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SEATTLE |
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Curved around the shore of Elliott Bay, with Lake Washington behind
and the snowy peak of Mount Rainier hovering faintly in the distance,
SEATTLE has a magnificent setting. The insistently modern skyline of
glass skyscrapers gleams across the bay, an emblem of three decades of
aggressive urban renewal.
Seattle's beginnings were inauspiciously muddy. Flooded out of its first
location on the flat little peninsula of Alki Point, in the 1850s the
town shifted to what's now Pioneer Square, renaming itself after the
Native American Chief Sealth (hence Seattle). This was soggy ground, and
the small logging community built its houses on stilts. As the
surrounding forest was gradually felled and the wood shipped out,
Seattle grew slowly until the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897 put it firmly
on the national map. World War I boosted shipbuilding, and the city was
soon a large industrial center. Trade unions, based around the
shipworkers, grew strong, and the Industrial Workers of the World, or "Wobblies,"
coordinated the US's first general strike here on February 6, 1919.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Boeing airline
corporation was crucial to the city's well being, booming during World
War II and employing one in five of Seattle's workforce by the 1960s.
The prosperity that Boeing and more recent success stories such as
Microsoft and internet shopping site Amazon.com have brought the city is
obvious, reflected in a restored old center, a nationally acclaimed arts
scene with vibrant movie and music industries, and a flood of coffee
houses and excellent seafood restaurants. No longer overshadowed by the
two big California metropolises, Seattle now regularly tops magazine
surveys of desirable places to live, attracting migrants across the
social and economic spectrum, which has led to both exponential growth
and increasing traffic jams. As if to round out the turbulent decade, a
February 2001 earthquake shook Seattle's foundations, and reminded its
resi dents that they're just as prone to Pacific Rim tremors as their
southern counterparts in the Golden State.
Despite the dizzying expansion, the city's more established
neighborhoods remain distinctive, and Seattle has a pleasantly
down-to-earth ambience.
The City
Downtown Seattle's main attractions are the busy stalls and cafés of
Pike Place Market and the restored nineteenth-century Pioneer Square ,
lined with restaurants and taverns. A stroll along the more touristy
waterfront lets you enjoy fabulous views of Elliott Bay. At the Seattle
Center in the north, the Space Needle presides over cultural
institutions and carnival rides, as well as the city's latest draw, the
Experience Music Project . Several outlying districts are often livelier
than downtown: Capitol Hill 's cafés and bars are the heart of the
city's hipster and gay scene, and the University District is a student
area with inexpensive cafés and uptempo nightlife.
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Vacation Rentals in Seattle |
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from $65.29
USD