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| On a clear day, visitors to Kerry Park can see the Space Needle, the Downtown Seattle skyline, and Mount Rainier (to the right). | thumb Howard Dean and Vanna White have both caught the "flying fish" at the Pike Place Market, one of Seattle's most popular tourist destinations. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Seattle is the largest city in the U.S. state of Washington, and in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, with a total estimated population of 569,101 as of 2003. It is situated between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, about 108 miles (180 km) south of the Canadian border, in King County, of which it is the county seat.
Seattle is sometimes referred to as the "rainy city", even though it gets less rain than many other U.S. cities (see the Climate section). It has also been called Jet City, due to the heavy influence of Boeing. Its official nickname is the Emerald City. Seattle is known as the home of grunge music, has a reputation for heavy coffee consumption, and was the site of the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization shut down by demonstrators.
Seattle residents and people who come from there are known as Seattleites.
See main article History of Seattle
Major events in Seattle's history include the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, which destroyed the central business district (but took no lives); the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, which is largely responsible for the current layout of the University of Washington campus; the Seattle General Strike of 1919, the first general strike in the country; the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, a World's Fair; the 1990 Goodwill Games; and the WTO Meeting of 1999, shut down by street protests and rioting.
Most of the Denny Party, the most prominent of the area's early white settlers, arrived at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. They relocated their settlement to Elliott Bay in April, 1852. The first plats for the Town of Seattle were filed on May 23, 1853. The city was incorporated in 1869, after having existed as an incorporated town from 1865 to 1867.
Seattle was named after Noah Sealth, chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes, better known as Chief Seattle. David Swinson ("Doc") Maynard, one of the city founders, was the primary advocate for naming the city after Chief Seattle. Previously, the city had been known as Duwamps (or Duwumps)—a variation of that name is preserved in the name of Seattle's Duwamish River.
Seattle has a history of boom and bust, or at least boom and quiescence. Seattle has almost been sent into permanent decline by the aftermaths of its worst periods as a company town, but has typically used those periods to successfully rebuild infrastructure.
The first such boom was the lumber-industry boom, followed by the construction of an Olmsted-designed park system. Arguably the Klondike Gold Rush constituted a separate, shorter boom.
Next came the shipbuilding boom, followed by the unused city development plan of Virgil Bogue.
The Boeing boom, followed by general infrastructure building. Seattle was home to Boeing until 2001, when the company announced a desire to separate its headquarters from its major production facilities. Following a bidding war in which several cities offered huge tax breaks, Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago, Illinois. The Seattle area is still home to Boeing's commercial airplanes division, several Boeing plants, and the Boeing Employees Credit Union (BECU).
Most recently, the boom centered around Microsoft and other software, Internet, and telecommunications companies, such as Amazon.com, RealNetworks, and AT&T Wireless. Although some of these companies remain relatively strong, the boom definitely ended in 2000.
The Space Needle is possibly Seattle's most famous landmark, featured in the logo of the television show Frasier, and dating from the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, a World's Fair. The Seattle monorail line constructed for the Exposition still exists today between Seattle Center and Downtown, though the trains have been idle since spring 2004 due to a Memorial Day fire.
Other famous landmarks include the Smith Tower, Pike Place Market, the Fremont Troll, the Experience Music Project, the new Seattle Central Library, and the Bank of America Tower, which is the fourth tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi River and the twelfth tallest in the nation. (On June 16, 2004, the 9/11 Commission reported that the original plan for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks included the Bank of America Tower as one of ten targeted buildings.)
Among Seattle's best-known annual cultural events and fairs are the 24-day Seattle International Film Festival, Northwest Folklife over the Memorial Day weekend, numerous Seafair events throughout the summer months (ranging from a Bon Odori celebration to hydroplane races), the Bite of Seattle, and Bumbershoot over the Labor Day weekend. All are typically attended by over 100,000 people annually, as are Hempfest and two separate Independence Day celebrations.
Several dozen Seattle neighborhoods have one or more annual street fair s, and many have an annual parade or foot race. The largest of the street fairs feature hundreds of craft and food booths and multiple stages with live entertainment, and draw more than 100,000 people over the course of a weekend; the smallest are strictly neighborhood affairs with a few dozen craft and food booths, barely distinguishable from more prominent neighborhoods' weekly farmers' markets.
Other significant events include numerous Native American pow-wows, a Greek Festival hosted by St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Montlake, and numerous ethnic festivals associated with Festal at Seattle Center.
As in most large cities, there are numerous other annual events of more limited interest, ranging from book fair s and specialized film festivals to a two-day, 8,000-rider Seattle-to- Portland bicycle ride.
Seattle is a significant center of the performing arts. The century-old Seattle Symphony Orchestra is among the world's most-recorded orchestras. The Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet are comparably distinguished, with the Opera being particularly known for its performances of the works of Richard Wagner and the PNB School (founded in 1974) ranking as one of the top three ballet training institutions in the United States.
In addition, Seattle has about twenty live theater venues, a slim majority of them being associated with fringe theater . It has a strong local scene for poetry slam s and other performance poetry, and several venues that routinely present public lectures or readings. The largest of these is Seattle's 900-seat, Roman Revival Town Hall on First Hill.
In popular music, Seattle is often thought of mainly as the home of grunge rock, but it is also home to such varied musicians as avant-garde jazz musicians Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz, rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot, and such poppier rock bands as Goodness and the Presidents of the United States of America.
Being so much younger than the cities of Europe and the eastern U.S., Seattle has a lower profile in terms of art museums than it does in the performing arts. It is nonetheless home to five major art museums and galleries: Consolidated Works, the Frye Art Museum, the Henry Art Gallery, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Several Seattle museums and cultural institutions that are not specifically art museums also have excellent art collections, most notably the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, which has an excellent collection of Native American artwork.
Seattle is also home to well over 100 commercial art galleries, at least a dozen non-profit art galleries, and perhaps a hundred artists' studios that are open to the public at least once a month. About half of these galleries and studios are concentrated in one neighborhood, Pioneer Square.
There are a number of other museums in Seattle. The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, on the campus of the University of Washington, has a large collection of botanical, zoological, and geologic specimens in addition to its anthropology collection, which concentrates on Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest but covers the rest of the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific Islands as well. Residents and visitors interested in history, industry, and transporation are served by the Center for Wooden Boats, a maritime heritage museum on Lake Union; the Museum of Flight, which incorporates Boeing's original manufacturing plant; and the Museum of History and Industry, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. The Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard honors Seattle's Scandinavian immigrants, and the Seattle Metropolitan Police Museum in Pioneer Square honors its police force. And on the campus of Seattle Center are located the Pacific Science Center and Paul Allen's Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.
The Seattle Aquarium is located on the Elliott Bay waterfront, and the Woodland Park Zoo is on Phinney Ridge in north Seattle.
United Indians of All Tribes operates the Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Discovery Park.See main article Education in Seattle.
36% of Seattle's population over 25 holds a bachelor's degree or higher; 93% have a high school diploma or equivalent.
Postsecondary education in Seattle is dominated by the University of Washington. It has over 36,000 students, making it the largest university in the Pacific Northwest. Most prominent of the city's other universities are Seattle University, a Jesuit school, and Seattle Pacific University, founded by the Free Methodists. There are also a handful of smaller schools, mainly in the fine arts and business and psychology. Seattle is also served by North Seattle, Seattle Central, and South Seattle Community Colleges.
The public school system, Seattle Public Schools, is supplemented by a number of private schools: four of the high schools are Catholic, one is Lutheran, and six are secular.
See main article Media in Seattle.
Seattle's leading newspapers are the daily Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the weekly Stranger and Seattle Weekly. It is also served by several ethnic newspapers and numerous neighborhood newspapers.
It is also well served by television and radio. Its major network television affiliates are KOMO 4 ( ABC), KING 5 ( NBC), and KIRO 7 ( CBS). Leading radio stations include KIRO-AM 710, KOMO-AM 1000, KUOW-FM 94.9, KNHC-FM C-89.5, and KEXP-FM 90.3.
Seattle is also well served medically. Hospitals in the community include Swedish Medical Center / Ballard; the VA Puget Sound Health Care System's Seattle Division on Beacon Hill; the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Cascade ; Group Health Central Hospital and Family Health Center on Capitol Hill; Northwest Hospital and Medical Center in Haller Lake; Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Laurelhurst ; the University of Washington Medical Center in the University District; and Swedish Medical Center/First Hill, Swedish Medical Center/Providence, Virginia Mason Medical Center , and Harborview Medical Center on First Hill. Harborview, the county hospital, is the only Level I trauma hospital serving Alaska, Washington, Idaho, and Montana.
First Hill is also known as "Pill Hill" because, in addition to being the current home of Harborview, Swedish, and Virginia Mason, it was also once the location of the Providence, Maynard, Seattle General, and Doctors Hospitals (all of which merged into Swedish) and Cabrini Hospital. On June 14, 2004, it was announced that Swedish Medical Center and Northwest Hospital and Medical Center planned to merge. This would leave Swedish and Virginia Mason as the only operators of private, adult, full-service (i.e., ER and inpatient surgery) hospitals in the city.In addition, Seattle was a pioneer in the development of modern paramedic services with the establishment of Medic One in 1970. A 60 Minutes story on the success of Medic One that aired in 1974 called Seattle "the best place in the world to have a heart attack." Some accounts report that Puyallup, a city south of Seattle, was the first place west of the Mississippi River to have 911 emergency telephone service.
Numerous professional sports teams play in Seattle. Most prominent are the Seattle Mariners ( baseball), the Seattle Seahawks ( football), and the Seattle SuperSonics ( basketball). The Seattle Storm ( women's basketball), the Seattle Thunderbirds ( hockey), and the Seattle Sounders ( men's and women's soccer) also call Seattle home.
In addition, the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Seattle Pacific University field teams in a variety of sports, most notably football and basketball.
As of the November 2003 elections, the mayor of Seattle is Greg Nickels, and the members of the Seattle City Council are Jean Godden, Richard Conlin, Peter Steinbrueck, Jan Drago, Tom Rasmussen, Nick Licata, David Della, Richard McIver, and Jim Compton. The mayor and all the councilmembers are Democrats, though all the offices are nonpartisan.
Seattle's politics lean famously to the left compared to the U.S. as a whole. In this regard, it sits with a small set of similar U.S. cities (such as Madison, Wisconsin, Berkeley, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts) where the dominant politics tend to range from center-left to social democratic. Seattle politics are generally dominated by the liberal wing (in the U.S. sense of the word "liberal") of the Democratic Party; in some local elections, Greens (and even, on at least one occasion, a member of the Freedom Socialist Party) have fared better than Republicans. There do exist pockets of conservatism, especially in the north and in exclusive neighborhoods such as Broadmoor, and scattered Libertarians, but for the most part Seattle is a safely Democratic city, as exemplified by congressman Jim McDermott, who represents the Seventh Congressional District of Washington, made up of most of Seattle and also including semi-rural Vashon Island. McDermott has been reelected to his seat in every election since 1988, when he replaced fellow liberal Democrat Mike Lowry, who had held the seat since 1979. McDermott's weakest re-election result came in 2000, when no Republican ran; that year he received 72.8% of the vote, while Green candidate Joe Szwaja received 19.6% and Libertarian candidate Joel Grus received 7.6%. In 2002, when the Republicans replaced the Greens as the third party on the ballot, McDermott's vote share rose to 74.1%. [1]
Among Seattle's notable past politicians is Bertha Knight Landes, mayor from 1926 to 1928. She was the first woman mayor of a major American city, and the only female mayor of Seattle so far.
Another, Bailey Gatzert, was mayor from 1875 to 1876. He was the first Jewish mayor of Seattle, narrowly missed being the first Jewish mayor of a major American city (Moses Bloom became mayor of Iowa City, Iowa in 1873), and has been the only Jewish mayor of Seattle so far.
See List of mayors of Seattle for a list of Seattle's mayors going back to 1869.
See List of companies based in Seattle for a more detailed compilation.
Five companies on the 2003 Fortune 500 list of the United States' largest companies, based on total revenue, are currently headquartered in Seattle: financial services company Washington Mutual (#103), insurance company Safeco Corporation (#267), clothing merchant Nordstrom (#286), Internet retailer Amazon.com (#342) and coffee chain Starbucks (#425).
Many Seattle residents work for companies based outside of Seattle proper. Airplane manufacturer Boeing (#21) was the largest company based in Seattle before its 2001 move to Chicago. Because several production facilities remain in the region, Boeing is still a major Seattle employer.
Other Fortune 500 companies popularly associated with Seattle are based in nearby Puget Sound cities. Warehouse club chain Costco Wholesale Corp. (#29), the largest company in Washington state, is based in Issaquah. Microsoft (#46) and AT&T Wireless (#120) are based in Redmond. Weyerhaeuser, the forest products company (#95), is based in Federal Way. And Bellevue is home to truck manufacturer PACCAR (#250).
Mayor Greg Nickels has announced a desire to spark a new economic boom driven by the biotechnology industry. Major redevelopment of the South Lake Union neighborhood is underway in an effort to attract new and established biotech companies to the region, joining current biotech companies such as Corixa, Immunex (now part of Amgen), and ZymoGenetics. The effort has public support and some financial backing from Paul Allen.
Seattle is located between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. West beyond the Sound, Seattle faces the Olympic Mountains; across Lake Washington beyond the Eastside suburbs are the Issaquah Alps and the Cascade Range.
The city itself is hilly, though not uniformly so. Some of the hilliest areas are quite near the center, and Downtown rises rather dramatically away from the water. The geography of Downtown and its immediate environs has been significantly altered by regrading projects, a seawall, and the construction of an artificial island, Harbor Island, at the mouth of the city's industrial Duwamish Waterway.
The rivers, forests, lakes, and fields were once rich enough to support one of the world's few sedentary hunter-gatherer societies. Today, a ship canal passes through the city, incorporating Lake Union near the heart of the city and several other natural bodies of water, and connecting Puget Sound to Lake Washington. Opportunities for sailing, skiing, bicycling, camping, and hiking are close by and accessible almost all of the year.
An active geological fault, the Seattle Fault, runs under the city. It has not been the source of an earthquake during Seattle's existence; however, the city has been hit by four major earthquakes since its founding: December 14, 1872 ( magnitude 7.3); April 13, 1949 (7.1); April 29, 1965 (6.5); and February 28, 2001 (6.8). See also Nisqually Earthquake.
Seattle is located at 47°37'35" North, 122°19'59" West (47.626353, −122.333144) ¹.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 369.2 km² (142.5 mi²). 217.2 km² (83.9 mi²) of it is land and 152.0 km² (58.7 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 41.16% water.
See also Seattle neighborhoods, List of Seattle parks.
Seattle is located between Puget Sound on the west and Lake Washington on the east. It was founded on the harbor of Elliott Bay, home to the Port of Seattle—in 2002, the 9th busiest port in the United States by TEUs of container traffic[2] and the 46th busiest in the world.[3]
Seattle is divided in half by the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which connects Lake Washington to Puget Sound. From east to west, it incorporates Union Bay, the Montlake Cut, Portage Bay, Lake Union, the Fremont Cut, Salmon Bay, and Shilshole Bay. The southern half of Seattle is itself divided by the Duwamish River, which empties into the south end of Elliott Bay as the industrialized Duwamish Waterway.
In addition, Seattle contains three other lakes, all north of the Ship Canal: Bitter Lake, Haller Lake, and Green Lake.
Seattle is also home to a number of creeks. Those emptying into Puget Sound include Broadview Creek, Fauntleroy Creek, Longfellow Creek, and Piper's Creek; emptying into Lake Washington are Arboretum Creek, Ravenna Creek (via University Slough), and Thornton Creek. A map showing all of Seattle's streams and watersheds can be found here.
The main inlets of Puget Sound are Elliott Bay, Smith Cove, and Shilshole Bay; the main inlet of Lake Washington is Union Bay.
Seattle's climate is mild, with the temperature moderated by the sea and protected from winds and storms by the mountains. As previously noted, it is sometimes referred to as the "rainy city", but the rain the city is famous for is actually unremarkable; at 35–38 inches of precipitation a year, it's less than most major Eastern Seaboard cities and many other U.S. cities. (For comparison, New York City averages 47.3 inches.)
What makes Seattle seem so wet is the cloudiness that predominates from about late October well into spring, sometimes clear into July, and that most precipitation falls as light rain, not snow or heavy storms. Seattle has more cloudy days (294 days per year on average vs. 259 in New York City) and rainy days, with few heavy downpours.
As of the U.S. Census of 2000, Seattle had a population of 563,374. 70.09% of the population was white, 13.12% Asian, 8.44% Black, 1.00% Native American, 0.50% Pacific Islander , 2.38% from other races, and 4.46% from two or more races. 5.28% of the population is Hispanic or Latino of any race. It is estimated that 1.25% of the population is homeless, and that up to 14% of Seattle's homeless are children and young adults. The Greater Puget Sound metropolitan area is home to roughly 3.7 million people.
For more information on Seattle's population, homeless, and housing issues, see Demographics of Seattle.
In 1981, Seattle held a contest to come up with a new official nickname to replace "the Queen City," which it had been since 1869 and was also the nickname of Cincinnati, Toronto, and Charlotte, North Carolina. The winner, selected in 1982, was "the Emerald City." Submitted by Californian Sarah Sterling-Franklin, it referred to the lush surroundings of Seattle that were the result of frequent rain.
Seattle's official flower has been the dahlia since 1913. Its official song has been "Seattle the Peerless City" since 1909. In 1942, its official slogan was "The City of Flowers"; 48 years later, in 1990, it was "The City of Goodwill," for the Goodwill Games held that year in Seattle.
Because of the geography of the area and the concentration of jobs in Seattle, much of the movement in the Seattle metropolitan area is through Seattle itself. North-south transportation is highly dependent on Interstate 5, which connects most of the major cities on the Puget Sound with Vancouver, British Columbia and Portland, Oregon. Also heavily used is Washington State Route 99, which includes the Alaskan Way Viaduct in downtown Seattle. Because of seismic instability, there are plans to rebuild the viaduct or replace it with a tunnel.
Transportation to and from the east is via Washington State Route 520's Evergreen Point Floating Bridge and Interstate 90's Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge and Third Lake Washington Bridge, all over Lake Washington. Those bridges are the first, second, and fourth longest floating bridges in the world, respectively. Washington State Route 522 connects Seattle to its northeastern suburbs.
Washington State Ferries, the largest ferry system in the United States and the third largest in the world, operates a passenger-only ferry from Colman Dock in Downtown to Vashon Island, car ferries from Colman Dock to Bainbridge Island and to Bremerton, and a car ferry from West Seattle to Vashon Island to Southworth. Seattle was once home to the Kalakala, a streamlined art deco-style ferry that plied the waters from the 1930s to the 1960s. The ship has since fallen into disrepair.Seattle contains most of Boeing Field, officially called King County International Airport, but most of the city's airline passengers use Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in the city of SeaTac. Seattle is also on three Amtrak routes: Amtrak Cascades, the Coast Starlight, and the Empire Builder.
Two bus systems serve Seattle. They are operated by King County's Metro Transit and the regional organization Sound Transit. Sound Transit is also associated with a controversial light rail project. The Metro Bus Tunnel runs the length of downtown. It is currently only used by buses, but is scheduled to be renovated for simultaneous use both by buses and light rail.
The Seattle monorail, constructed for the Century 21 Exposition, connects Downtown and Seattle Center. It will be torn down when the Green Line of the new mass-transit Seattle monorail is built from Ballard through Downtown to West Seattle.
Over 15,000 Seattleites are members of the car sharing program Flexcar. While not all members are frequent users, as of Spetember 2004 the use of these shared cars has been substantial enough to justify the purchase of over 150 cars and other light vehicles for the program, with an additional vehicle purchased approximately every ten days.
See main article Street layout of Seattle. See also Seattle neighborhoods for articles on individual neighborhoods, including information on major thoroughfares.
Seattle's streets are laid out in a cardinal-direction grid pattern, except in the central business district, where the grid from Yesler Way north to Stewart Street is oriented 32 degrees west of north, and from Stewart Stewart north to Denny Way, 49 degrees west of north. Only one street, Madison Street, runs uninterrupted from the salt water of Puget Sound in the west to the fresh water of Lake Washington in the east. No street, excluding Interstate 5 and Washington State Route 99—both freeways in whole or in part—runs without interruption from the northern to the southern city limits. This is largely the result of Seattle's topography. Split by the Duwamish River and the Lake Washington Ship Canal, containing four lakes within the city limits, and boasting deep ravines and at least seven hills, there are few more-or-less straight routes where such a road could reasonably be built, even allowing for the short bridge or two.
| Washington | |
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| Regions: Central Washington | Columbia River Plateau | Eastern Washington | Inland Empire | Kitsap Peninsula | Olympic Peninsula | Okanogan Country | Palouse | Puget Sound | San Juan Islands | Western Washington | Yakima Valley | |
| Largest Cities: Auburn | Bellevue | Bellingham | Bremerton | Edmonds | Everett | Federal Way | Kennewick | Kent | Kirkland | Lakewood | Olympia | Redmond | Renton | Richland | Seattle | Shoreline | Spokane | Tacoma | Vancouver | Yakima | |
| Counties: Adams | Asotin | Benton | Chelan | Clallam | Clark | Columbia | Cowlitz | Douglas | Ferry | Franklin | Garfield | Grant | Grays Harbor | Island | Jefferson | King | Kitsap | Kittitas | Klickitat | Lewis | Lincoln | Mason | Okanogan | Pacific | Pend Oreille | Pierce | San Juan | Skagit | Skamania | Snohomish | Spokane | Stevens | Thurston | Wahkiakum | Walla Walla | Whatcom | Whitman | Yakima | |
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