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| Seattle Apartment Locator Services : Seattle Apartments |  | Contents | |
| History |
| Founding |
| 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. |
| Major events |
On a clear day, visitors to Kerry Park can see the Space Needle, the Downtown Seattle skyline, and Mount Rainier (to the right).
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| 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. |
| In February 2001, a state of emergency was declared after
the Nisqually Earthquake, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, rocked
the region. Damage was moderate, but served as a reminder that
southwestern British Columbia and western Washington are under
a constant threat of sustaining a great earthquake. |
| Economic history |
| 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 Seattle Central Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas, is the result of a public vote on the "Libraries for All" bond measure approved by Seattle voters on November 3, 1998.
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| The first such boom was the lumber-industry boom covering
the early years of the city (it was during this period that
Yesler Way became known as the first "Skid Row", named
after the timber skidding down the street to be milled), followed
by the construction of an Olmsted-designed park system. Arguably
the Klondike Gold Rush constituted a separate, shorter boom
during the last years of the 19th century. |
| Next came the shipbuilding boom in the early part of the 20th
century, followed by the unused city development plan of Virgil
Bogue. After World War II the local economy was marked by the
expansion of Boeing, fueled by the growth of the commercial
aviation industry. When this particular cycle went into a major
downturn in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many 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". |
| Seattle remained the corporate headquarters of 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. Even locally
headquartered Starbucks held investments in numerous Internet
and software interests. Although some of these companies remain
relatively strong, the frenzied boom years had ended by early
2001. |
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