68 Facts About Seattle

Seattle is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington.

Seattle area was inhabited by Native Americans for at least 4, 000 years before the first permanent European settlers.

Today, Seattle has high populations of Native, Scandinavian, Asian American and African American people, as well as a thriving LGBT community that ranks sixth in the United States by population.

Seattle is the birthplace of rock musician Jimi Hendrix, as well as the origin of the bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Heart, Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters, and the alternative rock movement grunge.

Name "Seattle" appears on official Washington Territory papers dated May 23, 1853, when the first plats for the village were filed.

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The Town of Seattle was disincorporated on January 18, 1867, and remained a mere precinct of King County until late 1869, when a new petition was filed and the 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 Si'ahl in left profile.

That same year, Seattle acquired the epithet of the "Queen City", a designation officially changed in 1982 to "Emerald City".

Seattle has a history of boom-and-bust cycles, like many other cities near areas of extensive natural and mineral resources.

Seattle has risen several times economically, then gone into precipitous decline, but it has typically used those periods to rebuild solid infrastructure.

Seattle had achieved sufficient economic success that when the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 destroyed the central business district, a far grander city-center rapidly emerged in its place.

Portland docked with its famed "ton of gold, " and Seattle became the main transport and supply point for the miners in Alaska and the Yukon.

Seattle brought in the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm to design a system of parks and boulevards.

Seattle was mildly prosperous in the 1920s but was particularly hard hit in the Great Depression, experiencing some of the country's harshest labor strife in that era.

Great Depression in Seattle affected many minority groups, one being the Asian Pacific Americans; they were subject to racism, loss of property, and failed claims of unemployment due to citizenship status.

However, Seattle faced massive unemployment, loss of lumber and construction industries as Los Angeles prevailed as the bigger West Coast city.

Seattle had building contracts that rivaled New York City and Chicago, but lost to LA as well.

Seattle was the home base of impresario Alexander Pantages who, starting in 1902, opened a number of theaters in the city exhibiting vaudeville acts and silent movies.

Seattle went on to became one of America's greatest theater and movie tycoons.

Scottish-born architect B Marcus Priteca designed several theaters for Pantages in Seattle, which were later demolished or converted to other uses.

Seattle's surviving Paramount Theatre, on which he collaborated, was not a Pantages theater.

Seattle celebrated its restored prosperity and made a bid for world recognition with the Century 21 Exposition, the 1962 World's Fair, for which the iconic Space Needle was built.

Seattle remained the corporate headquarters of Boeing until 2001, when the company separated its headquarters from its major production facilities; the headquarters were moved to Chicago.

The Seattle area is still home to Boeing's Renton narrow-body plant and Everett wide-body plant.

In 1993, the movie Sleepless in Seattle brought the city further national attention, as did the television sitcom Frasier.

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Sea, rivers, forests, lakes, and fields surrounding Seattle were once rich enough to support one of the world's few sedentary hunter-gatherer societies.

Seattle has a temperate climate, classified in the Mediterranean zone by the main climatic classification, but some sources put the city in the oceanic zone (Cfb).

The Seattle area is the cloudiest region of the United States, due in part to frequent storms and lows moving in from the adjacent Pacific Ocean.

However, because it often has merely a light drizzle falling from the sky for many days, Seattle actually receives significantly less rainfall overall than many other U S cities like New York City, Miami, or Houston.

Seattle is cloudy 201 days out of the year and partly cloudy 93 days.

The 2010 census showed that Seattle was one of the whitest big cities in the country, although its proportion of white residents has been gradually declining.

The Chinese population in the Seattle area has origins in mainland China, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan.

The Seattle area is home to a large Vietnamese population of more than 55, 000 residents, as well as over 30, 000 Somali immigrants.

Additionally, the Seattle area had the highest percentage of self-identified mixed-race people of any large metropolitan area in the United States, according to the 2000 United States Census Bureau.

In 2021 Seattle experienced its first population decline in 50 years.

Seattle has a relatively high number of adults living alone.

Seattle has a notably large lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.

Greater Seattle ranked second among major U S metropolitan areas, with 6.

Seattle's economy is driven by a mix of older industrial companies and "new economy" internet and technology companies, as well as service, design, and clean technology companies.

The Port of Seattle, which operates Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, is a major gateway for trade with Asia and cruises to Alaska.

In February 2010, the city government committed Seattle to become North America's first "climate neutral" city, with a goal of reaching zero net per capita greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Seattle has large aircraft manufacturing plants in Everett and Renton; it remains the largest private employer in the Seattle metropolitan area.

Seattle has been a regional center for the performing arts for many years.

Seattle has "around 100" theatrical production 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.

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 international audiences in the early 1990s.

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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.

The Seattle Poetry Festival is a biennial poetry festival that has featured local, regional, national, and international names in poetry.

Seattle has artist-run galleries, including ten-year veteran Soil Art Gallery, and the newer Crawl Space Gallery.

The Seattle Aquarium has been open on the downtown waterfront since 1977.

The Seattle Underground Tour is an exhibit of places that existed before the Great Fire.

Since the middle 1990s, Seattle has experienced significant growth in the cruise industry, especially as a departure point for Alaska cruises.

Seattle Seahawks entered the National Football League in 1976 as an expansion team and have advanced to the Super Bowl three times: 2005, 2013 and 2014.

Seattle will be one of eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Seattle was awarded a Major League Baseball franchise, the Seattle Pilots, in 1969.

From 1967 to 2008, Seattle was home to the Seattle SuperSonics of the National Basketball Association.

Seattle successfully applied for a new expansion team with the National Hockey League called the Seattle Kraken, who began play in 2021.

Seattle fielded the Seattle Dragons of the XFL, who played at Lumen Field in 2020.

Seattle is widely considered one of the most socially liberal cities in the United States, even surpassing Portland.

All precincts in Seattle voted for Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

In 1926, Seattle became the first major American city to elect a female mayor, Bertha Knight Landes.

Part of southeastern Seattle is in the 9th District, represented by Democrat Adam Smith.

Seattle is home to the University of Washington, as well as the institution's professional and continuing education unit, the University of Washington Educational Outreach.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, known as the P-I, published a daily newspaper from 1863 to March 17, 2009, before switching to a strictly on-line publication.

Seattle is well served by television and radio, with all major U S networks represented, along with at least five other English-language stations and two Spanish-language stations.

Seattle has seen local developments of modern paramedic services with the establishment of Medic One in 1970.

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Seattle is served by a Veterans Affairs hospital on Beacon Hill, a third campus of Swedish in Ballard, and Northwest Hospital and Medical Center near Northgate Mall.

Seattle is one of the few cities in North America whose bus fleet includes electric trolleybuses.

Seattle has the 8th worst traffic congestion of all American cities, and is 10th among all North American cities according to Inrix.