Seattle

19th century

In 1851, a large party of American pioneers led by Luther Collins made a location on land at the mouth of the Duwamish River; they formally claimed it on September 14, 1851.^[28] Thirteen days later, members of the Collins Party on the way to their claim passed three scouts of the Denny Party.^[29] Members of the Denny Party claimed land on Alki Point on September 28, 1851.^[30] The rest of the Denny Party set sail on the schooner Exact from Portland, Oregon, stopping in Astoria, and landed at Alki Point during a rainstorm on November 13, 1851.^[30] After a difficult winter, most of the Denny Party relocated across Elliott Bay and claimed land a second time at the site of present-day Pioneer Square,^[30] naming this new settlement Duwamps.^[31]

Charles Terry and John Low remained at the original landing location, reestablished their old land claim and called it "New York", but renamed "New York Alki" in April 1853, from a Chinook word meaning, roughly, "by and by" or "someday".^[32][33] For the next few years, New York Alki and Duwamps competed for dominance, but in time Alki was abandoned and its residents moved across the bay to join the rest of the settlers.^[34]

David Swinson "Doc" Maynard, one of the founders of Duwamps, was the primary advocate to name the settlement after Chief Seattle (Lushootseed: siʔaɫ, anglicized as "Seattle"), chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.^[35][36][37] The brief Puget Sound War culminated in the Battle of Seattle on January 26, 1856. The attack was repelled, and the settlement was never attacked again.^[38]

The name "Seattle" appears on official Washington Territory papers dated May 23, 1853, when the first plats for the village were filed. In 1855, nominal land settlements were established. On January 14, 1865, the Legislature of Territorial Washington incorporated the Town of Seattle with a board of trustees managing the city. 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.^[30][39] The corporate seal of the City of Seattle carries the date "1869" and a likeness of Chief Seattle in left profile.^[40] That same year, Seattle acquired the epithet of the "Queen City", a designation officially changed in 1982 to the "Emerald City".^[41]

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.^[42]

The first such boom, covering the early years of the city, rode on the lumber industry. During this period the road now known as Yesler Way won the nickname "Skid Road", supposedly after the timber skidding down the hill to Henry Yesler's sawmill. The later dereliction of the area may be a possible origin for the term which later entered the wider American lexicon as Skid Row.^[43] Like much of the Western United States, Seattle experienced conflicts between labor and management and ethnic tensions that culminated in the anti-Chinese riots of 1885–1886.^[44] This violence originated with unemployed whites who were determined to drive the Chinese from Seattle; anti-Chinese riots also occurred in Tacoma.

Seattle had achieved sufficient economic success when the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 destroyed the central business district. However, a far grander city center rapidly emerged in its place.^[45] Finance company Washington Mutual, for example, was founded in the immediate wake of the fire.^[46] The Panic of 1893 hit Seattle hard.^[47]

The second and most dramatic boom resulted from the Klondike Gold Rush, which ended the depression that had begun with the Panic of 1893. In a short time, Seattle became a major transportation center. On July 14, 1897, the S.S. 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. Few of those working men found lasting wealth. However, it was Seattle's business of clothing the miners and feeding them salmon that panned out in the long run. Along with Seattle, other cities like Everett, Tacoma, Port Townsend, Bremerton, and Olympia, all in the Puget Sound region, became competitors for exchange, rather than mother lodes for extraction, of precious metals.^[48]

A September 1870 engraving of Seattle published in Harper's Magazine

20th century

The boom lasted into the early part of the 20th century, and funded many new Seattle companies and products. In 1907, 19-year-old James E. Casey borrowed $100 from a friend and founded the American Messenger Company (later UPS). Other Seattle companies founded during this period include Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer.^[46] Seattle brought in the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm to design a system of parks and boulevards.^[49] The Gold Rush era culminated in the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition of 1909, which is largely responsible for the layout of today's University of Washington campus.^[50]

A shipbuilding boom in the early part of the 20th century became massive during World War I, making Seattle somewhat of a company town. The subsequent retrenchment led to the Seattle General Strike of 1919, an early general strike in the country.^[51] A 1912 city development plan by Virgil Bogue went largely unused. 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. Violence during the Maritime Strike of 1934 cost Seattle much of its maritime traffic, which was rerouted to the Port of Los Angeles.^[52]

Seattle was one of the major cities that benefited from programs such as the Works Progress Administration, CCC, Public Works Administration, and others.^[53][54] The workers, mostly men, built roads, parks, dams, schools, railroads, bridges, docks, and even historical and archival record sites and buildings. Seattle faced significant 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 also lost to Los Angeles. Seattle's eastern farm land faded due to Oregon's and the Midwest's, forcing people into town.^[55][56]

Hooverville arose during the Depression, leading to Seattle's growing homeless population. Stationed outside Seattle, the Hooverville housed thousands of men but very few children and no women. With work projects close to the city, Hooverville grew and the WPA settled into the city.^[57]

A movement of women arose from Seattle during the Great Depression, fueled in part by Eleanor Roosevelt's 1933 book It's Up to the Women; women pushed for recognition, not just as housewives, but as the backbone of the family. Using newspapers and journals Working Woman and The Woman Today, women pushed to be seen as equal and receive some recognition.^[58]

The Great Depression did not impact the University of Washington negatively. As schools across Washington lost funding and attendance, the university actually prospered during the time period as they focused on growing their student enrollment. While Seattle public schools were influenced by Washington's superintendent Worth McClure,^[59] they still struggled to pay teachers and maintain attendance.^[60]

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. He went on to become 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.^[61]

War work again brought local prosperity during World War II, centered on the production of Boeing aircraft. The war dispersed the city's numerous Japanese-American businessmen due to the Japanese American internment. After the World War II, however, the local economy dipped. It rose again with Boeing's growing dominance in the commercial airliner market.^[62] 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 Space Needle was built.^[63]

Another major local economic downturn was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when Boeing was heavily affected by the oil crises, loss of government contracts, and costs and delays associated with the Boeing 747. Many people left the area to look for work elsewhere, and two local real estate agents put up a billboard reading "Will the last person leaving Seattle – Turn out the lights."^[64]

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.^[65] The Seattle area is still home to Boeing's Renton narrow-body plant and Everett wide-body plant.^[66] The company's credit union for employees, BECU, remains based in the Seattle area and has been open to all residents of Washington since 2002.^[67]

On March 20, 1970, twenty-eight people were killed when the Ozark Hotel was burned by an unknown arsonist.^[68] The Wah Mee massacre in 1983 resulted in the killing of 13 people in an illegal gambling club in the Seattle Chinatown-International District.^[69]

The city's first coffeehouses were established in the late 1950s and grew over the following decades as espresso was introduced to the American market. On March 30, 1971, the first location for Starbucks Coffee opened at Pike Place Market in Downtown Seattle. The company initially sold coffee beans but later expanded into cafes.^[70]

Prosperity began to return in the 1980s beginning with Microsoft's 1979 move from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to nearby Bellevue, Washington.^[71]

Seattle and its suburbs became home to a number of technology companies, including Amazon, F5 Networks, RealNetworks, Nintendo of America, and T-Mobile.^[72] This success brought an influx of new residents with a population increase within city limits of almost 50,000 between 1990 and 2000,^[73] and saw Seattle's real estate become some of the most expensive in the country.^[74]

Seattle in this period attracted attention as home to the companies opened operations in or around the city. In 1990, the Goodwill Games were held in the city.^[75] Three years later, in 1993, the APEC leaders was hosted in Seattle.^[76] The 1990s also witnessed a growing popularity in grunge music, a sound that was largely developed in Seattle's independent music scene.^[77]

In 1993, the movie Sleepless in Seattle brought the city further national attention,^[78] as did the television sitcom Frasier. The dot-com boom caused a great frenzy among the technology companies in Seattle but the bubble ended in early 2001.^[79][80]

In 1999, the World Trade Organization held its conference in Seattle, which was met with protest activity. The protests and police reactions to them largely overshadowed the conference itself.^[81]

21st century

In 2001, the city was impacted by the Mardi Gras Riots and then by the Nisqually earthquake the following day.^[82]

Another boom began as the city emerged from the Great Recession, commencing when Amazon moved its headquarters from North Beacon Hill to South Lake Union. The move initiated a historic construction boom which resulted in the completion of almost 10,000 apartments in Seattle in 2017, more than any previous year and nearly twice as many as were built in 2016.^[83][84] By 2025, Seattle's new apartments had become the smallest in the U.S., with an average of 649 square feet (60.3 m²) among all unit types.^[85]

From 2010 to 2015, Seattle gained an average of 14,511 residents per year, with the growth strongly skewed toward the center of the city,^[86] and unemployment dropped from roughly 9 percent to 3.6 percent.^[87] The city has found itself "bursting at the seams", with over 45,000 households spending more than half their income on housing and at least 2,800 people homeless, and with the country's sixth-worst rush-hour traffic.^[87] In response, many urbanist measures to improve transit, cycling,^[88] and housing affordability were passed by city council, the state, and voters.^[89] These include Sound Transit 3, Seattle Prop 1A,^[90] a new "One Seattle" Comprehensive Plan,^[91] and electing Katie Wilson to mayor.

In 2020, protesters established a self-declared autonomous zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.^[92]

During the early to mid 2020s, large numbers of transgender people fled to Seattle from conservative-leaning states, which had implemented hostile legislation restricting their civil rights. This led the city's LGBTQ commission to send a letter to the mayor recommending a state of civil emergency be declared.^[93][94][95]

Topography

Seattle is located between the saltwater Puget Sound (an arm of the Pacific Ocean) to the west and Lake Washington to the east. The city's chief harbor, Elliott Bay, is part of Puget Sound, making the city an oceanic port. To the west, beyond Puget Sound, are the Kitsap Peninsula and Olympic Mountains on the Olympic Peninsula; to the east, beyond Lake Washington and the Eastside suburbs, are Lake Sammamish and the Cascade Range. Lake Washington's waters flow to Puget Sound through the Lake Washington Ship Canal (consisting of two man-made canals, Lake Union, and the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks at Salmon Bay, ending in Shilshole Bay on Puget Sound).^{[citation needed]}

The sea, rivers, forests, lakes, and fields surrounding Seattle were once rich enough to support one of the world's few sedentary hunter-gatherer societies. In modern times the surrounding area lends itself well to sailing, skiing, bicycling, camping, and hiking year-round.^[96][97]

The city is hilly in some places.^[98] Like Rome, the city is said to lie on seven hills;^[99] the lists vary but typically include Capitol Hill, First Hill, West Seattle, Beacon Hill, Queen Anne, Magnolia, and the former Denny Hill. The Wallingford, Delridge, Mount Baker, Seward Park, Washington Park, Broadmoor, Madrona, Phinney Ridge, Sunset Hill, Blue Ridge, Broadview, Laurelhurst, Hawthorne Hills, Maple Leaf, and Crown Hill neighborhoods are all located on hills. Many of the hilliest areas are near the city center, with Capitol Hill, First Hill, and Beacon Hill collectively constituting something of a ridge along an isthmus between Elliott Bay and Lake Washington.^[100] The break in the ridge between First Hill and Beacon Hill is man-made, a result of two of the many regrading projects that reshaped the topography of the city center.^[101] The topography of the city center was also changed by the construction of a seawall and the artificial Harbor Island (completed 1909) at the mouth of the city's industrial Duwamish Waterway, the terminus of the Green River. The highest point within city limits, 520 feet (160 m) above sea level, is at Myrtle Reservoir Park in the High Point neighborhood of West Seattle.^[102]

North of the city center, the Lake Washington Ship Canal connects Puget Sound to Lake Washington. It incorporates four natural bodies of water: Lake Union, Salmon Bay, Portage Bay, and Union Bay.^[103]

Due to its location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Seattle is in a major earthquake zone. On February 28, 2001, the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake did significant architectural damage, especially in the Pioneer Square area (built on reclaimed land, as are the Industrial District and part of the city center), and caused one fatality.^[104] Other strong earthquakes occurred on January 26, 1700 (estimated at 9 magnitude), December 14, 1872 (7.3 or 7.4),^[105] April 13, 1949 (7.1),^[106] and April 29, 1965 (6.5).^[107] The 1965 quake caused three deaths in Seattle directly and one more by heart failure.^[107] Although the Seattle Fault passes just south of the city center, neither it^[108] nor the Cascadia subduction zone has caused an earthquake since the city's founding. The Cascadia subduction zone poses the threat of an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 or greater, capable of seriously damaging the city and collapsing many buildings, especially in zones built on fill.^[109]

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 142.5 square miles (369 km²),^[110] 84 square miles (220 km²) of which is land and 58.1 square miles (150 km²) is water (41% of the total area).^[1]

Cityscape

A Seattle skyline view from Queen Anne Hill, including the Space Needle, Climate Pledge Arena, Mount Rainier, Elliott Bay, and the Port of Seattle on Puget Sound

Climate

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Seattle has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Csb),^{[111][112][113]} while under the Trewartha system, it is labeled an oceanic climate (Dobk).^[114][115] It has cool, wet winters and mild, relatively dry summers, covering characteristics of both climate types.^[116][117] The climate is sometimes characterized as a "modified Mediterranean" climate because it is cooler and wetter than a "true" Mediterranean climate, but shares the characteristic dry summer (which has a strong influence on the region's vegetation).^[118]

Seattle's strong seasonal contrast reflects the migration of the dominant North Pacific pressure centers. In summer, the North Pacific High expands northward over the eastern Pacific and deflects the storm track far to the north of Washington.^[119] From late autumn through early spring the high retreats southward while the Aleutian Low, a semi-permanent low-pressure system near the Aleutian Islands, intensifies and shifts south, becoming one of the dominant features of Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation.^[119][120] Extratropical cyclones forming in the sub-polar North Pacific typically reach peak intensity near the Aleutian Low and are then steered by the polar jet stream toward the Pacific Northwest coast, delivering the great majority of Seattle's annual precipitation between October and March.^[120] Particularly intense storms include atmospheric rivers ("Pineapple Express" systems) that channel subtropical moisture into western Washington and can produce four to five inches of rainfall in twenty-four hours.^[121]

The city's precipitation is further shaped by its position in the lee of the Olympic Mountains, which rise abruptly to nearly 8,000 feet (2,400 m) only about 60 miles (97 km) to the west and force orographic uplift of incoming Pacific air. The windward Hoh Rainforest averages roughly 142 inches (3,600 mm) of precipitation annually, while the rain shadow on the leeward side produces only about 16 inches (410 mm) at Sequim in the Dungeness Valley, one of the steepest precipitation gradients in the contiguous United States.^[122][123] Seattle sits near the eastern edge of this shadow and is only partially sheltered by it.

Temperature extremes are moderated by the adjacent Puget Sound, greater Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington. Thus extreme heat waves are rare in the Seattle area, as are very cold temperatures (below about 15 °F; −9 °C). The Seattle area is the cloudiest region of the Continental United States, with 201 cloudy days and 93 partly cloudy days in an average year.^[124] With many more "rain days" than other major American cities, Seattle has a well-earned reputation for frequent rain.^[123] In an average year, there are 150 days in which at least 0.01 inches (0.25 mm) of precipitation falls, more days than in nearly all U.S. cities east of the Rocky Mountains.^[125] However, because it often has merely a light drizzle falling from the sky for many days, Seattle actually receives significantly less rainfall (or other precipitation) overall than many other major U.S. cities like New York City, Miami, or Houston.

The most damaging weather events in the region are deep extratropical cyclones spawned along the Aleutian Low storm track, which periodically produce some of the strongest non-tropical windstorms in the contiguous United States.^[126] The benchmark event is the Columbus Day storm of 1962, which brought sustained winds above 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) to western Washington and killed 46 people across the region; the Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006 cut power to approximately 1.8 million customers and caused damages exceeding $1 billion.^[127]

This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: Some of this data is more than five years old; parts are more than 10 years old. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (November 2024)

Sexual orientation and gender identity

Seattle has a notably large lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. According to a 2006 study by UCLA, 12.9% of city residents polled identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. This was the second-highest proportion of any major U.S. city, behind San Francisco.^[158] Greater Seattle also ranked second among major U.S. metropolitan areas, with 6.5% of the population identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.^[158] In a more recent Gallup poll survey of 2015, Seattle ranked fifth, at 4.8%.^[18] According to 2012 estimates from the United States Census Bureau, Seattle has the highest percentage of same-sex households in the United States, at 2.6 percent, surpassing San Francisco (2.5 percent).^[159] The Capitol Hill district has been the center of LGBTQ culture in Seattle^[160] since the 1970s. Before then, the Pioneer Square district was the city's hub of LGBTQ community.^[161]

Performing arts

Seattle has been a regional center for the performing arts for many years. The century-old Seattle Symphony Orchestra has won many awards and performs primarily at Benaroya Hall.^[184] The Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet, which perform at McCaw Hall (opened in 2003 on the site of the former Seattle Opera House at Seattle Center), are comparably distinguished,^[185][186] with the Opera being particularly known for its performances of the works of Richard Wagner^[187][188] and the PNB School (founded in 1974) ranking as one of the top three ballet training institutions in the United States.^[189] The Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras (SYSO) is the largest symphonic youth organization in the United States.^[190] The city also boasts lauded summer and winter chamber music festivals organized by the Seattle Chamber Music Society.^[191]

The 5th Avenue Theatre, built in 1926, stages Broadway-style musical shows^[192] featuring both local talent and international stars.^[193] Seattle has "around 100" theatrical production companies^[194] and over two dozen live theatre venues, many of them associated with fringe theatre;^[195][196] Seattle is probably second only to New York for number of equity theaters^[197] (28 Seattle theater companies have some sort of Actors' Equity contract).^[194] In addition, the 900-seat Romanesque Revival Town Hall on First Hill hosts numerous cultural events, especially lectures and recitals.^[198]

Between 1918 and 1951, there were nearly two dozen jazz nightclubs along Jackson Street, running from the current Chinatown/International District to the Central District. The jazz scene developed the early careers of Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Bumps Blackwell, Ernestine Anderson, and others.^[199]

Early popular musical acts from the Seattle/Puget Sound area include the collegiate folk group The Brothers Four, vocal group The Fleetwoods, 1960s garage rockers The Wailers and The Sonics, and instrumental surf group The Ventures, some of whom are still active.^[199]

Seattle is considered the home of grunge music,^[19] having produced artists such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney, all of whom reached international audiences in the early 1990s.^[199] The city is also home to such varied artists as avant-garde jazz musicians Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz, hot jazz musician Glenn Crytzer, hip hop artists Sir Mix-a-Lot, Macklemore, Blue Scholars, and Shabazz Palaces, smooth jazz saxophonist Kenny G, classic rock staples Heart and Queensrÿche, and alternative rock bands such as Foo Fighters, Harvey Danger, The Presidents of the United States of America, The Posies, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Death Cab for Cutie, and Fleet Foxes. Rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Duff McKagan, and Nikki Sixx spent their formative years in Seattle.

The Seattle-based Sub Pop record company continues to be one of the world's best-known independent/alternative music labels.^[199] Seattle is known for its live-music venues including The Crocodile, Vito's and Columbia City Theater.^[200] Over the years, a number of songs have been written about Seattle.

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;^[201] Anis Mojgani, two-time National Poetry Slam Champ;^[202] and Danny Sherrard, 2007 National Poetry Slam Champ and 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam Champ.^[203] Seattle also hosted the 2001 national Poetry Slam Tournament. The Seattle Poetry Festival is a biennial poetry festival that (launched first as the Poetry Circus in 1997) has featured local, regional, national, and international names in poetry.^[204]

The city also has movie houses showing both Hollywood productions and works by independent filmmakers.^[205] Among these, the Seattle Cinerama stands out as one of only three movie theaters in the world still capable of showing three-panel Cinerama films.^[206]

Tourism

Among Seattle's prominent annual fairs and festivals are the 24-day Seattle International Film Festival,^[208] Northwest Folklife over the Memorial Day weekend, numerous Seafair events throughout July and August (ranging from a Bon Odori celebration to the Seafair Cup hydroplane races), the Bite of Seattle, one of the largest Gay Pride festivals in the United States, and the art and music festival Bumbershoot, which programs music as well as other art and entertainment over the Labor Day weekend. All are typically attended by 100,000 people annually, as are the Seattle Hempfest and two separate Independence Day celebrations.^{[209][210][211][212]}

Other significant events include numerous Native American pow-wows, a Greek Festival hosted by St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Montlake, and numerous ethnic festivals (many associated with Festál at Seattle Center).^[213]

There are other annual events, ranging from the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair & Book Arts Show;^[214] an anime convention, Sakura-Con;^[215] Penny Arcade Expo, a gaming convention;^[216] a two-day, 9,000-rider Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic;^[217] and specialized film festivals, such as the Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival, the Seattle Asian American Film Festival, Children's Film Festival Seattle, Translation: the Seattle Transgender Film Festival, the Seattle Queer Film Festival, Seattle Latino Film Festival, and the Seattle Polish Film Festival.^[218][219]

The Henry Art Gallery opened in 1927, the first public art museum in Washington.^[220] The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) opened in 1933 and moved to their current downtown location in 1991 (expanded and reopened in 2007); since 1991, the 1933 building has been SAM's Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM).^[221] SAM also operates the Olympic Sculpture Park (opened in 2007) on the waterfront north of the downtown piers.^[222] The Frye Art Museum is a free museum on First Hill.^[223]

Regional history collections are at the Log House Museum in Alki, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, the Museum of History and Industry, and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Industry collections are at the Center for Wooden Boats and the adjacent Northwest Seaport, and the Museum of Flight. Regional ethnic collections include the National Nordic Museum, the Wing Luke Asian Museum, and the Northwest African American Museum. Seattle has artist-run galleries,^[224] including ten-year veteran Soil Art Gallery,^[225] and the newer Crawl Space Gallery.^[226]

The Seattle Great Wheel, one of the largest Ferris wheels in the US, opened in June 2012 as a new, permanent attraction on the city's waterfront, at Pier 57, next to Downtown Seattle.^[227] The Seattle Aquarium opened on the downtown waterfront in 1977 and was expanded in 2007 with an auditorium, gift shop, and cafe alongside new exhibit spaces. A new, three-story building under the Overlook Walk opened in 2024 with tropical exhibits and a 500,000-US-gallon (1,900,000 L) tank with sharks and rays from the Coral Triangle region of Southeast Asia.^[228][229]

Woodland Park Zoo opened as a private menagerie in 1889 but was sold to the city in 1899.^[230] The city also has many community centers for recreation, including Rainier Beach, Van Asselt, Rainier, and Jefferson south of the Ship Canal and Green Lake, Laurelhurst, Loyal Heights north of the Canal, and Meadowbrook.^[231] The Seattle Underground Tour is an exhibit of places that existed before the Great Fire and subsequent rebuilding of modern-day Pioneer Square, which raised the street level.^[232]

Since the mid-1990s, Seattle has experienced significant growth in the cruise industry, especially as a departure point for Alaska cruises. In 2023, a record total of 907,572 cruise passengers passed through the city, surpassing the number for Vancouver, BC, the other major departure point for Alaska cruises.^[233] New tourist industries, such as guided tours and amphibious tours also emerged during the 1990s.^[234]

Libraries

The Seattle Public Library system consists of 27 branches with a combined total of 3,119,298 items as of 2023^[update].^[235] The library was founded as part of the city government in 1890, though previous efforts to establish one date back to 1868; it first opened in 1891 and moved into a permanent location, a mansion once owned by Seattle pioneer Henry Yesler, in 1899.^[236] The mansion burned down in 1901 along with most of the 33,000 books then in the library's collection, resulting in the construction of a Carnegie library building in 1906; eventually known as the Seattle Central Library, the building was replaced in 1960 with an International Style design and again in 2004 with a design by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.^[236][237]

Health systems

The University of Washington is consistently ranked among the country's leading institutions in medical research, earning special merits for programs in neurology and neurosurgery. The university-run UW Medicine system encompasses several major local hospitals, including Harborview Medical Center, the public county hospital and the only Level I trauma hospital for Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho.^[354] Harborview and two other major hospitals—Virginia Mason Medical Center and Swedish Medical Center—are located on First Hill, which is nicknamed "Pill Hill" for its concentration of medical facilities.^[355]

Located in the Laurelhurst neighborhood, Seattle Children's, formerly Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, is the pediatric referral center for Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has a campus in the Eastlake neighborhood. The University District is home to the University of Washington Medical Center which, along with Harborview, is operated by the University of Washington. Seattle is also served by a Veterans Affairs hospital on Beacon Hill, a third campus of Swedish in Ballard, and UW Medical Center - Northwest near Northgate Station.^[356]

Seattle has seen local developments of modern paramedic services with the establishment of Medic One in 1970.^[357] In 1974, a 60 Minutes story on the success of the then four-year-old Medic One paramedic system called Seattle "the best place in the world to have a heart attack."^[358] The city also has several pharmacy chains; these include Walgreens, and formerly Bartell Drugs, which was family-run in Seattle until its acquisition by Rite Aid in 2020 and then closed in 2025.^[359][360] As of 2024^[update], Seattle lacks a 24-hour retail pharmacy due to the closure of locations across several chains.^[361][362]

Transportation

The first streetcars appeared in 1889 and were instrumental in the creation of a relatively well-defined downtown and strong neighborhoods at the end of their lines. The advent of the automobile began the dismantling of rail in Seattle. Tacoma–Seattle railway service ended in 1929 and the Everett–Seattle service came to an end in 1939, replaced by automobiles running on the recently developed highway system. Rails on city streets were paved over or removed, and the opening of the Seattle trolleybus system brought the end of streetcars in Seattle in 1941. This left an extensive network of privately owned buses (later public) as the only mass transit within the city and throughout the region.^[363]

King County Metro provides regular bus service in the city and county, and the South Lake Union Streetcar line and the First Hill Streetcar line.^[364] Seattle is one of the few cities in North America whose bus fleet includes electric trolleybuses. Sound Transit provides an express bus service within the metropolitan area, two Sounder commuter rail lines between the suburbs and downtown, and its 1 Line light rail line between Northgate and Angle Lake.^[365][366] Washington State Ferries, which manages the largest network of ferries in the United States and third-largest in the world, connects Seattle to Bainbridge and Vashon Islands in Puget Sound and to Bremerton and Southworth on the Kitsap Peninsula.^[367] In addition to the state's large car ferries, passenger-only catamarans are operated by other public agencies to provide service on water taxi and "fast ferry" routes.^[368] King Street Station in Pioneer Square serves Amtrak intercity trains and Sounder commuter trains, and is located adjacent to the International District/Chinatown light rail station.^[369]

According to the 2007 American Community Survey, 18.6% of Seattle residents used one of the three public transit systems that serve the city, giving it the highest transit ridership of all major cities without heavy or light rail prior to the completion of Sound Transit's 1 Line.^[370] The city has also been described by Bert Sperling as the fourth most walkable U.S. city and by Walk Score as the sixth most walkable of the fifty largest U.S. cities.^[371][372]

Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, locally known as Sea-Tac Airport and located just south in the neighboring city of SeaTac, is operated by the Port of Seattle and provides commercial air service to destinations throughout the world. Closer to downtown, Boeing Field is used for general aviation, cargo flights, and testing/delivery of Boeing airliners. A secondary passenger airport, Paine Field, opened in 2019 and is located in Everett, 25 miles (40 km) north of Seattle. It is predominantly used by Boeing and their large assembly plant located nearby.^[373][374]

The main mode of transportation, however, is the street system, which is laid out in a cardinal directions grid pattern, except in the central business district where early city leaders Arthur Denny and Carson Boren insisted on orienting the plats relative to the shoreline rather than to true north.^[375] The city's topography, formed by the recession of glaciers, created north–south troughs that did not allow east–west streets to be continuous;^[376] only Madison Street runs uninterrupted from Elliott Bay to Lake Washington.^[377] Only two roads, Interstate 5 and State Route 99 (both limited-access highways) run uninterrupted through the city from north to south. From 1953 to 2019, State Route 99 ran through downtown Seattle on the Alaskan Way Viaduct, an elevated freeway on the waterfront. However, due to damage sustained during the 2001 Nisqually earthquake the viaduct was replaced by a tunnel. The 2-mile (3.2 km) Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel was originally scheduled to be completed in December 2015 at a cost of US$4.25 billion. The world's largest tunnel boring machine, named "Bertha", was commissioned for the project, measuring 57 feet (17 m) in diameter. The tunnel's opening was delayed to February 2019 due to issues with the machine, which included a two-year halt in excavation.^[378] Seattle has the 8th-worst traffic congestion of all American cities, and ranks 10th among all North American cities according to Inrix.^[379]

The city has started moving away from the automobile and toward mass transit. From 2004 to 2009, the annual number of unlinked public transportation trips increased by approximately 21%.^[380] In 2006, voters in King County passed the Transit Now proposition, which increased bus service hours on high ridership routes and paid for five limited-stop bus lines called RapidRide.^[381] After rejecting a roads and transit measure in 2007, Seattle-area voters passed a transit only measure in 2008 to increase ST Express bus service, extend the Link light rail system, and expand and improve Sounder commuter rail service.^[382]

A Link light rail line (now the 1 Line) from downtown heading south to Sea-Tac Airport began service in 2009, giving the city its first rapid transit line with intermediate stations within the city limits. The line was first extended north to the University of Washington in March 2016,^[383] followed by Northgate in October 2021,^[384] and Lynnwood in August 2024.^[385] A second line, the 2 Line opened in April 2024 between Bellevue and Redmond and was extended to Seattle in March 2026. The section between Seattle and Bellevue is the first railway to use a floating pontoon bridge.^[386][387] Voters in the Puget Sound region approved an additional tax increase, part of the Sound Transit 3 package, in November 2016 to expand light rail to West Seattle and Ballard as well as Tacoma, Everett, and Issaquah.^[388]

Seattle has scooter and bicycle-sharing systems operated by private companies (Bird and Lime) who cooperate with the city government.^[389] A docked bikeshare system, Pronto Cycle Share, debuted in 2014 but was shut down in 2017 due to low ridership numbers.^[390] Later that year, the city government allowed privately operated dockless bicycles to operate within Seattle as a pilot.^[391] It was later made a permanent program with several competing companies; one used bikes with gears specifically chosen for Seattle's hilly terrain.^[88] Later developments included using exclusively e-bikes and e-scooters.^[392] A city-operated site tracks ridership.^[g] In 2024, a total of 6.3 million trips on bikeshare and scootershare systems were taken in Seattle; there were also 163 serious injuries that year involving bikes and scooters.^[394]

Utilities

Water and electric power are municipal services, provided by Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light, respectively.^[395] Private utility companies serving Seattle include Puget Sound Energy, which has 150,000 natural gas customers in the city,^[396] and Seattle Steam Company, which has a district heating system in Downtown Seattle powered by several steam plants.^[397] Curbside solid waste, recycling, and composting pickup is outsourced by Seattle Public Utilities to Waste Management, Inc and Recology. Non-garbage waste is processed by other companies;^[398] since 2015, curbside collection of food waste for composting in Seattle has been mandatory to offer to all households.^[399]

Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink),^[400] Astound Broadband (formerly Wave Broadband),^[401] and Comcast are the primary providers of telephone, cable television, and Internet service in the city.^[402] CenturyLink stopped providing cable television service in 2021.^[403]

As of 2023, at least 88% of Seattle's electricity is produced using hydropower, with less than 40% of the hydroelectricity acquired via the Bonneville Power Administration. The remaining known electricity sources consist of wind power, nuclear power, and biogas; less than 2% comes from an unidentified source.^[404] Seattle Public Utilities manages two tap water supply systems on the Cedar River and Tolt River.^[405] These systems are fed by melted snowpack in the Cascade Mountains over the autumn and winter that fill reservoirs as they melt.^[406] The city's wastewater system includes 1,422 miles (2,288 km) of sewers that reach treatment plants that discharge into Puget Sound; a 485-mile (781 km) network of separate tunnels for stormwater serve other treatment facilities.^[407] Older areas of the city have a combined sewer system that dumps stormwater and untreated wastewater into Puget Sound during overflow events.^[408]