Seattle ( see-AT-əl) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It is the 18th-most populous city in the United States with a population of 784,777 in 2025, while the Seattle metropolitan area at over 4.15 million residents is the 15th-most populous metropolitan area in the nation. The city is the county seat of King County, the most populous county in Washington. Seattle's growth rate of 21.1% between 2010 and 2020 made it one of the country's fastest-growing large cities.
Seattle is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington. It is the northernmost major city in the United States, located about 100 miles (160 km) south of the Canadian border. A gateway for trade with the Asia-Pacific region, the Port of Seattle is the fourth-largest port in North America in terms of container handling as of 2021.
The Seattle area has been inhabited by Native Americans (such as the Duwamish, who had at least 17 villages around Elliott Bay) for at least 4,000 years before the arrival of the first permanent European settlers. Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers, subsequently known as the Denny Party, arrived from Illinois via Portland, Oregon, on the schooner Exact at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The settlement was moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay in 1852 and named "Seattle" in honor of Chief Seattle, a prominent 19th-century leader of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. Seattle has relatively high populations of Native Americans as well as Americans with strong Asian, African, and European ancestry, and, as of 2015, has the fifth-highest percentage of residents who identify as LGBT among major metropolitan areas in the U.S. (4.8 percent).
Logging was Seattle's first major industry, but by the late 19th century the city had become a commercial and shipbuilding center as a gateway to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. The city grew after World War II, partly due to the local company Boeing, which established Seattle as a center for its manufacturing of aircraft. Beginning in the 1980s, the Seattle area developed into a technology center; Microsoft established its headquarters in the region. Alaska Airlines is based at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport in nearby SeaTac. The rise of new software, biotechnology, and Internet companies led to an economic revival, which increased the city's population by almost 50,000 between 1990 and 2000.
The culture of Seattle is heavily defined by its significant musical history. Between 1918 and 1951, nearly 24 jazz nightclubs existed along Jackson Street, from the current Chinatown/International District to the Central District. The jazz scene nurtured the early careers of Ernestine Anderson, Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, and others. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the city was the origin of several rock artists and bands, including the Foo Fighters, Heart, and Jimi Hendrix, and the subgenre of grunge and its pioneering bands, including Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden.
Archaeological excavations suggest that Native Americans have inhabited the Seattle area for at least 4,000 years. By the time the first European settlers arrived, the Duwamish people occupied at least 17 villages in the areas around Elliott Bay. The name for the modern city of Seattle in Lushootseed, dᶻidᶻəlal̓ič, meaning "little crossing-over place", comes from one of these villages, which was located at the present-day King Street Station.
In May 1792, George Vancouver was the first European to visit the Seattle area during his 1791–1795 expedition for the Royal Navy, which sought to chart the Pacific Northwest for the British.
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. Thirteen days later, members of the Collins Party on the way to their claim passed three scouts of the Denny Party. Members of the Denny Party claimed land on Alki Point on September 28, 1851. 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. 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, naming this new settlement Duwamps.
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". 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.
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. 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.
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. The corporate seal of the City of Seattle carries the date "1869" and a likeness of Chief Seattle in left profile. That same year, Seattle acquired the epithet of the "Queen City", a designation officially changed in 1982 to the "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.
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. 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. 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. Finance company Washington Mutual, for example, was founded in the immediate wake of the fire. The Panic of 1893 hit Seattle hard.
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.