Seattle

Just a little Seattle history for those who are interested… a chance to get to know some of the movers and shakers, the characters that founded the Emerald City. Check out the Seattle neighborhood buttons on the side panel under Downtown and North Seattle for entertainment ideas.

This place we call Seattle and the Puget Sound is just the last in a long line of names given to the area the Bearded One and I call home. Archeology digs show that people have called this region home for more than four thousand years. When later settlers, i.e., Asians, Europeans, or Mid-Westerners, arrived, they encountered a host of thriving Native American communities.

These original inhabitants had developed a multitude of inter-related communities. The vast Puget Sound and its connecting waterways provided them with the super highways of their day. They also had an active exchange of goods established with other Native American groups located east of the Cascades and in what is now known as Western Canada.

Seattle, as we now know it now, was first settled by the Arthur Denny party, who had traveled overland via the Oregon Tail from Illinois to Portland, Oregon. After an extended lay over there, they then took to the ocean for a trip up the coast, arriving on November 13, 1851 at Alki Point in West Seattle.

Their journey, like that of many traveling West, was full of family, friends, and sometimes “no longer friends”, illness, injury, danger, birth, death and disappointment but always with a stubbornness to move forward.

What the Denny party and other settlers found in Western Washington was awesome and overwhelming, for the land was covered with a forest trees. These trees were not just your garden variety trees, they were giants, towering up to four hundred feet tall and one thousand to two thousand years old. Someone once said, “The white settlers saw nothing but the trees (i.e., lumber and money) and the Native Americans saw the space between the trees (i.e., the forest)."

The Denny Party’s first winter on Alki Point convinced them that being on the cutting edge of the winter storms blowing down the coast from Alaska was not the location they had envisioned. The Sheltered inland waters of Elliott Bay proved to be much more to everyone’s liking, with its deep water mooring readily available.

Henry Yesler was just one of Seattle's early settlers who were quick to take advantage of all those wonderful trees, (i.e., lumber and money). Financial backing from a mid-westerner allowed Henry to get his steam-run sawmill up and going in no time at all. Northwest lumber was in high demand in San Francisco before and after their great fire of 1906. Much of the red brick used in Seattle, especially as street paving (some of which can still be seen on streets or under broken asphalt even today) was sent as ballast in the holds of sailing ships, coming north for lumber.

The Great Seattle Fire, June 6, 1889, leveled over twenty-nine city blocks, which was almost the entire business district, plus many homes. This included Yesler’s mill and home. Henry Yesler and others, not to be detoured by fire, wind or rain, started to rebuild almost before the coals had cooled. However, this time they built with brick. Many of these buildings are still standing and currently in use in the Historic district.

After the fire, and after the new buildings were up and occupied, the City Fathers decided to raise the streets ten feet or so because the incoming tide had a bad habit of back flushing their newly-installed indoor toilets (twice a day). Some of the original store fronts, and toilets, are available for viewing during the Underground Tour. The tour guides will also fill you in on a lot of information about Seattle’s early movers and shakers.

There are a number of excellent books written about the early history of Seattle and Puget Sound. Author William Speidel wrote two books we highly recommend for an entertaining look at Seattle’s early history, SONS OF THE PROFITS and DOC MAYNARD. Please check out our local book stores for these and other books on the region.

Enjoy Our History

Belva & The Bearded One