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When did Seattle get its name?
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May 9, 2013 · Today I found out how the city of Seattle got its name. Seattle is one of the only major cities in the United States to be named after a Native American chief. In his native language, Seattle was pronounced “see-ahlsh” but it was difficult for English speakers to pronounce, so they anglicized it to the version that you know today.
- Overview
- Character of the city
Seattle, chief city of the state of Washington, U.S., seat (1853) of King county, the largest metropolis of the Pacific Northwest, and one of the largest and most affluent urban centres in the United States. A major port of entry and an air and sea gateway to Asia and Alaska, Seattle lies alongside Puget Sound, a deep inland arm of the northern Pacific Ocean, and is at the centre of a conurbation that is defined roughly by Everett to the north, Bellevue to the east, and Tacoma to the south.
The city was settled on November 13, 1851, at what is now West Seattle. It was relocated the following year to a site across Elliott Bay near a Duwamish Indian village. It owes its name to the Native American leader Seattle, chief of the Duwamish, Suquamish, and other tribes of the Puget Sound area. Areas of great natural beauty, including the densely forested Olympic Peninsula and the Cascade Range, surround the city. Its urban centre, dominated by tall skyscrapers that overlook Elliott Bay and enhanced by the city’s abundant parks and neighbourhoods, also offers a handsome prospect.
Seattle is a city of distinct neighbourhoods and urban districts that, though close to one another, change from one street to the next. Some neighbourhoods, notably those near the Duwamish Waterway to southwest of the city centre, are industrial in character, marked by rail yards, wharves, cranes, and low-income housing projects. Others, largely outside the city centre, are showcases for the opulence wrought by Seattle’s booming high-technology sector.
Seattle’s districts have a comfortably prosperous but not ostentatious feel, characterized by neat family homes and townhouses occupied by industrial workers, artists, academics, professionals, and that odd class of technology workers whom the novelist Douglas Coupland branded “microserfs.” The city is more closely connected to its downtown area than most of its counterparts in the American West, and considerable effort has been given to promoting the city centre as a place in which to live and work.
Seattle is a bustling place that thrives with industrial, commercial, and cultural activity around the clock. Its waters teem with great oceangoing ships, its streets with automobiles, its rail lines with transcontinental freighters and passenger trains, and its skies with aircraft of every description. Although the city’s image is of a financial and commercial centre, its people place great value on the arts, literature, sports, and other cultural activities; it boasts large arenas, multistory bookshops, dozens of museums and galleries, and countless examples of public art.
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The city is densely populated. The metropolitan area, loosely defined, has grown to embrace once far-outlying satellites such as Everett and Renton. The shift from urban to bedroom communities is a consequence of several economic considerations, among them the rapid escalation within the city of the cost of family housing. Many Seattle workers have elected to commute from distant but more affordable towns beyond the city proper. By the early 21st century some 200,000 workers commuted to downtown Seattle from neighbouring communities, creating heavy traffic and disruptions on interstate and regional highways. Despite the high real estate prices, however, the inner city remained popular among certain groups, such as young renters.
The settlement was moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay in 1852 and named "Seattle" in honor of Chief Seattle, a prominent 19th-century leader of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.
The founding of Seattle is usually dated from the arrival of the Denny Party scouts on September 25, 1851. However, Luther Collins, Henry Van Asselt, and the Maple family founded a farming settlement on what is currently the Seattle neighborhood of Georgetown on September 27, 1851. [3]
Aug 31, 1998 · Seattle was founded by members of the Denny party, most of whom arrived at Alki Beach on November 13, 1851, and then, in April 1852, relocated to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay. With the filing of the first plats on May 23, 1853, the "Town of Seattle" became official.
Mar 4, 2019 · West Seattle’s Alki Point got its name from the original settlement, the one prior to Seattle, on that flat point jutting into Puget Sound. It was called New York Alki (New York before long). Arthur Denny and his group landed at Alki November 13, 1851.
They soon changed the name to Seattle, after the local Indian Chief Sealth, and moved it to its present location on the deep waters of Elliott Bay. British Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver had explored Puget Sound more than a half century earlier when he sailed to its farthest reaches aboard the sloop H.M.S. Discovery.
