- Seattle’s Rainier Valley is both a neighborhood and a geographical feature. The valley, which is not a watercourse but the low land between two ridges, extends some seven miles southeast from downtown Seattle to Lake Washington. As a neighborhood, “Rainier Valley” most frequently refers to the northern and central portions of the valley, but the name is sometimes used for the entire length of the valley including neighborhoods such as Columbia City and Rainier Beach.
- Seattle — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
Seattle is the largest city in Washington state and its economic capital. Settled in 1851, its deep harbor and acquisition of Puget Sound’s first steam-powered sawmill quickly established it as a center of trade and industry. It gained the Territorial University (now University of Washington) in 1861, but was snubbed by the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1874 when it picked Tacoma as its western terminus. Despite this, the town prospered thanks to independent railroad development fueled by local coal deposits…