SEATAC

A short history of SeaTac

The earliest people to live in the Highline ridge and surrounding lowlands were Coast Salish peoples for thousands of years before European contact. The area sits between Puget Sound to the west and the Duwamish and Green River valleys to the east. It was used by Duwamish and Muckleshoot peoples for fishing, hunting, and overland travel. In the 1850s, federal surveyors recorded salal and huckleberry across the area, believed to be evidence of deliberate land management through intentional burning and cultivation, rather than pure wilderness. In 1990, a diver discovered two dugout canoes from the bottom of Angle Lake that were carbon-dated to approximately 1678. Both the Muckleshoot and Duwamish tribes claimed the artifacts, which were eventually transferred to the Muckleshoot Tribe for stewardship.

The Highline area, which includes modern-day SeaTac, Burien, most of Des Moines, and unincorporated communities such as White Center and Boulevard Park, was settled by European Americans in the mid-1850s. Over the following decades, small farming communities developed around Miller Creek and other drainages on the plateau. The federal government finished construction of a military road from Fort Steilacoom to Fort Bellingham in 1860, passing through the Highline area to the east of modern-day SeaTac. One of the more prominent roads of travel from Seattle to Tacoma early in the 20th century is Des Moines Memorial Drive (originally called the High Line road), which passes directly through the middle of the region, particularly through SeaTac and Burien.

The construction of Seattle–Tacoma International Airport transformed the area. After the U.S. military took control of Boeing Field following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Port of Seattle accepted a federal grant in March 1942 to build a replacement civilian airport as part of a larger wartime pattern of federal intervention in municipal airport development across the country. The airport was dedicated on October 31, 1944, though the U.S. Army Air Forces used it primarily to stage B-29 bombers through the end of World War II.

The communities of Riverton Heights and McMicken Heights tripled in population during the war as workers moved to the area to staff Boeing's plants and the new airport. After the war, as Sea-Tac became the primary commercial aviation gateway for the Puget Sound region, the surrounding unincorporated communities grew further. By 1962, the airport and its tenants employed 6,000 workers with an annual payroll of $40 million and supported an estimated $133 million in regional business activity and 30,000 local residents.

The development of Interstate 5 in the 1960s drew regional through-traffic away from Pacific Highway South, which evolved into a commercial strip of motels, restaurants, and service businesses catering to airport travelers. This concentration of airport-dependent commerce would give the future city of SeaTac an unusually large tax base relative to its residential population.

In response to growing noise complaints in the 1960s and 1970s, the Port Commission joined King County in a comprehensive planning effort that resulted in the Sea-Tac Communities Plan of 1976, the first program in the United States in which an airport operator established a noise buffer by purchasing homes and school buildings adjacent to the facility and soundproofing others. The plan received the American Institute of Planners' Meritorious Program Award in 1978, and 420 acres of vacated land north of the airport were converted into what became North SeaTac Park.

Incorporating the area as a city was proposed by local residents in the 1980s, while a competing proposal sought annexation into Des Moines or another city. Local residents voted for incorporation on March 14, 1989, and the city incorporated on February 28, 1990. Des Moines amended their annexation territory following the decision. The original ballot used the name "Sea-Tac", but the incorporation petition to the county government omitted the hyphen.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article SeaTac, Washington, revision 1379399000 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.