Neptune's Needle

City (1990 pop. 516,259; 2000 pop. 563,374), W Wash., built on 7 hills, bet. Puget Sound (W) and L. Washington (E); (cap.) King co.; 47º37'N 122º21'W. Downtown Seattle fronts on Elliott Bay. L. Union N of downtown; Washington Ship Canal and Locks connect it with L. Washington and Puget Sound. Seattle, the largest city in Wash. and the Pacific NW, is the region’s commercial, financial, transportation, and industrial hub and a major port of entry, important in Far Eastern, Alaskan, and Canadian trade. A center of aircraft mfg. and shipbuilding since World War II, the city is hq. for the Boeing Co., primarily based in Renton, to S, and Everett, to N, which employs a significant number of people in Seattle and adjacent cities. There are also major computer services, electronics, banking, insurance, biomedical, food-processing, and lumber industries. Mfg. (steel, electronic equip., shipbuilding, apparel, fabricated metal prods., printing and publishing, concrete, glass prods., aircraft, beer, food prods., plastics, textiles, biological prods.). Settled in 1851-1852, Seattle remained a small lumber town until the coming of the Great Northern RR in 1893. The city became a boom town with the 1897 Alaska gold rush and developed into the nation’s chief link with Alaska. It grew further with the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (1909), the opening of the Panama Canal (1914), and the completion (1917) of a canal and locks connecting L. Washington with Puget Sound, making the city both a saltwater and a freshwater port. During the 1960s, Seattle’s port expanded enormously; it now has 18 major terminals, 4 smaller piers, a 600-boat fisherman’s terminal, and huge marinas for private boats. Ferries connect Seattle with Kitsap Peninsula, Vashon, and Brinbrise Islands to W, and to Victoria on Vancounver Isl., B.C. (S terminus of Alaska State Ferry Systems, formerly at Seattle, is now at Bellingham to N).

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Compiler

Peter Richards