Seattle was built on timber and gold. Named for Chief Sealth, a local Indian who befriended the first settlers, the city's location made it a natural outlet for the vast forests of the Northwest. With the discovery of gold in the Yukon territory, a whole new flood of people rushed in.
Originally isolated from the rest of the country, the completion of the railroad in 1893 and the telegraph 29 years earlier helped cement Seattle's position as a resource and trading center.
The first steam powered lumber mill on Puget Sound, built by Henry Yesler processed millions of logs that skidded down the slopes behind the town where they were loaded onto steamships and transported to San Francisco and many ports in between.
On June 6th 1889, 25 blocks in the center of Seattle burned to the ground, giving Seattlites the opportunity to rebuild and correct a drainage and sewage problem that the town had suffered thus far. The solution was to grade the steep slopes to the east and raise the streets. However, building occurred faster then the grading and, as a result, the ground floor of several newly constructed buildings on several streets wound up being below ground level.
Today, you can take a tour through what remains of Seattle's Pioneer district, before the Great Fire. (See, Bill Speidel's Underground Tour(c)in Things to See).
In 1916, William Boeing and Clyde Esterveld, with the intention of running an airmail service between Seattle and Canada, launched their first airplane from Lake Union. It turned out to be the launch of a great company as well. Boeing Aviation is world renowned, and to this day remains the largest employer in the area. Look through one of the many high powered telescopes mounted in the observation deck in Seattle's Space needle, built in 1962 for the Century 21 World's Fair, (See Things To DO) and you can see aircraft coming and going from Boeing Air Field.
The latest chapter in Seattle history is being written by another high technology company, Microsoft. Founded by Seattle native Bill Gates, the company is a PC powerhouse that has done much to help diversify the local economy.
