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Seattle Tidbits
In 1851, pioneers first arrived in the area currently known as Seattle. They established a settlement known as New York. However, it wasn't long before they relocated the short distance across Elliott Bay to what is currently known as historic Pioneer Square district, where a deep water, protected harbor was available. Soon this settlement was renamed to Seattle, after a Duwamish Indian leader who had befriended them, named Sealth.
A man named Henry Yesler owned a lumber mill, which became the primary economic support for the settlement. Although the mill did supply some of the fledgling settlements around the Puget Sound area, much of the production of the lumber mill went to the thriving community of San Francisco. The development if the settlement was briefly interrupted during the Indian war in the winter of 1856. However, the year 1869 brought the incorporation of Seattle, which had a population of over 2000 people.
In spite of coal being discovered close to Lake Washington, the 1870's were relatively quiet. During the early 1870's, the Northern Pacific Railway Company announced that the western terminus of its transcontinental railroad would be at Tacoma, which was some 40 miles south of Seattle. Seattle managed to forge a connection with Northern Pacific, in spite the disappointment of local leaders, shortly after the line was completed in 1883. Although the growth of shipping, shipbuilding, and fishing contributed to the population growth and economic expansion. Coal and lumber were the primary industries. This growth was slowed, but not stopped in 1889, when a devastating fire leveled all of the structures on 116 acres in the center of the business district of the community. Although the property damage ran into the millions of dollars, nobody died in the fire.
The fire did little to dampen the enthusiasm for Seattle. The fact is that it offered the opportunity for massive municipal improvements, such as a a professional fire department, municipal waterworks, reconstructed wharves, and regraded and widened streets. In the district that was burned, new construction was required to be of steel or brick.
In spite of the arrival of the Great Northern Railroad in 1893, the 1890's weren't so prosperous. However, the discovery of gold in 1897 close to the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory in Alaska and Canada once again made Seattle an instant boom town. The community exploited its already established shipping lines and closeness to the Klondike to become the premier outfitting point for prospectors.
During the early 1900's, Seattle, continued to experience strong growth. Two more transcontinental railroads, arrived in Seattle and reinforced the position of the community as a shipping and trade center, especially with the North Pacific and Asia.
The population of the community became increasingly diversified. Japanese operated hotels and truck gardens. African Americans worked as railroad porters and waiters, and Scandinavians worked in lumbering and fishing. There were considerable communities of Jews, Italians, Filipinos, and Chinese.
The shipbuilding industry in Seattle, was transformed by WW I. During the war, the industry turned out 20% of the wartime ship tonnage in the country. Seattle also had a reputation for a boom-and-bust economy. The 1920's brought depressed conditions in the lumber and shipbuilding trades. The Great Depression of the 1930's struck Seattle especially hard, and lean-to and shacks that housed some 1,000 unemployed men became established at an abandoned shipbuilding yard just south of Pioneer Square.
The economy rebounded with the onset of WW II as shipyards flourished again. A modestly successful aircraft manufacturer that was established in 1916, known as the Boeing Company, increased its workforce by over 1,200% and its sales increased to $600 Million from $10 million annually during the war years. However, the end of the war brought an economic slump to the region that persisted until the middle 1950's.
There was an additional burst of municipal optimism, when Boeing introduced the 707 commercial jet airliner successfully during the late 1950's. Seattle was also the host of the world's Fair in 1962, known as the futuristic Century 21 Exposition. The fair left the city a permanent legacy in the Seattle Center and its complex of entertainment, sports, and performance as well as the Space Needle, the Monorail, and the Pacific Science Center.
Seattle has always exhibited a spirit of self-promotion, enterprise, and optimism. This was institutionalized as The Seattle Spirit at one time, which was a movement that allowed the community to virtually construct the largest manmade island in the world at the mouth of the Duwamish River, to connect Puget Sound and Lake Washington with a canal and locks, and to move mountains by washing down high hills to improve building locations. Most recently, this spirit can be credited with accomplishments such as the Forward Thrust program of the 1970's, which constructed many different parks and the Kingdome arena throughout the community.
Seattle is proud of its downtown art museum, it many live theaters, as well as its cultural and arts institutions. It is also proud of the Pike Place market, its collegiate and professional sports, its parks, and most of all, the beauty of its surroundings. Seattle is also a community of homes that has many who are homeless, as well as a community that wants great growth but demands that the setting somehow remain untouched.
