Seattle is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest framed by views of the Olympic and Cascade Mountains and bordered by the Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Seattle is a city of 602,000 people with a metropolitan population of 3,340,000.
Native Americans inhabited the area for around 10,000 years prior to when the first settlers arrived in 1851. Seattle suffered a severe fire in 1889. The Alaskan gold rush in 1897 helped establish Seattle as an important commercial center. Seattle expanded as a seaport following the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and during WWI. During WWII, Seattle became a center of the aircraft industry.
