Tourist information -
Seattle
Seattle is a city in west central Washington and seat of King County. Seattle is located between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. The most populous city in the state, Seattle is built on a series of hills and is noted for its fine scenery. Lake Union, Lake Washington, and Green Lake lie within the city limits. The mountains of Olympic National Park rise to the west, and the Cascade Range, which includes Mount Rainier, is to the east. Commercial and manufacturing establishments occupy sites along the coast of Elliott Bay and in the south along the Duwamish River. Residential districts crown the city's hills.
Native Americans, including the Snohomish and the Suquamish, lived in the area before Seattle was founded. In 1852 a white settlement, established the previous year at Alki Point, was moved to the present-day site of downtown Seattle; the city was named for Suquamish leader Chief Sealth. A sawmill was constructed at Seattle in 1853, and exploitation of the rich local timber resources began. Seattle was incorporated as a city in 1869. Chinese workers began to arrive in the 1860s, and by the mid-1880s their population exceeded 500. Fears that cheap immigrant labor would cost whites their jobs resulted in anti-Chinese riots, and many Chinese were driven from town. A fire leveled the old downtown on June 6, 1889, but the area was reconstructed, and Pioneer Square still contains many buildings from this period. Seattle served as a gateway to, and a supply center for, the Yukon and Alaska gold rushes of the 1890s, and its population swelled from 37,000 in 1889 to 237,000 in 1910. Four transcontinental railroads served the city by 1910, and trade was further stimulated by the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and the Lake Washington Ship Canal a few years later. By this time Seattle had a diverse population. A large Scandinavian community was centered in the fisheries-oriented Ballard area, and many people of Japanese and Chinese descent worked in the agricultural lands of the Duwamish and Green river valleys.
World War I (1914-1918) stimulated the growth of port activities in Seattle. In February 1919, Seattle shipworkers striking for increased wages were joined by the city's other trade unions, creating a three-day general strike. The region's economy has been dominated by the aerospace industry since World War II (1939-1945), when defense plants produced thousands of military aircraft. The Boeing Company has operated in the area since 1916; in the 1950s the company developed the 707 commercial jet-powered plane that permanently changed civilian air travel. Beginning in the 1980s the city's economy diversified through the rapid expansion of companies creating computer software, led by Microsoft Corporation, based in a Seattle suburb. The city hosted the Goodwill Games in 1990. In 1993 Seattle was the site of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) annual Ministerial Meeting. |
