the oil crises, loss of government contracts, and costs and delays associated with the Boeing 747. Many people left the area to look for work elsewhere, and two local real estate agents put up a billboard reading "Will the last person leaving Seattle – Turn out the lights."^[61]

Seattle remained the corporate headquarters of Boeing until 2001, when the company separated its headquarters from its major production facilities; the headquarters were moved to Chicago.^[62] The Seattle area is still home to Boeing's Renton narrow-body plant and Everett wide-body plant.^[63] The company's credit union for employees, BECU, remains based in the Seattle area and has been open to all residents of Washington since 2002.^[64]

On March 20, 1970, twenty-eight people were killed when the Ozark Hotel was burned by an unknown arsonist.^[65] The Wah Mee massacre in 1983 resulted in the killing of 13 people in an illegal gambling club in the Seattle Chinatown-International District.^[66]

Prosperity began to return in the 1980s beginning with Microsoft's 1979 move from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to nearby Bellevue, Washington.^[67]

Seattle and its suburbs became home to a number of technology companies, including Amazon, F5 Networks, RealNetworks, Nintendo of America, and T-Mobile.^[68] This success brought an influx of new residents with a population increase within city limits of almost 50,000 between 1990 and 2000,^[69] and saw Seattle's real estate become some of the most expensive in the country.^[70]

Seattle in this period attracted attention as home to the companies opened operations in or around the city. In 1990, the Goodwill Games were held in the city.^[71] Three years later, in 1993, the APEC leaders was hosted in Seattle.^[72] The 1990s also witnessed a growing popularity in grunge music, a sound that was largely developed in Seattle's independent music scene.^[73]

In 1993, the movie Sleepless in Seattle brought the city further national attention,^[74] as did the television sitcom Frasier. The dot-com boom caused a great frenzy among the technology companies in Seattle but the bubble ended in early 2001.^[75][76]

In 1999, the World Trade Organization held its conference in Seattle, which was met with protest activity. The protests and police reactions to them largely overshadowed the conference itself.^[77]

21st century

In 2001, the city was impacted by the Mardi Gras Riots and then by the Nisqually earthquake the following day.^[78]

Another boom began as the city emerged from the Great Recession which commenced when Amazon.com moved its headquarters from North Beacon Hill to South Lake Union. This initiated a historic construction boom which resulted in the completion of almost 10,000 apartments in Seattle in 2017, which is more than any previous year and nearly twice as many as were built in 2016.^[79][80]

Beginning in 2010, and for the next five years, Seattle gained an average of 14,511 residents per year, with the growth strongly skewed toward the center of the city,^[81] as unemployment dropped from roughly 9 percent to 3.6 percent.^[82] The city has found itself "bursting at the seams", with over 45,000 households spending more than half their income on housing and at least 2,800 people homeless, and with the country's sixth-worst rush hour traffic.^[82]

Geography

Topography

Seattle is located between the saltwater Puget Sound (an arm of the Pacific Ocean) to the west and Lake Washington to the east. The city's chief harbor, Elliott Bay, is part of Puget Sound, which makes the city an oceanic port. To the west, beyond Puget Sound, are the Kitsap Peninsula and Olympic Mountains on the Olympic Peninsula; to the east, beyond Lake Washington and the Eastside suburbs, are Lake Sammamish and the Cascade Range. Lake Washington's waters flow to Puget Sound through the Lake Washington Ship Canal (consisting of two man-made canals, Lake Union, and the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks at Salmon Bay, ending in Shilshole Bay on Puget Sound).^{[citation needed]}

The sea, rivers, forests, lakes, and fields surrounding Seattle were once rich enough to support one of the world's few sedentary hunter-gatherer societies. The surrounding area lends itself well to sailing, skiing, bicycling, camping, and hiking year-round.^[83][84]

The city is hilly in some places.^[85] Like Rome, the city is said to lie on seven hills;^[86] the lists vary but typically include Capitol Hill, First Hill, West Seattle, Beacon Hill, Queen Anne, Magnolia, and the former Denny Hill. The Wallingford, Delridge, Mount Baker, Seward Park, Washington Park, Broadmoor, Madrona, Phinney Ridge, Sunset Hill, Blue Ridge, Broadview, Laurelhurst, Hawthorne Hills, Maple Leaf, and Crown Hill neighborhoods are all located on hills. Many of the hilliest areas are near the city center, with Capitol Hill, First Hill, and Beacon Hill collectively constituting something of a ridge along an isthmus between Elliott Bay and Lake Washington.^[87] The break in the ridge between First Hill and Beacon Hill is man-made, the result of two of the many regrading projects that reshaped the topography of the city center.^[88] The topography of the city center was also changed by the construction of a seawall and the artificial Harbor Island (completed 1909) at the mouth of the city's industrial Duwamish Waterway, the terminus of the Green River. The highest point within city limits is at High Point in West Seattle, which is roughly located near 35th Ave SW and SW Myrtle St.

North of the city center, Lake Washington Ship Canal connects Puget Sound to Lake Washington. It incorporates four natural bodies of water: Lake Union, Salmon Bay, Portage Bay, and Union Bay.^{[citation needed]}

Due to its location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Seattle is in a major earthquake zone. On February 28, 2001, the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake did significant architectural damage, especially in the Pioneer Square area (built on reclaimed land, as are the Industrial District and part of the city center), and caused one fatality.^[89] Other strong earthquakes occurred on January 26, 1700 (estimated at 9 magnitude), December 14, 1872 (7.3 or 7.4),^[90] April 13, 1949 (7.1),^[91] and April 29, 1965 (6.5).^[92] The 1965 quake caused three deaths in Seattle directly and one more by heart failure.^[92] Although the Seattle Fault passes just south of the city center, neither it^[93] nor the Cascadia subduction zone has caused an earthquake since the city's founding. The Cascadia subduction zone poses the threat of an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 or greater, capable of seriously damaging the city and collapsing many buildings, especially in zones built on fill.^[94]

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 142.5 square miles (369 km²),^[95] 84 square miles (220 km²) of which is land and 58.1 square miles (150 km²), water (41% of the total area).^[1]

Cityscape

A Seattle skyline view from Queen Anne Hill, including Space Needle, Climate Pledge Arena, Mount Rainier, Elliott Bay, and the Port of Seattle on Puget Sound

Climate

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Seattle has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Csb),^[96][97][98] while under the Trewartha system, it is labeled as an oceanic climate (Do).^[99][100] It has cool, wet winters and mild, relatively dry summers, covering characteristics of both.^[101][102] The climate is sometimes characterized as a "modified Mediterranean" climate because it is cooler and wetter than a "true" Mediterranean climate, but shares the characteristic dry summer (which has a strong influence on the region's vegetation).^[103]

Temperature extremes are moderated by the adjacent Puget Sound, greater Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington. Thus extreme heat waves are rare in the Seattle area, as are very cold temperatures (below about 15 °F; −9 °C). The Seattle area is the cloudiest region of the United States, due in part to frequent storms and lows moving in from the adjacent Pacific Ocean. With many more "rain days" than other major American cities, Seattle has a well-earned reputation for frequent rain.^[104] In an average year, at least 0.01 inches (0.25 mm) of precipitation falls on 150 days, more than nearly all U.S. cities east of the Rocky Mountains.^[105] However, because it often has merely a light drizzle falling from the sky for many days, Seattle actually receives significantly less rainfall (or other precipitation) overall than many other U.S. cities like New York City, Miami, or Houston. Seattle is cloudy 201 days out of the year and partly cloudy 93 days.^[106]