- King County — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
King County, located in Western Washington, covers some 2,100 square miles extending from the crest of the Cascade Range to Puget Sound, including Vashon Island. It is Washington’s most populous county and contains its largest city – Seattle. It is the commercial center of the Pacific Northwest with public and private enterprises including Boeing, Costco, Group Health Cooperative, Washington Mutual, Starbucks Coffee Co., Amazon.com, University of Washington, Microsoft, PACCAR Inc, Weyerhaeuser, Seattle City Light, and the Port of Seattle, which operates the nation’s eighth-largest port as well as Sea-Tac International Airport…
- The City of Burien is located in the Highline area of southwest King County, just west of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and about 14 miles south of downtown Seattle. Incorporated in 1993, Burien contains some of the neighborhoods that developed from homesteads settled in the 1870s and 1880s once Military Road was cut through between Fort Steilacoom near Tacoma and Seattle. Roads connecting the neighborhoods grew into a popular highway dubbed the High Line or Highline Highway between Seattle and Tacoma in 1915, and the name Highline has been used since for this portion of southwestern King County…