- Seattle Neighborhoods: Ballard — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
The Seattle neighborhood of Ballard is a “city within a city” with a decidedly Scandinavian accent. Located in the northwest part of the city, it is a maritime center. Salmon and Shilshole bays on Puget Sound form its southern and western boundaries, and Phinney Ridge rises to the east. Ballard incorporated as a city in 1890, and its citizens voted to annex to Seattle in November 1906. Today sightseers visit the Hiram Chittenden Locks on the Ship Canal to watch salmon begin their spawning journey or they tour historic Ballard Avenue. Ballard’s increasingly diverse residents enjoy the district’s small town pace and easy access to downtown.
- incomplete list
clockwise around Elliott Bay
- Seattle Neighborhoods: Belltown-Denny Regrade — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
The area of Seattle stretching north of the central business district from Stewart Street to Mercer Street is usually dubbed the Denny Regrade, acknowledging the area’s forcible flattening by city engineers early in the twentieth century. It incorporates the older Belltown district, originally west of 2nd Avenue but today more broadly defined by its various denizens. The area today combines artist lofts and hangouts with new highrises where condos and apartments are providing close-in housing. Following the new, mostly affluent residents, a number of upscale restaurants and clubs have established a brisk trade in the area. The result, at least for the time being, is a yeasty combination of the bohemian and the trendy, with a significant nightlife.
- Once a salt marsh between two extensions of Elliott Bay, the Interbay neighborhood is home to businesses and industries representing the wide sweep of Seattle’s history. A transcontinental railroad, first completed in the nineteenth century, runs next to the home of a twenty-first century biotechnology company. A food bank, a fishing fleet, and a golf course round out the wide variety of activities where once deranged hermits hid from society.
- 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…
- Ballard Bridge (Seattle) (historylink.org)
Seattle’s Ballard Bridge carries 15th Avenue NW across the Lake Washington Ship Canal at Salmon Bay, connecting the Ballard neighborhood north of the canal with Interbay to the south.