[ Music ]
>> [Water splashing] The Pacific Northwest is defined by water.
It has shaped us for millions of years.
Ice, snow, rain, tides, rivers, bringing life and food,
defining settlements, dividing and connecting us.
The people who built Seattle harnessed the power of water
for food [splashing], energy, transportation,
recreation, and business.
It sustained them.
Changed them.
It humbled them.
[ Music ]
>> On June 1, 1909, more
than 80,000 visitors attended the opening
of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition,
Seattle's first World's Fair.
The crowds toured buildings and exhibits, enjoyed rides
and amusements, listened to music,
or just relaxed along the Cascade Court,
a series of waterfalls that flowed into Geyser Basin.
The Army and Navy were in attendance, as well as officials
from the Imperial Japanese Navy.
It was a grand spectacle, and many fair-goers stayed
to see the fairgrounds lit up with-electric lights!
It was a celebration of Seattle's success and prosperity
after the Klondike Gold Rush, which lifted the city
out of a deep depression, and established it
as the Gateway to Alaska.
[ Music ]
>> Seattle had grown up.
Buildings rose overnight.
Neighborhoods were annexed,
connected by numerous trolleys and streetcars.
A rough-and-tumble frontier town was becoming a modern city.
A 260-acre portion of the University
of Washington campus was chosen, due to its proximity to downtown
and its breathtaking views of the Cascades,
the Olympics, and Lake Washington.
During it's four and a half month run,
Seattle graced the world stage,
and Washingtonians beamed with pride.
Many local communities created exhibits and assembled artifacts
that told their town's story.
Smaller towns, cities, and counties were honored
with designated special days, and hundreds or even thousands
of community members traveled to the Fair,
to promote their regions.
The Fair welcomed a variety of very notable visitors.
[ Music ]
>> A cross-country car race began in New York and ended
at the fairgrounds, with Henry Ford himself showing off his new
Model-T car.
>> The great Alaskan Yukon, Pacific...
>> Even President William Taft arrived to tour the exhibits
and to orate to the crowds.
The Fair ended on October 16, 1909.
More than three million people had seen the best
of the Northwest.
These visitors boosted the local economy,
and the Alaska Yukon Exposition was Seattle's introduction
to the world stage.
And elements of its legacy remain at the U.W. to this day.
[ Music ]
>> [Water flowing] My name is Anna Lise White,
and my father is Chief Gardner
at the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition.
I go every day for free!
There is supposed to be a man in a flying machine, up in the sky!
My favorite part is the pastry,
where I can buy a Welch's grape juice for 5 cents!
I like the Fairly Gorge Tickler ride,
the hot waffles, and the music!
About the Eskimo village-they have a girl wearing
animal skins.
She's my age.
We just smile at each other.
Do Eskimos speak English?
I keep looking for the flying machine.
They say it looks like an enormous potato.
Sadly, when summer's over, the Fair closes.
My father goes back to work at the Bagley Mansion,
and I have to go back to school.
I never spotted the man in the flying machine.
I wonder what happened to him [faint engine]?
[ Thunder Booming ]
>> When New York tycoon Lyman C. Smith suggested building a
14-story office building in Seattle in 1909, his son,
Burns Smith, had loftier plans.
Why not erect the tallest skyscraper west
of the Mississippi?
The proposed steel framed tower would signal a new era
for an ambitious, booming Seattle.
It was nothing less than a forty story signpost announcing
to the world, the sky is the limit.
A dazzled Seattle City Council
and supportive Mayor jumped on board.
Designed by Syracuse architectural firm,
Gagnon and Gagnon, the tower rose skyward at 2nd and Yesler.
Its eight high-speed elevators, modern telegraph office,
and mail chutes, provided its 540 offices
with the latest innovations.
Interiors were detailed in polished brass, Alaskan marble
and Mexican onyx, while installation
of the white terra cotta cladding astonished onlookers
with the dizzying spectacle of daredevil construction workers,
popularly called "Cowboys of the Air" [trolley bell rings].
Although Lyman Smith did not live
to see his gleaming towers opening day, on the Fourth
of July 1914, his son welcomed dozens of dignitaries,
along with 4,000 eager Seattleites
to the 35th Floor observation deck
of what he called his "cloud cleaver."
Atop the pyramidal cone,
an eight-foot diameter glass ball signaled the quarter hour
in red, white and blue, also serving as a beacon
to mariners across Puget Sound.
Elegant and iconic, the Smith Tower would remain the tallest
building West of the Rockies until eclipsed
by the 605-foot Space Needle in 1962.
It still stands tall today, dwarfed by modern skyscrapers.
[ Waves Lapping, Seagulls Vocalizing ]
>> Puget Sound has been the front porch and front gate
of the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years.
Though it turned out not to be the entrance
to the mythical Northwest Passage, it did become a portal
for international trade, and for cementing American political
claims to Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, the last piece
in the United States puzzle.
Once this region was officially American,
military protection became paramount.
In the 1890s, the Navy built a major base and shipyard
at Bremerton [explosion].
To protect them, the Army built massive forts at the entrance
to Puget Sound, Fort Casey and Fort Warden.
The Army also established Fort Lawton, to protect Seattle.
The forts were fully staffed
and armed during the Spanish-American War.
World War I meant larger and more permanent military bases,
including the sprawling Camp Lewis, now part of JBLM.
Military aviation took off in the 1920s
and propelled Bill Boeing's new airplane company.
Ironically, airplanes made the 19 forts guarding Puget Sound
obsolete [yelling, explosions].
During World War II, Federal funding poured into the region
to expand military bases
and establish new facilities along the waterfront.
Boeing designed and built World War II's most famous bomber,
the B-17 Flying Fortress [airplane engines].
And to hide from possible Japanese attacks,
the roof of the Boeing plant was camouflaged
with a painted, fake neighborhood.
Wartime aviation boomed, with Naval air stations established
or expanded at Sandpoint, and on Whidby Island,
along with McChord Field.
During the Cold War, the area was a prime target
for Soviet attacks because of Boeing's defense work,
including the B-52 bomber.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, the region was rimmed
with Army anti-aircraft missile sites in suburban neighborhoods
and rural areas, with soldiers on duty 24 hours a day.
Puget Sound has always been the front porch
for protecting the west coast and the north Pacific.
Strong military presence was important 150 years ago,
and it's still important today
for the security of the entire region.
[ Indistinct Newscast ]
>> During and after the Gold Rush, Seattle was labeled a
"wicked city," what we call today a "party town."
Downtown, in only three blocks, there were 28 saloons,
often filled with loggers, miners, and fishermen.
The burlesque scene produced Gypsy Rose Lee,
the most famous performer of all.
After the Gold Rush, there was more money in Seattle
than in Portland and Los Angeles combined.
Theaters and music halls, with names like The Paramount,
Fifth Avenue, and the Roxy, were packed with Vaudeville shows.
Circuses set up big tents,
and neighborhoods celebrated their ethnic heritage
with choirs, Oom-Pa bands, and festivals.
People flocked to one of the main attractions, Luna Park,
on a pier, in West Seattle.
It was a wild, Coney Island style place,
with a rollercoaster [faint screaming, splashing],
a log ride, a giant saltwater swimming pool, a Tunnel of Love,
and daily acts, such as Don Carlo's Trained Monkey
and Dog Circus [monkey screeching, laughter].
Most of it closed down in 1913,
the rest of it suspiciously burned down in 1931 [cheering].
Out on the water, crowds cheered for the powerful University
of Washington Crew, as it rowed past the Ivy League schools
and eventually the Germans, to grab the Gold Metal
at Hitler's Olympics in 1936.
Locally designed and built hydroplanes [engines roaring]
smashed world speed records
on Lake Washington during the city's biggest
annual party-Seafair.
Some years more than 250,000 people lined the shores
to watch the "thunder boats" [engines growl].
Mountains, water, amusements!
And all kinds of music and nightlife.
Seattle always had a great tradition
for working hard and playing hard.
The sleepy town might have been a little wicked [clapping,
cheering, ragtime music],
but when the day was done, they had fun.
[ Music ]
>> Innovative technologies transformed fishing, logging
and waterpower at a cost.
In 1905, Edmond Smith patented a revolutionary salmon butchering
machine he labeled "The Iron Chink."
Its racist name mocked the Northwest's Chinese workers.
Smith's electric-powered invention prepared salmon
for canning six times faster than the speediest hand butcher,
exploiting workers and salmon.
Washington logging had been driven by muscle power--
men, horses and oxen-- until steam engines entered the woods,
greatly increasing output.
Logging was transformed again
by gas-powered two-man chainsaws, then solo chainsaws.
By 1950, one logger
with a chainsaw could equal the earlier production
of 15 loggers with axes and saws.
FDR's New Deal put thousands to work in Washington State.
The Grand Coulee Dam harnessed the Columbia River
for irrigation and hydroelectricity.
Construction took eight years, blocked the river,
and displaced native people, but generated 2,000 megawatts
of electricity by 1942.
It powered Boeing, aluminum plants,
and Hanford's plutonium production.
Logging mechanization hastened clearcutting.
The Iron Chink contributed to over-fishing.
Damming the Columbia River generated power,
but also blocked the legendary salmon runs forever.
[ Water Splashing ]
>> The next time you turn on the tap, consider that we have some
of the purest drinking water in the world.
Seattle's proximity to the Cascades, in combination
with abundant snowfall, gives us this pristine natural resource.
It didn't happen by chance.
After the city's water supply failed
in the 1889 Great Seattle Fire,
Mayor Robert Moran demanded a new, reliable system.
City Engineer, R.H. Thompson,
created the 90,000 acre Cedar River Watershed,
thirty-five miles east of the city.
It took over 10 years to build.
City water flowed freely downhill
from the watershed in huge Cedar pipes.
Over time, these leaky pipes were replaced.
New reservoirs were added as the city grew.
Today, Seattle uses around 105 million gallons per day.
It's easy to take this mountain-fresh water
for granted.
You can thank the early city planners, geography,
and the good fortunes of rain and snow that define our region.
[ Water Splashing ]
>> The hill was too high and too steep to be utilized
for business purposes.
The hill had to be removed.
>> Few quotes better summarize early Seattle's topography.
Denny Hill was preventing Seattle from its destiny
as a world-class city [bell rings].
Nor was it the only concern.
Although Elliott Bay was an ideal harbor,
the waterfront was too narrow.
The bay also had an enormous tide flat.
Half the day of stinking, massive mud.
And Lake Washington was landlocked.
Seattle would have to be re-engineered.
Down went debris and garbage to fill in the waterfront.
Thousands of pilings were driven, for buildings
and railroad trestles.
Along with a massive sea wall,
pushing the waterfront out hundreds of feet.
Attempts to connect Lake Washington
to Puget Sound started in the 1880s, using Chinese labor.
And after many years of squabbling and false starts,
the lake Washington Ship Canal and the Locks opened in 1916,
causing Lake Washington to drop nearly nine feet,
and drying up most of the lake's wetlands.
The early 1900s also saw crews using giant underwater vacuums
to suck up millions of cubic yards of mud
from the Duwamish River.
They dumped the muck behind massive bulkheads, the result,
2,200 acres of new land that covered an ecosystem long-valued
by indigenous residents.
Denny Hill, located in what today is called Belltown,
was a steep, massive mound that rose 100 feet in just one block.
To erase Denny, crews wielded giant hoses,
and shot water canons into the hill.
Steam shovels did the rest.
Hillsides collapsed, houses spilled into the void.
Nearly ten million cubic yards
of sediment ultimately reached Elliot Bay,
turning the water the color of chocolate milk.
Over 33 years of sluicing finally made Belltown
pancake flat.
But the explosion of commerce didn't happen.
The Great Depression had hit Seattle.
And not until the 2000s, would it achieve its destiny.
Ironically, driven by a company with a name
of a muddy river, Amazon.
[ Birds Chirping ]
[ Music ]
>> No one in local history had a greater impact
on Seattle's infrastructure than Reginald Hebert Thompson.
In charge of the city's surveying and engineering,
he looked at the city and wrote, "Seattle is in a pit.
To get anywhere, we would be compelled to climb out.
If we could."
For Thompson, this meant the removal
of the steep hills [crashing earth], from 1895 to 1912,
he regraded Denny Hill, Jackson Street and Dearborn Street.
Thompson also helped acquire Seattle's main drinking
water source.
The Cedar River Watershed.
A power plant on the river furnished electricity
[toilet flushes].
He also helped establish Seattle's sewer system.
His biographer wrote, "Implicit in his work was a belief
that an improved standard of living encouraged enjoyment
in life, and spiritual fulfillment."
He was a quiet man who did big things.
[ Music ]
>> Women in the State of Washington won the right to vote
in 1910 a decade before the U.S. Constitution granted it
nationally, but they fought long and hard to gain it
in a campaign called Women's Suffrage.
Women argued they were just as capable as men.
Even though opponents labeled them as too emotional
and irrational to make good decisions on election day.
In fact, suffragettes insisted women possessed special insights
into the needs of society.
In 1909, a pro-suffrage convention was held
at the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition.
The meeting exposed a sharp split between women activists.
Some advocated polite tactics-letter writing
to newspapers and legislators, and some pressed
for bolder statements, like marches and parades.
The following year, male voters
in Washington finally endorsed [distant cheering] women voting
in every county.
Women immediately embraced their new rights.
They were instrumental
in removing Seattle's crooked Mayor, Hiram Gill, in 1911,
and electing anti-crime,
anti-vice candidate, Bertha Landis.
They pushed for more parks, playgrounds
and public libraries, safe working conditions,
public health, sanitation, and environmental protections,
including forest preservation.
They endorsed temperance laws to close saloons [door slams].
Women became Justices of the Peace, elected officials,
and trustees at State colleges.
Finally, in 1920, the U.S. Constitution granted the vote
to women nationally [distant applause], however,
a general growth of conservativism
in America slowed progressive reforms.
But President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal
of the 1930s embraced their calls
for expanded social services [distant applause],
including many of which endure to this day.
Women securing the right to vote made the country
and the world a better place for all.
[ Music ]
>> Seattle in the 1900s was a city with an adolescent economy
and mentality, an upstart in its civic and business impulses.
World War I was Seattle's great coming of age.
>> We are glad to fight for the ultimate peace of the world,
and for the liberation of its people.
>> Seattle leapt to the flag,
local national guardsmen mobilized, and reached France
on New Year's Day, 1918 [Patriotic music swells].
Gun crews manning the forts guarding Puget Sound offered a
ready-made pool.
We were to train these troops.
Pierce County had voted to donate land
to the federal government.
The first troops arrived at Camp Lewis in September 1917.
Many of the soldiers were draftees.
>> The Selective Service Act.
Silenced forever the pacifists and the objectors
to universal military training.
>> Not everybody was gung-ho for the war.
Constriction prompted resistance.
Resistance prompted retaliation.
Posters and parades, strategic speeches and bond drives,
and the promise of lots of jobs, pressured everyone
to support the Doughboys.
Labor organizers joined pacifists,
and draft opponents in protest.
War supporters drowned them out,
scorning them as disloyal slackers.
>> The time for debate has ended.
We will stamp out disloyalty wherever we find it.
>> Divided they may have been,
all Seattle enjoyed the economic boom.
A timber baron turned airplane builder named William Boeing,
flew his Model C trainer airplane for Navy officials.
They ordered 50.
The fledgling Boeing Airplane Company started production.
The Skinner and Eddy Shipyards broke records churning
out 32 ships, more than any other shipbuilder.
>> Never mind the money.
A day's delay in finishing a ship is a crime
against the boys in France!
[ Music Flourish ]
>> With a whimper, the guns fell silent in November 1918.
The boys filtered home to chaos.
A deadly global influenza had fit, killing 1,400 Seattleites.
The economy suddenly shrank.
Workers retaliated
with a historic four-day city-wide general strike.
President Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke,
soon after a visit to Seattle.
And yet, out of the energies of wartime,
out of a national knitting together, out of strife,
and shock, and death of war, and post-war, Seattle,
a city in the far edge of the continent,
grew into urban adulthood.
First, a regional powerhouse,
and not so long after, a world city.
[ Airplane Motor ]
>> The next time you step on a jet airplane,
there's a good chance it's a Boeing,
named after William Boeing, who got his start in the forests
of Hoquiam, Washington, over 100 years ago.
Bill's father was a wealthy immigrant from Detroit,
who owned vast timberlands.
At age 21, Bill moved to Hoquiam to run a logging company
on land inherited from his father.
America was growing, and timber was in demand.
By 1908, Bill was one of the richest men in Washington.
A so-called "Timber Baron."
At the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition,
thousands of amazed spectators watched Mud Mars fly his
powered dirigible.
Everybody was swept up in the idea of flying,
and Bill was desperate to go for a ride.
It wasn't until July 1914 that Tara Maroney took him
on his first flight over Lake Union.
Seeing the future, Boeing believed he could build a plane
of his own, even better.
Before Boeing's hobby plane was finished,
the U.S. entered World War I [bombs exploding].
Boeing offered to build trainers for the Navy,
and Boeing's company was off and flying.
In a stroke of genius, Bill hired Chinese aviation prodigy,
Wong Su, to design his early planes made from local spruce,
the perfect material for wooden aircraft.
Bill Boeing, the fortunate son of a timber baron,
transformed his passion for flying in an industry
that changed Seattle and the world, connecting millions
of people like never before.
Seattle was, is, and will always be a Boeing town
[airplane engines].
[ Music ]
>> After the turn of the century,
Seattle was riding high on gold rush wealth.
International and domestic trade, and the glow
of the Alaska Yukon Exposition.
But for many residents, Seattle was a shabby,
chaotic boomtown without a plan.
Locals envied real cities back east, like New York and Chicago,
with urban amenities, great public spaces,
and reliable roads and public transportation.
What muddy Seattle needed was some beatification.
So, in 1910, the city's Municipal Plans Commission hired
renowned civil Engineer, Virgil Bogue,
to develop a comprehensive urban plan,
a vision for the city's future.
Bogue was an innovator, and he proposed a dramatic revisioning
of metro Seattle, including setting aside Mercer Island
as a public park, developing Harbor Island
as a world-class port, building a light rail tunnel
under Lake Washington to connect Seattle to the east side,
moving all city offices into a magnificent baroque
and classical civic center in Belltown.
His vision was highly controversial.
>> This is an amazing plan for Seattle's future.
>> Bogue's plan is the most hairbrained boondoggle we've
ever seen.
>> It's a bold step forward...
>> This will destroy downtown forever.
>> The price tag will bankrupt the city.
>> It was soundly defeated at the polls in 1912.
Over the next 50 years, regional population skyrocketed,
as Seattle grew and suburbanized,
driven by Boeing and the post-war G.I.
Bill. Instead of tunnels under the lake,
innovative floating bridges were built
across Lake Washington in 1940 to 1962.
Bogue predicted the future with great accuracy.
But as would happen again and again in Seattle's history,
rightly or wrongly, voters were not always willing
to embrace big change.
[ Musical Flourish ]
[ Indistinct Chatter ]
>> Alice Samson Presto was an outspoken and fearless leader
in Seattle, in the days when African Americans
and women had very few rights.
She was born around 1872 in Massachusetts,
and moved to Seattle in December of 1900,
to start a new life, with her husband.
When she arrived, she noticed the many problems
that affected the city's black residents, and women.
As a mother of three young girls,
Alice became deeply involved in community outreach.
She helped establish the Dorcus Charity Club, to find good homes
for orphaned black children.
She started a political organization for black women
to fight for civil rights, and women's freedom.
In 1918, she was the first black woman [distant applause] to run
for State Senate in Washington history.
Her priorities were clear, and promising.
Equal pay for women, ending child labor,
free State college education,
and an end to all forms of discrimination.
Alice promoted a progressive vision of society,
but in a crowded race against four white male candidates,
she lost the primary election.
Defeat never stopped Alice.
She spent the rest of her life fighting to improve the lives
of others, leaving behind a legacy of social justice
and equality for future generations.
[ Music, Distant Chatter ]
>> Washington State has always had a topsy-turvy relationship
with alcohol.
With rough-and-tumble saloons
and bars dotting the cities and countryside.
This was much to the chagrin of its more temperate citizens.
When voters ratified the State Constitution back in 1889,
they were given the chance to vote on the prohibition
of alcohol, but it failed by a large margin.
Nevertheless, grassroots organizations
like The Anti-Saloon League,
and the Women's Christian Temperance Union,
lobbied to ban the so-called "giggle juice."
The efforts worked.
And the manufacture and sale of alcohol was banned
by State voters in 1914,
nearly five years before national prohibition.
[ Music ]
>> Overnight, a black market emerged,
and bootleggers began smuggling liquor
in from Canada, mainly by boat.
It was to supply the numerous underground speakeasies
and after-hours clubs that popped up,
attracting so many roughnecks,
and the happy-go-lucky guys and dolls.
Often, you needed a password to gain admission.
The biggest rum runner was Roy Olmsted,
a former police lieutenant, who became one
of the largest employers in Puget Sound, with his fleet
of boats, warehouses, drivers, accountants,
salesmen, and lawyers.
Olmsted was called
"the gentleman bootlegger," for his genteel ways.
Federal prohibition agents weren't
so well-mannered [glass breaking].
They came down hard on Olmsted, and also on Frank Gat,
who was manufacturing moonshine.
Both men were sent to prison in 1927 [chains clanging].
Olmsted was released in 1931, when the nation was deep
into the Great Depression.
By then, Seattle had had enough of America's failed experiment
in sobriety [distant cheering].
Ironically, today Washington is known as one
of the country's finest producers of wine and beer,
despite its long and storied history of prohibition.
[ Music ]
>> The Seattle area has a history of boom times
and busted economies going back over 100 years,
but nothing had prepared the city
for the Great Depression of the 1930s.
It hit the region like a tidal wave.
At one point, over 25% of the population was jobless,
and that didn't include unemployed women.
Sprawling shanty-towns,
including one near the current Starbucks headquarters,
were everywhere.
They were nicknamed "Hoovervilles"
after President Herbert Hoover.
Families begged for food, sold apples on street corners,
did odd jobs, returned to petty crime, just to eat.
It was rock-bottom times.
The 1920s had been good for the city,
but the post-World War I slowdown led to panic and fear
in the markets and banks.
Exports slowed, demand for lumber and coal dropped.
Construction stalled, businesses failed.
There were long lines at soup kitchens.
Angry workers and organizers protested.
There were strikes, and riots,
and threats against the government.
Strikers were killed.
People fought for power.
Mayor Frank Edwards proclaimed,
>> Communism is the root of the present trouble.
>> Edwards was recalled in 1931.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President in 1932,
the banking system was near collapse.
Panic and fear gripped the nation.
>> I pledge myself to a new deal
for the American people [cheers and applause].
>> Under his leadership,
confidence in banks was restored,
and federal money poured into programs
to get people working again.
The Civilian Conservation Corps employed men to work
in America's forests, building roads,
trails, and lookout towers.
Pay was $30 per month.
The Works Project Administration built playgrounds, stadiums,
over 1,000 bridges, building and roads
at Mount Rainier National Park, and the largest
of the New Deal Relief Programs, Grand Coulee Dam.
These get-to-work programs revived the American economy,
just as the guns of war started sounding Europe [explosion],
the onset of World War II.
Soon, unemployed men and women went to work on the war effort.
Many joined the military, as Seattle began to boom once again
in an unending cycle of up and down.
[ Music ]
>> Water is the essence of Seattle's great beauty,
but 100 years ago, it was also a huge barrier.
Take Lake Washington, 22 miles long, and over two miles wide.
The quickest way across was on the famous Mosquito Fleet,
with stops at more than 40 ferry landings.
The lake's width and depth ruled
out a traditional suspension bridge.
Enter Homer Hadley, a young engineer with a wild idea.
In 1921, Homer proposed a floating bridge,
made from a connected series of hollow, concrete barges,
patterned after small military bridges in Europe.
At first, everyone thought he was crazy.
They called it Homer's Folly.
Homer dreamed about a floating bridge for the next decade.
Enter George Speed Lightfoot, a Mercer Island businessman
who lobbied tirelessly for the bridge until he
and Homer convinced the State Department of Highways
that the concept was feasible.
Construction began in 1939.
Twenty-five giant concrete pontoons were built
on Harbor Island, employing 650 men and floated
through the lochs, each section 350 feet long and 60 feet wide.
These massive structures were secured
by 65-ton anchors, sunk deep in the mud.
The bridge was an engineering marvel,
the longest floating bridge in the world,
until it was surpassed
by the Evergreen floating bridge in 1963.
The toll was 35 cents.
These bridges connected land and people
in a region divided by water.
Today, Lake Washington is surrounded by cities,
and millions of vehicles per year cross effortlessly
over concrete pontoons bobbing in the water.
You can thank Homer Hadley for the generally easy commute.
[ Music ]
>> Long before it was known around the world as the hometown
of guitarist Jimi Hendrix and the grunge band, Nirvana,
Seattle was a hot town for music.
Particularly jazz.
[ Singing ]
>> Between 1937 and 1961, jazz fans could be found at 2 o'clock
in the morning walking up and down South Jackson Street,
ducking in and out of 25 nightclubs between Fifth
and Fourteenth Avenue South.
At the black Elks Club,
limousines dropped off women in diamonds and furs.
At the corner of Twelfth,
a man called Never Sleep husked newspapers all night in front
of the Black and Tan [distant music plays],
a club where soul singer Etta James
and band leader Count Bassie once performed.
Over at Washington Hall,
Billie Holliday's sultry songs could be heard.
This rich after-hours jazz scene nurtured the early careers
of composer and arranger, Quincy Jones, soul singer, Ray Charles,
and vocalist Ernestine Anderson.
[ Music and Singing ]
>> Charles even named one of his early songs,
Rocking Chair Blues, after The Rocking Chair Nightclub
on Fourteenth Avenue.
[ Singing ]
>> [Background music] This area of South Jackson Street,
now known as the Chinatown International District,
was strikingly diverse.
A place where Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Black, Jewish,
and Italian families lived and worked together.
In 1933, Seattle's historic black newspaper,
The Northwest Enterprise, described the area
as a poor-man's playground, where all races meet
on common ground and rub elbows as equals,
though that was somewhat idealistic.
The Jazz District had been created, after all,
by racist real estate covenants and segregated musician's unions
that excluded people of color from other neighborhoods.
Seattle's jazz explosion was sparked by an influx of workers
and soldiers, drawn to the area by World War II,
part of a second great migration
that brought 350,000 African Americans
to west coast seaports.
As pianist Gerald Wiggins once put it,
>> When soldiers from Fort Lewis blew into Seattle
for a hot night on the town, they did everything but go home.
>> The scene was also driven by old-fashioned liquor laws
that gave rise to illegal after-hours clubs,
where authorities took bribes to look the other way.
The poor man's playground faded into memory,
when the city finally loosened liquor laws.
The unions integrated, and the police department was
cleaned up.
But the Jackson Street jazz scene was a remarkable era.
[ Music and Applause ]
>> When Ernestine Anderson's first album, Hot Cargo,
hit the streets in 1958, Time Magazine called her the
"best kept secret in the land."
She would not be a secret for long.
[ Singing ]
>> Born in 1928 in Houston,
Anderson came to Seattle in 1944.
At Garfield High School, she befriended classmate,
Quincy Jones, playing with him and the legendary Ray Charles,
on the city's Jackson Street jazz scene.
[ Music and Singing ]
>> Anderson recorded more than 30 albums,
and only received four Grammy nominations.
Anderson's vocal style was intimate
and bluesy [singing in background].
Her irresistible voice in the words
of Jones was "like honey at dusk."
Though she traveled the world, Ernestine always returned
to Seattle, where she often appeared
with the Garfield High School Jazz Band.
She died in 2016.
>> Yesterday, December 7, 1941,
a date which will live in infamy.
>> War came to America on December 7, 1941,
and Puget Sound was ready to join the fight.
Preparations started immediately.
Air raid drills, radio silence, and nighttime blackouts.
On the very first night,
ardently patriotic rioters knocked out lights
in downtown Seattle, which had been left
on mistakenly past 11 p.m. It was front page news.
Along with fear of foreign invasion, Japanese Americans
in Seattle were targeted as possible spies and saboteurs.
With help from the Seattle Police, the FBI rounded
up Japanese families and residents,
hauling them to internment camps.
Fear ruled the day.
The war stoked employment in the Pacific Northwest,
especially Boeing and the shipyards.
The influx of workers meant severe housing shortages,
crowded city apartments, motor courts, and urban travel camps.
>> And boy is it crowded!
I stopped one guy on the street, and I said,
"How do you get a room here?"
He said, "I don't know, I'm the Mayor,
and I live in Tacoma" [laughter].
>> War time meant the end of so-called shack towns
that had housed the poorest since at least the 1890s.
Hoovervilles on the waterfront and inner bay were burned
to make way for docks and Navy boats.
The booming economy gave new buying power
to the middle class,
though war-time shortages meant rationing and empty shelves.
Puget Sound was central to the war effort,
supplying Europe and the Pacific.
Defense plants worked around the clock turning
out hundreds of war ships.
The famous Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses were built
at the incredible rate of 14 to 16 planes per day.
The military bought billions of board feet of lumber,
and all the canned salmon the area could produce.
A half million soldiers and sailors passed through Seattle.
The downtown streets were lined with happy-go-lucky sailors
on leave, or headed overseas.
Seattle became a non-stop city, with restaurants, bars,
and nightclubs, going around the clock.
There was an electric energy, day and night.
So much defense money and labor poured into Puget Sound,
it was one of the top three war-production cities
in the country, that had dramatically remade the
whole area.
Women entered the workforce, with Rosie the Riveter,
and many stayed on after the war was over.
The end of World War II meant a new world order.
Victory and peace, and the looming Cold War also meant a
new phase of growth and development
for the Pacific Northwest.
World War II rocketed Seattle forward,
like the Gold Rush 50 years earlier,
and there was no turning back.
[ Water Rushing ]
[ Music ]
>> Imagine you were living in a thriving community
and suddenly the government forced you to pack up
and board a bus or train bound for a prison camp.
This is what happened to more than 7,500 local Japanese
and Japanese-Americans at the start of World War II.
President Roosevelt's Executive Order authorized the
incarceration of 120,000 Japanese from the west coast,
most of them American citizens.
Many were locked up on the grounds
of the Puyallup State Fair, and then moved
to a Concentration Camp in Idaho.
These citizens lost everything-homes, land,
businesses, friends, and freedom.
They were confined behind barbed wire.
Some stayed in the camps the entire war.
Others relocated.
Despite the injustice and racism,
many Japanese-Americans joined the Army
and bravely fought for their country.
They proved they loved their country more
than their country loved them.
[ Music ]
>> From the top of the Space Needle, the forested slopes
and snowy mountains of three national parks surround the city
like Guardians.
It's the only place like it in the world.
To the southeast, the glaciers
of Mount Rainier float over the city.
Further north, the rugged peaks
of North Cascades National Park [birds calling] stretch
into Canada.
To the west, the Olympic Mountains complete a near-circle
of protected wild lands around the city.
As Seattle grew, so did campaigns
to protect the wilderness.
Native Americans who guided 19th Century European explorers
to Mount Rainier's slopes knew the mountain
as Tahoma, Mother of Waters.
Those early explorers became the first advocates
for Rainier's protection, with support
from scientific societies, fledgling groups [frog croaks]
like the Sierra Club, and the influential Northern Pacific
Railroad, Mount Rainier became America's fifth national park
in 1899.
At the dawn of the 20th Century,
the northwest's vast natural resources seemed endless
[birds chirping].
They were not.
By the 1930s, hydroelectric dams
and commercial canneries had taken a toll on salmon,
and logging was harvesting vast stretches of virgin forests.
The campaign to save the Olympic rainforests brought President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to the northwest
in 1937 [distant cheering and applause].
He was astounded.
The next year, he signed the bill,
creating Olympic National Park,
preserving the country's most outstanding
temperate rainforests.
A general later, hikers, climbers,
and environmentalists join forces again
with elected officials to create the remote
and rugged North Cascades National Park in 1968.
The park and nearby glacier peak
and Alpine Lakes Wilderness areas established Seattle
as a top destination for outdoor recreation [birds chirping].
Once a source of lumber and raw resources, today our circle
of National Parks is recognized as one
of Seattle's greatest assets, inspiring millions
of visitors each year.
[ Boat Horn ]
>> So here goes.
[Singing] I've traveled all over this county...
>> The northwest has always had its share
of kooks and characters.
Just a part of our "anything goes" lifestyle.
One of Seattle's true originals was Iver Hagland,
a guitar-strumming troubadour, who endeared himself to locals
with his delicious clam chowder, and cornball antics,
like the time he wheeled his pet seal, Patsy,
into a downtown department store, or the time he whipped
up a batch of pancakes after a railcar spilled a load
of syrup on the waterfront.
Oh, and who can forget his famous octopus
wrestling contest?
Clam-eating contest?
Or amazing fireworks [explosions]?
Iver was a tireless promoter, and his legend grew,
as did the number of his waterfront restaurants.
His off-beat humor continued after he passed,
and he can be remembered for zany television ads,
humongous windsocks, and of course, the giant running clams.
>> [Singing] As I think of my happy condition,
surrounded by acres of clams.
[ Wind Blowing ]
>> The long-overdue granting of U.S. Citizenship
to all Native people [distant applause]
in 1924 may have signaled a time of inclusion,
but few Native Americans shared in the prosperity
of the roaring 20s [rooster crows].
A 1928 government study revealed stark conditions
on reservations, dire poverty, poor health,
and severely under-funded programs.
In response, Congress enacted the 1934 Indian
Reorganization Act.
The Act aimed to empower tribes and protect their cultures.
The Muckleshoot, Puyallup and Nisqually used it
to form tribal councils, adopt constitutions,
and pursue self-governance.
Some viewed it as the "Indian New Deal," others as the
"Indian Raw Deal," due to continued federal oversight.
Still, Puget Sound tribes were able to use the new law
to regain land, launch economic projects,
and restore salmon runs laying the groundwork
for future progress.
Mobilizing for World War II, Native people were drawn
to Seattle to work in aerospace, shipyards,
and military industries.
Many served in the Armed Forces.
After the war, most wartime industries contracted,
and many native people were left jobless.
They settled in Seattle's Pioneer Square.
In the 1950s, the government attempted
to assimilate Native people by ending their status as "wards
of the United States."
The 1956 Indian Relocation Act encouraged Native Americans
to relocate to cities.
Amid these challenges, Native advocacy grew.
The American Indian Women's Service League founded
by Native women in Seattle became a key support network
[distant chanting] for Seattle's native community.
By 1958, the league would play a central role
in shaping the future of Native activism in the 70s
and 80s [distant cheering].
>> Please welcome the Garfield High School Jazz Ensemble
[music begins].
>> In the heart of the Central District, Garfield is one
of Seattle's most storied High Schools.
More than half the students are in AP classes.
It has more athletic state championships
than any other Seattle school, and for decades,
its jazz program has been nationally renowned.
Clarence Acox had a lot to do with it.
>> Garfield was always a more progressive of all the schools
in Seattle, because they had all kinds of different races there.
I used to talk to Quincy Jones, and he said it was
like that when we were there.
>> Students thrived in the diversity.
Jewish and black students, Asian Americans and others,
bound together by Garfield's great tradition.
No doubt the school had its ups and downs,
but it produced talents such as Jimi Hendrix,
Ernestine Anderson, Macklemore, Quincy Jones, Jackman Arroya,
R.E. Melber, Mayor Bruce Harrell, and Mamoru Yamasaki,
architect of the World Trade Center.
>> When we started going to New York,
and we won four national championships [distant cheering,
music], they would look at Garfield and then say,
"that's the school we need to beat."
>> Garfield is more than just an exceptional jazz program.
It's about blending new ideas, and cultures, and experiences
to create something bigger and better.
>> If you went to Garfield, you could go anywhere in the world
and get along with people.
I think that's the legacy.
[ Music, Cheering ]
[ Music ]
>> Seattle always was a blue collar union town.
One for loggers, foundry workers, shipbuilders,
eventually airplane builders.
With powerful industry came powerful unions.
Boilermakers, longshoremen, Teamsters, and the Machinists,
representing Boeing workers.
Founded in 1960, Boeing was a cornerstone
of the northwest's economy in Seattle, Everett, and Renton.
>> Boeing put Seattle on the map.
>> By 1944, the company was flourishing.
Over 50,000 employees.
Roughly one out of every 10 Seattle residents.
Everett cranked out bombers,
while Renton built commercial aircraft.
In the Spring of 1948, after extended layoffs
and contract tensions due to post-war reductions,
the Machinists Union voted,
>> Strike!
>> Boeing refused to bargain,
and brought in outside workers-scabs.
Emotions ran high.
Picket lines formed.
Workers battled workers.
After five months of no paychecks,
the Machinists folded.
Battle-weary, Boeing welcomed back those who did the riveting,
welding, machining and airplane assembly.
There was a city-wide collective sigh of relief-for now.
Boeing labor troubles would keep the local economy
on rollercoaster for years to come.
[ Music ]
>> Some people think the history of Northwest art began in 1953,
when Life Magazine featured a story on Mark Toby,
Morris Graves, Guy Anderson, and Kenneth Callahan,
calling them "the mystic painters of the Northwest."
It gave the impression that the artists were living
in Zen-like solitude in the misty forests of Washington.
The truth is, most Northwest artists were well-read
and well-traveled.
They followed the latest art trends in the U.S.,
Europe, Japan and Mexico.
Surrounded by spectacular landscapes at home,
and aware of indigenous art forms, Seattle artists drew
from a broad palette of influences,
and worked in many different styles.
Long before the so-called mystics,
Washington artists were exhibiting nationally
and abroad.
One of the most influential was Ella Shepherd Bush.
She founded Seattle's first art school and in the early 1900s,
painted portraits of some of the state's most prominent citizens.
But it was Bush's amazing skill at miniatures
that brought her national acclaim.
[ Camera Shutters, Music ]
>> Seattle was an important hub for photography, too,
with Edward Curtis at the center.
Known as The Shadow Catcher, Curtis spent much
of his career documenting Native tribal members for his book,
North American Indian.
Meanwhile, others, such as Imogene Cunningham,
Ella McBride, and an innovative group
of Japanese-American photographers were among those
creating a new kind of pictorial artwork.
>> The Seattle Camera Club was formed in 1923, by Isay,
or first generation Japanese immigrants, and by the middle
to late 1920s, they became among the top ten most exhibited
photographers in the world.
>> During the Great Depression,
Vanessa Helder documented the construction of Grand Coulee Dam
in a series of exquisite watercolors.
In 1943, her work was included in the show American Realists
and Magic Realists of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.
Yet by that time, two
of the so-called mystic painters were getting the most attention.
Mark Toby, who had once painted crowded scenes
at the Pike Place Market, became famous
for a new abstract style called White Writing.
And when Morris Graves borrowed from Toby's style
to create his haunting Bird in the Moonlight Series,
the Museum of Modern Art bought 10 paintings.
>> With the so-called Northwest Mystic Artists,
really we're standing on the shoulders of generations
of artists that came before them.
Most of them were women and Japanese-American artists.
These artists exhibited nationally and internationally.
[ Music ]
>> In the 1950s, City Councilman Al Rochester proposed
that Seattle should hold a second World's Fair,
to commemorate the success
of 1909's Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition.
The fair would be called, "The Festival of the West,"
celebrating Seattle's early history.
At the last minute, the World's Fair Commission reconsidered,
and decided to imagine the future.
It was renamed, The Century 21 Exposition.
The exhibits would showcase America's technology
and engineering know-how.
Seattle was already a main player in the jet age,
thanks to Boeing, and the Space Race had begun following the
Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957.
The Cold War was also raging, so Senators Magnuson
and Scoop Jackson convinced Congress to allocate funds
for a major science pavilion.
Fair promoters needed to move visitors,
so a futuristic Monorail was built.
But it was the Space Needle that became the lasting icon
of the Fair, and the city.
The Needle was the brainchild of Century 21 Commissioner,
Eddie Carlson, who sketched it on a napkin.
Construction of the Space Needle caught everyone's attention,
as did the raising of the Colosseum, the Science Pavilion,
and other architectural wonders.
Civic boosters and marketers tirelessly promoted Century 21.
[ Music ]
>> Everybody is planning
to see Seattle's spectacular 100 million dollar World's Fair!
>> After years of planning and non-stop construction,
the Fair opened on April 21, 1962.
Seattle entered the 21st Century.
In just over 50 years, Seattle had again taken great leaps
forward through world wars and a depression, labor strikes,
and prohibition, boom times, and cool jazzy nights.
The landscape had been reshaped, the waterways bridged,
steamships replaced by jet aircraft, the city not
yet 100 years old grew in all directions, filled with workers,
and dreamers, always, always looking to the future.
[ Music ]
>> Funding for Seattle, the History
and Short Stories provided by--
[ Music ]