10 



GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 



Seattle (see sheet 1^ p. 20) ^ the metropoUs of Washington, the corn- 

 center of the Puget Sound country; and the gateway to 



mercial 



Seattle. 



Elevation 20 feet. 

 Population 237,194. 



Alaska, stands on a neck of land 

 (an eastern ami of Admiralty 

 and the fresh-water Lake Wa 



* 



miles bv steamer and 957 miles 



£> 



;et Soimd) 

 about 865 



San Francisco. Seattle was founded in 1852 and named after a 



Duwamish I] 

 the business 



almost 



and 



financial 



1893 



ime the growth 



in the Klondike region in 1897 gave it a new impulse, as it became 

 the shipping point for the new gold fields. It is the western termmus 



railro 



populat 



_. .._._ . . Its 



trebled in 10 years, and it is now one of the 



most 



commerci 



om 



standing near sea level and the better res 



terrace about 500 feet above the sea. F 



there are fine views not only of the Olympic Mountams and Puget 



Sound, to the west, but also of Lake Wasliington and Momit Hainier, 



to the east. The city has an excellent salt-water harbor, wliich is 



beino" connected by a ship canal with Lake Washington, where vcs- 



may go into 

 princi 



Se 



the chief pomt of entry from the Alaskan gold fields, and large quanti- 



offices 



m 



XIV 



method used in hydrauhc mining; in other words, the 



literally washed away by powerful jets of water. (See PI 



This method of grading Avas feasible because the city is buUt on uncon- 



sohdated drift left by a glacier that once occupied the basin of J'uget 



Sound, as described below by W. C, Alden.^ 



iThe 



figures 



given for population 

 throughout this book are those of the 

 United States Census for 1910. For places 

 that are not incorporated the census fig- 

 ures represent the population of the elec- 

 tion precinct, township, or other similar 

 unit; such figures are in this book marked 

 with an asterisk (*). 



2 Thousands of years ago, during what is 

 variously termed the Great Ice Age, the 

 glacial period, or the Pleistocene epoch, 

 the northern part of the North American 

 Continent was covered by vast sheets of 

 ice similar to the great ice cap which now 



! 



covers most of Greenland. (See fig. 1-) 

 Although at times the ice may have coa- 

 lesced in one vast sheet stretching from 

 the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the 

 Arctic regions southward about to the line 

 of Missouri and Ohio rivers, yet there were 

 three di:^tinct centers of accumulation and 

 spreading. One of these centers was on 

 Labrador Peninsula, one west of Hudson 

 Bay, and one, called the Cordilleran, in 

 the mountains of western Canada. Tliere 

 were also several distinct periods of ice 

 accumulation, each followed by a warmer 

 interval thousands of years in duration, 



