History
Industry
Snapshot | Economy/Cost of Living
Education | Recreation & Entertainment
| Transportation
Geography & Climate
| Suggested Reading
List
Seattle's beginnings are rooted in business. Arthur Denny, a
merchant, led the first party of white immigrants to settle the central Puget Sound region
almost 150 years ago. They landed at Alki Point in what is now the West Seattle
neighborhood, and quickly established this frontier outpost as a trading center supporting
the region's developing timber and commercial fishing industries. Their new city was named
for Suquamish Indian Chief Sealth.
Henry Yesler operated Seattle's first steam-powered sawmill, located on
Elliott Bay at the edge of today's Pioneer Square Historical District. Yesler Way follows
the original Skid Road, which paralleled the skid down which logs were sent to the
sawmill. Taverns serving loggers and sawmill workers soon lined Skid Road a
rough-and-tumble locale that became known as the original "skid row!"
Much of Seattle's business district was destroyed in the great fire of June 1889, but
this young city quickly bounced back, rebuilding in time for the Klondike Gold Rush a
decade later. When the S.S. Portland carrying a band of lucky prospectors
with more than a ton of gold from the Klondike region in Canada's Yukon Territory
docked in Elliott Bay on July 17, 1897, it touched off a boom unlike anything seen in the
Pacific Northwest before or since.
The Seattle Chamber of Commerce lost no time in promoting Seattle as "the"
place for stampeders from around the world to outfit themselves and board steamers for the
rush north. Business in Seattle doubled, then tripled. By the spring of 1898, these
merchants had sold $25 million worth of goods to hopeful prospectors heading north. The
Klondike Gold Rush changed the business face of the Pacific Northwest. In 1890, Portland
was the region's largest city. By 1910, Seattle held this honor and has retained it ever
since.
Corporate giants originated and grew in Seattle in the years following the gold rush.
Weyerhauser, which became a timber-industry giant in the land of towering Douglas firs,
was established at the turn of the century. Less than two decades later, an engineer named
William Boeing started building airplanes in a red barn near present-day Boeing Field.
The Boeing Company turned
out the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-29 Superfortress by the thousands during World War
II, then applied its military expertise to commercial aviation. Boeing gambled and won by
introducing its 707, the first commercial passenger jet, in the 1950s and its 747, the
world's first jumbo passenger jet, in the 1960s becoming the world's largest
commercial airplane manufacturer along the way.
During the last half of the 20th century, Alaska's North Slope oil boom and
construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline generated new supply armadas sailing north from
the Port of Seattle. And Seattle companies
established world leadership in products ranging from
computer software by Microsoft and games by Nintendo to trucks by Paccar
and gourmet coffee by Starbucks.
Related Resources:
Back to Destination Seattle
|