Seattle's birth and growth was from a salmon and wood salesman called David Maynard, who would trade with passing ships. He was friends with a local Native American called Chief Sealth, and when the time came to name the new city, suggested it in honour of his him.

In 1897 the Yukon Gold Rush started, and the city became a boomtown. This was enhanced by lumber merchant William Boeing's dabbling in the development in aircraft, and via the Second World War the company was employing one in ten of the population.

Seattle was the birthplace of grunge music in the 1990s – a combination of punk and heavy metal, which was personified by the tormented life and suicide of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the band Nirvana.