Seattle, Washington Downtown Seattle from Queen Anne Hill, with Mount Rainier on the right Downtown Seattle from Queen Anne Hill, with Mount Rainier on the right Flag of Seattle, Washington Flag Official seal of Seattle, Washington Nickname(s): The Emerald City / The Jet City / Rain City Location of Seattle in King County and Washington Location of Seattle in King County and Washington Named for Chief Seattle Body Seattle City Council Seattle (Listeni/si t l/) is a seaport town/city on the west coast of the United States and the seat of King County, Washington.
With an estimated 686,800 inhabitants as of 2016, Seattle is the biggest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America.
In July 2013, it was the fastest-growing primary city in the United States and remained in the Top 5 in May 2015 with an annual expansion rate of 2.1%. The town/city is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound (an inlet of the Pacific Ocean) and Lake Washington, about 100 miles (160 km) south of the Canada United States border.
A primary gateway for trade with Asia, Seattle is the fourth-largest port in North America in terms of container handling as of 2015. The Seattle region was previously inhabited by Native Americans for at least 4,000 years before the first permanent European settlers. Arthur A.
Denny and his group of passengers, later known as the Denny Party, appeared from Illinois via Portland, Oregon, on the schooner Exact at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The settlement was moved to the easterly shore of Elliott Bay and titled "Seattle" in 1852, after Chief Si'ahl of the small-town Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.
Logging was Seattle's first primary industry, but by the late-19th century, the town/city had turn into a commercial and ship assembly center as a gateway to Alaska amid the Klondike Gold Rush.
Growth after World War II was partially due to the small-town Boeing company, which established Seattle as a center for airplane manufacturing.
The Seattle region developed as a technology center beginning in the 1980s, with companies like Microsoft becoming established in the region.
In 1994, Internet retailer Amazon was established in Seattle.
Seattle has a noteworthy musical history.
Seattle is also the place of birth of modern musician Jimi Hendrix, origin of the bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and the alternative modern subgenre grunge. Main articles: History of Seattle and Timeline of Seattle Archaeological excavations suggest that Native Americans have inhabited the Seattle region for at least 4,000 years. By the time the first European pioneer arrived, the citizens (subsequently called the Duwamish tribe) occupied at least seventeen villages in the areas around Elliott Bay. The first European to visit the Seattle region was George Vancouver, in May 1792 amid his 1791 95 expedition to chart the Pacific Northwest. In 1851, a large party led by Luther Collins made a locale on territory at the mouth of the Duwamish River; they formally claimed it on September 14, 1851. Thirteen days later, members of the Collins Party on the way to their claim passed three scouts of the Denny Party. Members of the Denny Party claimed territory on Alki Point on September 28, 1851. The rest of the Denny Party set sail from Portland, Oregon, and landed on Alki point amid a rainstorm on November 13, 1851. The name "Seattle" appears on official Washington Territory papers dated May 23, 1853, when the first plats for the village were filed.
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 January 18, 1867, and remained a mere precinct of King County until late 1869, when a new petition was filed and the town/city was re-incorporated December 2, 1869, with a Mayor-council government. The corporate seal of the City of Seattle carries the date "1869" and a likeness of Chief Sealth in left profile. Seattle has a history of boom-and-bust cycles, like many other metros/cities near areas of extensive natural and mineral resources.
Seattle has risen a several times economically, then gone into precipitous decline, but it has typically used those periods to rebuild solid infrastructure. The later dereliction of the region may be a possible origin for the term which later entered the wider American lexicon as Skid Row.) Like much of the American West, Seattle saw various conflicts between workforce and management, as well as ethnic tensions that culminated in the anti-Chinese riots of 1885 1886. This violence originated with unemployed caucasians who were determined to drive the Chinese from Seattle (anti-Chinese riots also occurred in Tacoma).
Seattle accomplished sufficient economic success that when the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 finished the central company district, a far grander city-center quickly emerged in its place. Finance business Washington Mutual, for example, was established in the immediate wake of the fire. However, the Panic of 1893 hit Seattle hard. The second and most dramatic boom and bust 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 primary transportation center.
Along with Seattle, other metros/cities like Everett, Tacoma, Port Townsend, Bremerton, and Olympia, all in the Puget Sound region, became competitors for exchange, clean water mother lodes for extraction, of precious metals. The boom lasted well into the early part of the 20th century and funded many new Seattle companies and products.
Other Seattle companies established during this reconstructioninclude Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer. Seattle brought in the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm to design a fitness of parks and boulevards. A ship assembly boom in the early part of the 20th century became massive amid World War I, making Seattle somewhat of a business town; the subsequent retrenchment led to the Seattle General Strike of 1919, the first general strike in the country. A 1912 town/city evolution plan by Virgil Bogue went largely unused.
The Great Depression in Seattle affected many minority groups, one being the Asian Pacific Americans; they were subject to racism, loss of property, and floundered claims of unemployment due to peoplehip status. Seattle was also the home base of impresario Alexander Pantages who, starting in 1902, opened a number of theaters in the town/city exhibiting vaudeville acts and silent movies.
Between Pantages and his rival John Considine, Seattle was for a while the United States' vaudeville mecca.
The theaters he assembled for Pantages in Seattle have been either completed or converted to other uses, but many other theaters survive in other metros/cities of the U.S., often retaining the Pantages name; Seattle's surviving Paramount Theatre, on which he collaborated, was not a Pantages theater.
Building the Seattle Center Monorail, 1961.
It rose again with Boeing's burgeoning dominance in the commercial airliner market. Seattle jubilated its restored prosperity and made a bid for world recognition with the Century 21 Exposition, the 1962 World's Fair. Another primary small-town economic downturn was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when Boeing was heavily affected by the petroleum crises, loss of Government contracts, and costs and delays associated with the Boeing 747.
Many citizens left the region to look for work elsewhere, and two small-town real estate agents put up a billboard reading "Will the last person leaving Seattle Turn out the lights." Seattle remained the corporate command posts of Boeing until 2001, when the business separated its command posts from its primary manufacturing facilities; the command posts were moved to Chicago. The Seattle region is still home to Boeing's Renton narrow-body plant (where the 707, 720, 727, and 757 were assembled, and the 737 is assembled today) and Everett wide-body plant (assembly plant for the 747, 767, 777, and 787).
The company's credit union for employees, BECU, remains based in the Seattle area, though it is now open to all inhabitants of Washington.
As prosperity began to return in the 1980s, the town/city was stunned by the Wah Mee massacre in 1983, when 13 citizens were killed in an illegal gambling club in the International District, Seattle's Chinatown. Beginning with Microsoft's 1979 move from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to close-by Bellevue, Washington, Seattle and its suburbs became home to a number of technology companies including Amazon.com, F5 Networks, Real - Networks, Nintendo of America, Mc - Caw Cellular (now part of AT&T Mobility), Voice - Stream (now T-Mobile), and biomedical corporations such as Heart - Stream (later purchased by Philips), Heart Technologies (later purchased by Boston Scientific), Physio-Control (later purchased by Medtronic), Zymo - Genetics, ICOS (later purchased by Eli Lilly and Company) and Immunex (later purchased by Amgen).
This success brought an influx of new inhabitants with a populace increase inside town/city limits of nearly 50,000 between 1990 and 2000, and saw Seattle's real estate turn into some of the most expensive in the country. In 1993, the movie Sleepless in Seattle brought the town/city further nationwide attention. Many of the Seattle area's tech companies remained mostly strong, but the frenzied dot-com boom years ended in early 2001. Seattle in this reconstructionattracted widespread consideration as home to these many companies, but also by hosting the 1990 Goodwill Games and the APEC leaders conference in 1993, as well as through the around the world popularity of grunge, a sound that had advanced in Seattle's autonomous music scene. Another bid for around the world attention hosting the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 garnered visibility, but not in the way its sponsors desired, as related protest activeness and police reactions to those protests overshadowed the conference itself. The town/city was further shaken by the Mardi Gras Riots in 2001, and then literally shaken the following day by the Nisqually earthquake. This initiated a historic assembly boom which resulted in the culmination of twice as many apartements in Seattle in 2017, which is more than any other year in the city's history.
The town/city lies on a several hills, including Capitol Hill, First Hill, West Seattle, Beacon Hill, Magnolia, Denny Hill, and Queen Anne.
Seattle Skyline view from Queen Anne Hill.
The Space Needle is visible on the left, the mountain in the background is Mount Rainier, on the right is Elliott Bay and the Port of Seattle on Puget Sound.
Panorama of Seattle as seen from the Space Needle: a almost 360-degree view that contains (from left) Puget Sound, Magnolia, Queen Anne Hill, Lake Union, Capitol Hill, downtown Seattle, Elliott Bay, and West Seattle.
Seattle's coastline from the Bainbridge Island ferry as it approaches the Seattle ferry terminal at Colman Dock See also: Bodies of water of Seattle, List of parks in Seattle, List of earthquakes in Washington (state), and Regrading in Seattle Seattle is positioned between the saltwater Puget Sound (an arm of the Pacific Ocean) to the west and Lake Washington to the east.
Aerial view of downtown Seattle.
Downtown Seattle is bounded by Elliott Bay (lower left), Broadway (from upper left to lower right), South Dearborn Street (lower right), and Denny Way (upper left, obscured by clouds).
The sea, rivers, forests, lakes, and fields encircling Seattle were once rich enough to support one of the world's several sedentary hunter-gatherer societies.
The town/city itself is hilly, though not uniformly so. Like Rome, the town/city is said to lie on seven hills; the lists vary but typically include Capitol Hill, First Hill, West Seattle, Beacon Hill, Queen Anne, Magnolia, and the former Denny Hill.
Many of the hilliest areas are near the town/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. 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 town/city center. The topography of the town/city center was also changed by the assembly of a seawall and the artificial Harbor Island (completed 1909) at the mouth of the city's industrialized Duwamish Waterway, the end of the Green River.
The highest point inside town/city limits is at High Point in West Seattle, which is approximately positioned near 35th Ave SW and SW Myrtle St.
Due to its locale in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Seattle is in a primary earthquake zone.
On February 28, 2001, the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake did momentous architectural damage, especially in the Pioneer Square region (built on reclaimed land, as are the Industrial District and part of the town/city center), but caused only one fatality. Other strong quakes occurred on January 26, 1700 (estimated at 9 magnitude), December 14, 1872 (7.3 or 7.4), April 13, 1949 (7.1), and April 29, 1965 (6.5). The 1965 quake caused three deaths in Seattle directly and one more by heart failure. Although the Seattle Fault passes just south of the town/city center, neither it nor the Cascadia subduction zone has caused an earthquake since the city's founding.
Vew of the downtown Seattle skyline, on the coastline, with the Seatle Aquarium on the left and Seattle Great Wheel on the right.
Downtown Seattle averages 71 completely sunny days a year, with most of those days occurring between May and September Seattle's climate is classified as oceanic or temperate marine, with cool, wet winters and mild, mostly dry summers. The town/city and environs are part of USDA hardiness zone 8b, with isolated coastal pockets falling under 9a. Thus extreme heat waves are rare in the Seattle area, as are very cold temperatures (below about 15 F ( 9 C)).
The Seattle region is the cloudiest region of the United States, due in part to incessant storms and lows moving in from the contiguous Pacific Ocean.
Cities, Seattle has many more "rain days", when a very light drizzle falls from the sky for many days. In an average year, at least 0.01 inches (0.25 mm) of rain falls on 150 days, more than almost all U.S.
Cities east of the Rocky Mountains. It is cloudy 201 days out of the year and partly cloudy 93 days. Official weather and climatic data is collected at Seattle Tacoma International Airport, positioned about 19 km (12 mi) south of downtown in the town/city of Sea - Tac, which is at a higher elevation, and records more cloudy days and severaler partly cloudy days per year. From 1981 to 2010, the average annual rain calculated at Seattle Tacoma International Airport was 37.49 inches (952 mm).
Annual rain has ranged from 23.78 in (604 mm) in 1952 to 55.14 in (1,401 mm) in 1950; for water year (October 1 September 30) precipitation, the range is 23.16 in (588 mm) in 1976 77 to 51.82 in (1,316 mm) in 1996 97. Due to small-town variations in microclimate, Seattle also receives decidedly lower rain than some other locations west of the Cascades.
Sixty miles (95 km) to the south of Seattle, the state capital Olympia, which is out of the Olympic Mountains' precipitation shadow, receives an annual average rain of 50 in (1,270 mm). The town/city of Bremerton, about 15 mi (24 km) west of downtown Seattle on the other side of the Puget Sound, receives 56.4 in (1,430 mm) of rain annually. Sequim, Washington, nicknamed "Sunny Sequim", is positioned roughly 40 miles northwest of downtown Seattle and receives just 16.51" of annual precipitation, more comparable to that of Los Angeles.
In November, Seattle averages more rainfall than any other U.S.
Seattle is one of the five rainiest primary U.S.
Cities as calculated by the number of days with precipitation, and it receives some of the lowest amounts of annual sunlight among primary cities in the lower 48 states, along with some metros/cities in the Northeast, Ohio and Michigan.
Thunderstorms are rare, as the town/city reports thunder on just seven days per year. By comparison, Fort Myers, Florida, reports thunder on 93 days per year, Kansas City on 52, and New York City on 25.
Seattle experiences its heaviest rainfall amid the months of November, December and January, receiving approximately half of its annual rainfall (by volume) amid this period.
Precipitation totals exceeded 13.8 in (350 mm) in some areas with winds topping out at 209 km/h (130 mph) along coastal Oregon. It became the second wettest event in Seattle history when a little over 130 mm (5.1 in) of precipitation fell on Seattle in a 24-hour period.
This moderate snow event was officially the 12th snowiest calendar day at the airport since 1948 and snowiest since November 1985. Much of the town/city of Seattle proper received somewhat lesser snow flurry accumulations.
Locations to the south of Seattle received more, with Olympia and Chehalis receiving 14 to 18 in (36 to 46 cm). Another moderate snow event occurred from December 12 25, 2008, when over one foot (30 cm) of snow fell and stuck on much of the roads over those two weeks, when temperatures remained below 32 F (0 C), causing widespread problem in a town/city not equipped for clearing snow.
The Puget Sound Convergence Zone is an meaningful feature of Seattle's weather.
Both streams of air originate over the Pacific Ocean; airflow is divided by the Olympic Mountains to Seattle's west, then reunited to the east.
One of many exceptions to Seattle's reputation as a damp locale occurs in El Nino years, when marine weather systems track as far south as California and little rain falls in the Puget Sound area. Since the region's water comes from mountain snow packs amid the dry summer months, El Nino winters can not only produce substandard skiing but can result in water rationing and a shortage of hydroelectric power the following summer. Between October and April, Seattle is mostly or partly cloudy six out of every seven days According to the 2010 United States Census, Seattle had a populace of 608,660 with a ethnic and ethnic composition as follows: Seattle's populace historically has been dominantly white. The 2010 census showed that Seattle was one of the whitest big metros/cities in the country, although its proportion of white inhabitants has been gradually declining. In 1960, caucasians comprised 91.6% of the city's population, while in 2010 they comprised 69.5%. According to the 2006 2008 American Community Survey, roughly 78.9% of inhabitants over the age of five spoke only English at home.
Seattle's foreign-born populace interval 40% between the 1990 and 2000 censuses. The Chinese populace in the Seattle region has origins in mainland China, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan.
The Seattle region is also home to a large Vietnamese populace of more than 55,000 residents, as well as over 30,000 Somali immigrants. The Seattle-Tacoma region is also home to one of the biggest Cambodian communities in the United States, numbering about 19,000 Cambodian Americans, and one of the biggest Samoan communities in the mainland U.S., with over 15,000 citizens having Samoan ancestry. Additionally, the Seattle region had the highest percentage of self-identified mixed-race citizens of any large urbane region in the United States, as stated to the 2000 United States Enumeration Bureau. According to a 2012 History - Link study, Seattle's 98118 ZIP code (in the Columbia City neighborhood) was one of the most distinct ZIP Code Tabulation Areas in the United States. In 2006, after burgeoning by 4,000 people per year for the previous 16 years, county-wide planners expected the populace of Seattle to expanded by 200,000 citizens by 2040. However, former mayor Greg Nickels supported plans that would increase the populace by 60%, or 350,000 citizens , by 2040 and worked on ways to accommodate this expansion while keeping Seattle's single-family housing zoning laws. The Seattle City Council later voted to relax height limits on buildings in the greater part of Downtown, partly with the aim to increase residentiary density in the town/city center. As a sign of increasing inner-city growth, the downtown populace crested to over 60,000 in 2009, up 77% since 1990. city, behind San Francisco. Greater Seattle also ranked second among primary U.S.
Metropolitan areas, with 6.5% of the populace identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. According to 2012 estimates from the United States Enumeration Bureau, Seattle has the highest percentage of same-sex homeholds in the United States, at 2.6 per cent, surpassing San Francisco. Enumeration interim measurements of 2004, Seattle has the fifth highest proportion of single-person homeholds nationwide among metros/cities of 100,000 or more residents, at 40.8%. See also: List of companies based in Seattle Seattle's economy is driven by a mix of older industrialized companies, and "new economy" Internet and technology companies, service, design and clean technology companies.
The city's gross urbane product was $231 billion in 2010, making it the 11th biggest urbane economy in the United States. The Port of Seattle, which also operates Seattle Tacoma International Airport, is a primary gateway for trade with Asia and cruises to Alaska, and is the 8th biggest port in the United States in terms of container capacity; its maritime cargo operations consolidated with the Port of Tacoma in 2015 to form the Northwest Seaport Alliance. Although it was affected by the Great Recession, Seattle has retained a comparatively strong economy, and remains a hotbed for start-up businesses, especially in green building and clean technologies: it was ranked as America's No.
1 "smarter city" based on its government policies and green economy. In February 2010, the town/city government committed Seattle to becoming North America's first "climate neutral" city, with a goal of reaching zero net per capita arboretum gas emissions by 2030. Four companies on the 2013 Fortune 500 list of the United States' biggest companies, based on total revenue, are headquartered in Seattle: Internet retailer Amazon.com (#49), coffee chain Starbucks (#208), department store Nordstrom (#227), and freight forwarder Expeditors International of Washington (#428). Other Fortune 500 companies popularly associated with Seattle are based in close-by Puget Sound cities.
The town/city has a reputation for heavy coffee consumption; coffee companies established or based in Seattle include Starbucks, Seattle's Best Coffee, and Tully's. There are also many prosperous autonomous artisanal espresso roasters and cafes. Prior to moving its command posts to Chicago, aerospace manufacturer Boeing (#30) was the biggest business based in Seattle.
Its biggest division is still headquartered in close-by Renton, and the business has large airplane manufacturing plants in Everett and Renton, so it remains the biggest private employer in the Seattle urbane area. Former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels reported a desire to spark a new economic boom driven by the biotechnology trade in 2006.
While some see the new evolution as an economic boon, the rest have criticized Nickels and the Seattle City Council for pandering to Allen's interests at taxpayers' cost. Also in 2006, Expansion Magazine ranked Seattle among the top 10 urbane areas in the country for climates favorable to company expansion. In 2005, Forbes ranked Seattle as the most expensive American town/city for buying a home based on the small-town income levels. In 2013, however, the periodical ranked Seattle No.
Alaska Airlines, operating a core at Seattle Tacoma International Airport, maintains its command posts in the town/city of Sea - Tac, next to the airport. Seattle is a core for global community with the command posts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PATH, Infectious Disease Research Institute, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Seattle Central Library From 1869 until 1982, Seattle was known as the "Queen City". Seattle's current official nickname is the "Emerald City", the result of a contest held in 1981; the reference is to the lush evergreen forests of the area.
Seattle is also alluded to informally as the "Gateway to Alaska" for being the nearest primary city in the adjoining U.S.
The town/city has two official slogans or mottos: "The City of Flowers", meant to encourage the planting of flowers to beautify the city, and "The City of Goodwill", adopted before to the 1990 Goodwill Games. Seattle inhabitants are known as Seattleites.
The facade of Marion Oliver Mc - Caw Hall at Seattle Center, seen from Kreielsheimer Promenade, with the Space Needle fortress in the background Seattle has been a county-wide center for the performing arts for many years.
The century-old Seattle Symphony Orchestra is among the world's most recorded and performs primarily at Benaroya Hall. The Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet, which perform at Mc - Caw Hall (opened 2003 on the site of the former Seattle Opera House at Seattle Center), are comparably prestigious, with the Opera being especially 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 establishments in the United States. The Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras (SYSO) is the biggest symphonic youth organization in the United States. The town/city also boasts lauded summer and winter chamber music celebrations ordered by the Seattle Chamber Music Society. The 5th Avenue Theatre, assembled in 1926, stages Broadway-style musical shows featuring both small-town talent and global stars. Seattle has "around 100" thespian manufacturing companies and over two dozen live theatre venues, many of them associated with fringe theatre; Seattle is probably second only to New York for number of equity theaters (28 Seattle theater companies have some sort of Actors' Equity contract). In addition, the 900-seat Romanesque Revival Town Hall on First Hill hosts various cultural affairs, especially lectures and recitals. Seattle Symphony Orchestra on stage in Benaroya Hall in Downtown Seattle.
Seattle is considered the home of grunge music, having produced artists such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney, all of whom reached global audiences in the early 1990s. The town/city is also home to such varied artists as avant-garde jazz musicians Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz, hot jazz musician Glenn Crytzer, hip hop artists Sir Mix-a-Lot, Macklemore, Blue Scholars, and Shabazz Palaces, smooth jazz saxophonist Kenny G, classic modern staples Heart and Queensryche, and alternative modern bands such as Foo Fighters, Harvey Danger, The Presidents of the United States of America, The Posies, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Death Cab for Cutie, and Fleet Foxes.
Rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Duff Mc - Kagan, and Nikki Sixx spent their formative years in Seattle.
Over the years, a number of music have been written about Seattle.
Seattle annually sends a team of spoken word slammers to the National Poetry Slam and considers itself home to such performance poets as Buddy Wakefield, two-time Individual World Poetry Slam Champ; Anis Mojgani, two-time National Poetry Slam Champ; and Danny Sherrard, 2007 National Poetry Slam Champ and 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam Champ. Seattle also hosted the 2001 nationwide Poetry Slam Tournament.
The Seattle Poetry Festival is a biennial poetry festival that (launched first as the Poetry Circus in 1997) has featured local, regional, national, and global names in poetry. The town/city also has movie homes showing both Hollywood productions and works by autonomous filmmakers. Among these, the Seattle Cinerama stands out as one of only three movie theaters in the world still capable of showing three-panel Cinerama films. 210 cruise ship visits brought 886,039 travelers to Seattle in 2008. Among Seattle's prominent annual fairs and celebrations are the 24-day Seattle International Film Festival, Northwest Folklife over the Memorial Day weekend, various Seafair affairs throughout July and August (ranging from a Bon Odori celebration to the Seafair Cup hydroplane competitions), the Bite of Seattle, one of the biggest Gay Pride celebrations in the United States, and the art and music festival Bumbershoot, which programs music as well as other art and entertainment over the Labor Day weekend.
There are other annual affairs, ranging from the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair & Book Arts Show; an anime convention, Sakura-Con; Penny Arcade Expo, a gaming convention; a two-day, 9,000-rider Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic; and specialized film festivals, such as the Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival, the Seattle Asian American Film Festival (formerly known as the Northwest Asian American Film Festival), Children's Film Festival Seattle, Translation: the Seattle Transgender Film Festival, the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Seattle Latino Film Festival, and the Seattle Polish Film Festival. The Henry Art Gallery opened in 1927, the first enhance art exhibition in Washington. The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) opened in 1933; SAM opened a exhibition downtown in 1991 (expanded and reopened 2007); since 1991, the 1933 building has been SAM's Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM). SAM also operates the Olympic Sculpture Park (opened 2007) on the coastline north of the downtown piers.
Industry collections are at the Center for Wooden Boats and the contiguous Northwest Seaport, the Seattle Metropolitan Police Museum, and the Museum of Flight.
The Seattle Great Wheel, one of the biggest Ferris wheels in the US, opened in June 2012 as a new, permanent attraction on the city's coastline, at Pier 57, next to Downtown Seattle. The town/city also has many improve centers for recreation, including Rainier Beach, Van Asselt, Rainier, and Jefferson south of the Ship Canal and Green Lake, Laurelhurst, Loyal Heights north of the Canal, and Meadowbrook. Woodland Park Zoo opened as a private menagerie in 1889 but was sold to the town/city in 1899. The Seattle Aquarium has been open on the downtown coastline since 1977 (undergoing a renovation 2006). The Seattle Underground Tour is an exhibit of places that existed before the Great Fire. Century - Link Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders FC Seattle Seahawks American football NFL Century - Link Field (69,000) 1976 1 69,005 Seattle Mariners Baseball MLB Safeco Field (47,574) 1977 0 46,596 Seattle Sounders FC Soccer MLS Century - Link Field (38,300 for Sounders FC matches) 2007 1 67,385 Seattle Storm Basketball WNBA Key - Arena (17,072) 2000 2 7,486 Seattle Reign FC Soccer NWSL Memorial Stadium (12,000; capped at 6,000 for most matches) 2012 0 6,303 Seattle has three primary men's experienced sports teams: the National Football League (NFL)'s Seattle Seahawks, Major League Baseball (MLB)'s Seattle Mariners, and Major League Soccer (MLS)'s Seattle Sounders FC.
Other experienced sports squads include the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)'s Seattle Storm, who won the WNBA championship in 2004 and 2010, and the Seattle Reign of the National Women's Soccer League.
Seattle Sounders FC has played in Major League Soccer since 2009, sharing Century - Link Field with the Seahawks, as a continuation of earlier squads in the lower divisions of American soccer. The Sounders have won the MLS Supporters' Shield in 2014 and the Lamar Hunt U.S.
Seattle's experienced sports history began at the start of the 20th century with the PCHA's Seattle Metropolitans, which in 1917 became the first American hockey team to win the Stanley Cup. Seattle was also home to a previous Major League Baseball charter in 1969: the Seattle Pilots.
From 1967 to 2008 Seattle was also home to an National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise: the Seattle Super - Sonics, who were the 1978 79 NBA champions.
The Major League Baseball All-Star Game was held in Seattle twice, first at the Kingdome in 1979 and again at Safeco Field in 2001. That same year, the Seattle Mariners tied the all-time single regular season wins record with 116 wins. The NBA All-Star Game was also held in Seattle twice: the first in 1974 at the Seattle Center Coliseum and the second in 1987 at the Kingdome. The Seattle Thunderbirds hockey team plays in the Canadian major-junior Western Hockey League and are based in the Seattle suburb of Kent. Seattle also boasts a strong history in collegiate sports.
The University of Washington and Seattle University are NCAA Division I schools.
The University of Washington's athletic program, nicknamed the Huskies, competes in the Pac-12 Conference, and Seattle University's athletic program, nicknamed the Redhawks, competes in the Western Athletic Conference.
Lake Union Park, South Lake Union and downtown Seattle In town, many citizens walk around Green Lake, through the forests and along the bluffs and beaches of 535-acre (2.2 km2) Discovery Park (the biggest park in the city) in Magnolia, along the shores of Myrtle Edwards Park on the Downtown coastline, along the shoreline of Lake Washington at Seward Park, along Alki Beach in West Seattle, or along the Burke-Gilman Trail.
Downtown Seattle from Gas Works Park Located athwart Lake Union from downtown, the park provides panoramic views of the Seattle skyline.
In 2005, Men's Fitness periodical titled Seattle the fittest town/city in the United States. In its 2013 Park - Score ranking, the Trust for Public Land announced that Seattle had the tenth best park fitness among the 50 most crowded US cities. Park - Score rates city park systems by a formula that analyzes acreage, access, and service and investment.
Main article: Government and politics of Seattle Seattle is a charter city, with a mayor council form of government.
From 1911 to 2013, Seattle's nine town/city councillors were voted for at large, clean water by geographic subdivisions.
Federally, Seattle is part of Washington's 7th congressional district, represented by Democrat Pramila Jayapal, voted for in 2016 and one of Congress's progressive members.
Seattle's political culture is very liberal and progressive for the United States, with over 80% of the populace voting for the Democratic Party.
All precincts in Seattle propel Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. In partisan elections for the Washington State Legislature and United States Congress, almost all elections are won by Democrats.
Seattle is considered the first primary American town/city to elect a female mayor, Bertha Knight Landes. It has also voted for an openly gay mayor, Ed Murray, and a socialist councillor, Kshama Sawant.
Seattle also has a grow alternative press, with the Web-based everyday Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a several other online dailies (including Publicola and Crosscut), The Stranger (an alternative, left-leaning weekly), Seattle Weekly, and a number of issue-focused publications, including the nation's two biggest online surroundingal magazines, Worldchanging and Grist.org.
In July 2012, Seattle banned plastic shopping bags. In June 2014 the town/city passed a small-town ordinance to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour on a staged basis from 2015 to 2021.
On October 6, 2014, Seattle officially replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, honoring Seattle's Native American improve and controversies encircling the impact of Christopher Columbus. Main article: Education in Seattle A 2008 United States Enumeration Bureau survey showed that Seattle had the highest percentage of college and college graduates of any primary U.S.
Seattle Public Schools desegregated without a court order but continue to struggle to achieve ethnic balance in a somewhat ethnically divided town/city (the south part of town having more ethnic minorities than the north). In 2007, Seattle's ethnic tie-breaking fitness was hit down by the United States Supreme Court, but the ruling left the door open for desegregation formulae based on other indicators (e.g., income or socioeconomic class). Seattle is home to the University of Washington, as well as the institution's experienced and closing education unit, the University of Washington Educational Outreach.
A study by Newsweek International in 2006 cited the University of Washington as the twenty-second best college in the world. Seattle also has a number of lesser private universities including Seattle University and Seattle Pacific University, the former a Jesuit Catholic institution, the latter Free Methodist; universities aimed at the working adult, like City University and Antioch University; universities inside the Seattle Colleges District system, comprising North, Central, and South; seminaries, including Western Seminary and a number of arts colleges, such as Cornish College of the Arts, Pratt Fine Arts Center, and The Art Institute of Seattle.
In 2001, Time periodical chose Seattle Central Community College as improve college of the year, stating the school "pushes distinct pupils to work together in small teams". Main article: Media in Seattle As of 2010, Seattle has one primary everyday newspaper, The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, known as the P-I, presented a everyday journal from 1863 to March 17, 2009, before switching to a strictly on-line publication.
There is also the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, and the University of Washington prints The Daily, a pupil-run publication, when school is in session.
The most prominent weeklies are the Seattle Weekly and The Stranger; both consider themselves "alternative" papers. The weekly LGBT journal is the Seattle Gay News.
Seattle is also well served by tv and radio, with all primary U.S.
Networks represented, along with at least five other English-language stations and two Spanish-language stations. Seattle cable viewers also receive CBUT 2 (CBC) from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Many Seattle airways broadcasts are also available through Internet radio, with KEXP in particular being a pioneer of Internet radio. Seattle also has various commercial airways broadcasts.
Seattle also has many online news media websites.
The two biggest are The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Seattle has seen small-town developments of undivided paramedic services with the establishment of Medic One in 1970. In 1974, a 60 Minutes story on the success of the then four-year-old Medic One paramedic fitness called Seattle "the best place in the world to have a heart attack". Three of Seattle's biggest medical centers are positioned on First Hill.
Harborview Medical Center, the enhance county hospital, is the only Level I trauma hospital in a region that contains Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. Virginia Mason Medical Center and Swedish Medical Center's two biggest campuses are also positioned in this part of Seattle, including the Virginia Mason Hospital.
Located in the Laurelhurst neighborhood, Seattle Children's, formerly Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, is the pediatric referral center for Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho.
Seattle is also served by a Veterans Affairs hospital on Beacon Hill, a third ground of Swedish in Ballard, and Northwest Hospital and Medical Center near Northgate Mall.
Interstate 5 in Washington as it passes through downtown Seattle The advent of the automobile sounded the death knell for rail in Seattle.
Tacoma Seattle stockyards service ended in 1929 and the Everett Seattle service came to an end in 1939, replaced by inexpensive automobiles running on the recently advanced highway system.
Rails on town/city streets were paved over or removed, and the opening of the Seattle street carbus fitness brought the end of streetcars in Seattle in 1941.
King County Water Taxi and downtown Seattle King County Metro provides incessant stop bus service inside the town/city and encircling county, as well as a South Lake Union Streetcar line between the South Lake Union neighborhood and Westlake Center in downtown. Seattle is one of the several metros/cities in North America whose bus fleet contains electric street carbuses.
Washington State Ferries, which manages the biggest network of ferries in the United States and third biggest in the world, joins Seattle to Bainbridge and Vashon Islands in Puget Sound and to Bremerton and Southworth on the Kitsap Peninsula. Central Link light rail trains in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel at the University Street Station According to the 2007 American Community Survey, 18.6% of Seattle inhabitants used one of the three enhance transit systems that serve the city, giving it the highest transit ridership of all primary cities without heavy or light rail before to the culmination of Sound Transit's Central Link line. The town/city has also been described by Bert Sperling as the fourth most walkable U.S.
Seattle Tacoma International Airport, locally known as Sea-Tac Airport and positioned just south in the neighboring town/city of Sea - Tac, is directed by the Port of Seattle and provides commercial air service to destinations throughout the world.
The chief mode of transportation, however, relies on Seattle's streets, which are laid out in a cardinal directions grid pattern, except in the central company precinct where early town/city leaders Arthur Denny and Carson Boren insisted on orienting their plats relative to the shoreline clean water to true North. Only two roads, Interstate 5 and State Route 99 (both limited-access highways), run uninterrupted through the town/city from north to south.
State Route 99 runs through downtown Seattle on the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was assembled in 1953.
Seattle has the 8th worst traffic congestion of all American cities, and is 10th among all North American cities. An extension north to the University of Washington opened on March 19, 2016; and further extensions are prepared to reach Lynnwood to the north, Des Moines to the south, and Bellevue and Redmond to the east by 2023. Voters in the Puget Sound region allowed an extra tax increase in November, 2016 to grew light rail to West Seattle and Ballard as well as Tacoma, Everett, and Issaquah. Water and electric power are municipal services, provided by Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light in the order given.
Other utility companies serving Seattle include Puget Sound Energy (natural gas, electricity); Seattle Steam Company (steam); Waste Management, Inc and Clean - Scapes, Inc.
See also: List of Seattle sister metros/cities Seattle is partnered with: National Register of Historic Places listings in Seattle, Washington a b "April 1, 2016 Population of Cities, Towns and Counties Used for Allocation of Selected State Revenues State of Washington" (PDF).
"Census: Seattle is the fastest-growing big town/city in the U.S.".
Seattle Times.
Seattle Times.
"Collins party encounters Denny party scouts at Duwamish Head near future site of Seattle on September 27, 1851.".
"Seattle a Snapshot History of Its Founding".
"Seattle at 150: Charles Terry's unlimited energy influenced a city".
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
"Legislature incorporates the Town of Seattle for the first time on January 14, 1865.".
"Seattle City Symbols".
City of Seattle.
Kinnear's article, originally appearing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was later privately presented in a small volume.
"Historical Enumeration Statistics On Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For Large Cities And Other Urban Places in the United States".
"Seattle burns down in the Great Fire on June 6, 1889.".
"Hard Drive to the Klondike: Promoting Seattle During the Gold Rush".
Seattle Parks and Recreation.
"Seattle General Strike, 1919, Part I".
BOLA Architecture + Planning & Northwest Archaeological Associates, Inc., "Port of Seattle North Bay Project DEIS: Historic and Cultural Resources" (PDF).
Retrieved 2008-07-26., Port of Seattle, April 5, 2005, pp.
"History of Seattle: The "Jet City" Takes Off".
"Billboard appears on April 16, 1971, near Sea Tac, reading: Will the Last Person Leaving Seattle Turn Out the Lights.".
The real estate agents were Bob Mc - Donald and Jim Youngren, as cited at Don Duncan, Washington: the First One Hundred Years, 1889 1989 (Seattle: The Seattle Times, 1989), 108, 109 110; The Seattle Times, February 25, 1986, p.
Boyce, Seattle Tacoma and the Southern Sound (Bozeman, Montana: Northwest Panorama Publishing, 1986), 99; Walt Crowley, Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 297.
"Chicago's got the headquarters, but Seattle's still Jet City, USA".
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
City of Seattle.
"Seattle region 'sticker shock' is a matter of perception".
The Seattle Times.
"Ted Turner's Goodwill Games open in Seattle on July 20, 1990.".
"Double dose of woe strikes historic Seattle neighborhood".
"Record assembly frenzy sweeps downtown Seattle; more building to come".
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle (city), Washington".
"Highest Elevations in Seattle and The Twenty Steepest Streets in Seattle".
City of Seattle.
"Landslide susceptibility revealed by LIDAR imagery and historical records, Seattle, Washington" (PDF).
(1950), Living in Seattle, Seattle: Seattle Public Schools, p.
"Earthquake registering 6.8 on Richter Scale jolts Seattle and Puget Sound on February 28, 2001".
"Seattle Fault Zone implications for earthquake hazards".
"Seattle Weather and Climate".
Because of its adjacency to the sea, Seattle generally remains milder than its outlying suburbs.
"Seattle breaks record for hottest day ever Seattle News".
"Monthly Averages for Seattle, WA".
"National Weather Service Seattle Public Information Statement (12:50 pm, January 18, 2012)".
"Snow and Other Weathers, Seattle and King County".
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
"Station Name: WA SEATTLE TACOMA INTL AP".
"April 1, 2016 Population of Cities, Towns and Counties Used for Allocation of Selected State Revenues State of Washington" (PDF).
"Seattle in Focus: A Profile from Enumeration 2000".
Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
Seattle Times.
Seattle has added about 4,000 inhabitants a year over the past 16 years.
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle blessed by downtown's upswing".
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
"City Profiles / Large Cities / Seattle, WA".
"The List; Seattle: An Insider's Address Book".
Seattle's coffee culture has turn into America's Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Seattle Weekly.
"Seattle receives epithet Queen City in 1869".
"Seattle becomes The Emerald City in 1982".
"Seattle City Symbols".
City of Seattle, Office of the City Clerk.
"Met Opera and Seattle Opera to Co-Produce Gluck's Final Operatic Masterpiece "Iphigenie en Tauride"" (PDF).
This press release from New York's Metropolitan Opera describes the Seattle Opera as "one of the dominant opera companies in the United States...
Hahn, Sumi Seattle Chamber Music Society's summer festivals: for newbies and longtime fans.
The Seattle Times, July 6, 2008.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
City of Seattle.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
"Create Your Seattle Center Experience".
Seattle Center.
"Seattle Film Office: Filming in Seattle: Film Events and Festivals".
City of Seattle.
"Seattle Art Museum opens in Volunteer Park on June 23, 1933.".
"The Seattle Great Wheel opens to a big crowd".
The Seattle Times.
City of Seattle.
"Seattle Aquarium opens to excited crowds on May 20, 1977.".
"History hidden in Seattle's basement".
"First cruise ship harbors at Seattle's new $72 million terminal".
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle Reign shuts out 'big sister' Portland, 3 0".
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle Storm wins WNBA championship on October 12, 2004.".
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle Sounders FC capture first-ever MLS Supporters' Shield with victory over LA Galaxy".
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle Metropolitan hockey team wins the Stanley Cup on March 26, 1917.".
"Seattle titled fittest town/city in America".
Van Sant, Ashley "Seattle parks ranked 10th best in US".
"Seattle City Council Members, 1869 present Chronological Listing".
Seattle City Archives.
City of Seattle.
The Seattle Times.
City of Seattle.
"Mc - Ginn concedes election to Seattle's mayor-elect Ed Murray".
"Socialist Sawant ready to shake up Seattle City Council".
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle City Council to be younger, more female, distinct ".
Seattle Times.
Seattle Times.
"Marijuana initiative wildly prominent in Seattle & Eastside".
The Seattle Times.
"Local News | Seattle Times Newspaper".
"Seattle City takes lead to raise minimum wage to $15 per hour".
Seattle News.
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle Changes Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day".
"Seattle Mayor Ed Murray won't seek second term: 'It tears me to pieces to step away'".
The Seattle Times.
"Lawsuit alleges Seattle Mayor Ed Murray sexually abused troubled teen in 1980s".
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce".
"A new history at Seattle Weekly".
The Seattle Times.
"KRWM edges out KIRO in March Seattle radio rankings".
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
The Seattle Times.
"Seattle City Light | Fuel Mix".
"Seattle, Washington Sister Cities".
"Seattle's Sister Cities".
Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Seattle: Nettle Creek Publishing Company.
Seattle: Nettle Creek Publishing Company.
Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle.
"Seattle, the town/city of destiny".
Eccentric Seattle: Pillars and Pariahs Who Made the City Not Such a Boring Place After All.
Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ecotopia (University of Pittsburgh Press; 2010) 288 pages; the rise of surroundingal activism Seattle Official website of the City of Seattle Historylink.org, history of Seattle and Washington Seattle Photographs from the University of Washington Digital Collections Seattle Historic Photograph Collection from the Seattle Public Library Seattle, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
Categories:
Seattle - 1853 establishments in Oregon Territory - Cities in the Seattle urbane region - Cities in Washington (state)County seats in Washington (state)Isthmuses of the United States - Populated places established in 1853 - Cities in King County, Washington - Populated places on Puget Sound - Port settlements in Washington (state)
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