Seattle
Seattle's historic Skid Road district (now better known as Pioneer Square) centers on Yesler Way. This road is often said to have been the original "Skid Road" in the literal sense serving a saw mill owned by Henry Yesler. Yesler acquired land from Doc Maynard at a small point of land at what is today near the intersection of 1st Ave and Yesler Way. He also acquired a swath of land 450 feet wide from his property up First Hill to a box of land about 10 acres in size full of timber spanning what is today 20th to 30th Avenues. His mill was built on the point of land that looked south towards a small island (Denny's Island, part of his land purchase from Doc Maynard) that has since been filled in around and is the heart of today's Pioneer Square.
The Skid Road was built on that 450 foot wide slice of land from the top of First Hill to the mill on the point. Since the building of the mill much of what is today's Seattle is the result of extensive terra forming by the local people to make the hilly landscape of Seattle habitable. At the time of the building of the mill it was some of the only flat land available. The Skid Road became the demarcation line between the affluent members of Seattle and the mill workers and more rowdy portion of the population.
Read more about this topic: Skid Row
Famous quotes containing the word seattle:
“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath—the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.”
—Attributed to Seattle (c. 1784–1866)