文档介绍：© Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd
BACKGROUND
HISTORY
For a major US city, Seattle’s civic history begins late in the chronicle of the nation. While the
rest of the country was establishing firm roots, most of today’s Seattle was covered in deep forest
that was perennially drenched in rain. Though native groups lived here long before, colonialist
settlement didn’t reach Puget Sound until 1851. The history of Seattle as a city is itself only
about 130 years long, but in that time it’s become the cultural and economic center of the Pacific
Northwest. Not that the city would ever brag about that status itself, mind you.
Despite its achievements and importance
to the region, Seattle still has the mellow
sense of modesty and self-deprecation that SEATTLE FACTS
characterizes the Northwest. This dates back City area sq miles
to its laid-back origins as ‘New York Pretty Population 602,000 (estimated)
Soon’ (see p24). The attitude peaked in the King County area sq miles
1950s and ’60s, with the wild antibooster- King County population million BACKGROUND
ism of newspaper columnist Emmett Watson Freshwater shoreline miles
(who wrote things like ‘Have a nice day – Saltwater shoreline miles
somewhere else’ and ‘Our suicide rate is one Puget Sound 500 sq miles of water, 300 islands
of the highest in the nation. But we can be
No 1!’). And it has colored the way the nation HISTORY
perceives Seattle, along with the popularization of the antiglamourous in the form of grunge,
a trend whose fame still seems to mortify the city. Then there was Seattle’s naive excitement
at being selected to host the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) conference and many
residents’ shock at the resulting fallout. Seattle always seems to have an uncomfortable
relationship with the success it has struggled to achieve.
NATIVE PEOPLES OF PUGET SOUND
When the accumulated ice of the great polar glacier