Seattle, Washington, and Pacific Northwest Histories

Seattle’s landscape functions as a curated public history exhibit authored by power. Street and neighborhood names such as Denny, Yesler, Pioneer Square, and Capitol Hill commemorate settlers, developers, and aesthetic identity while obscuring the displacement of Coast Salish peoples and the exploitation of immigrant labor. Yet Washington’s map also preserves Indigenous language in place names like Issaquah, Wenatchee, Cle Elum, and Mukilteo, revealing selective remembrance. Native words remain while Native sovereignty does not. At the same time, the city’s racial geography, shaped by redlining, restrictive covenants, and segregation, records another layer of historical ownership. Drawing on archives, oral histories, and public history projects, this essay contends that Seattle’s map tells two intertwined stories: a civic mythology of pioneers and progress, and a counter-history of communities whose experiences were structured into the landscape but excluded from its official narrative.

This paper examines how public lands in the Pacific Northwest have been shaped by selective historical narratives, obscuring histories of presence, labor, and resistance. Drawing on multiple case studies, it argues that conservation has often relied on erasure as much as preservation, and offers a more inclusive interpretation of public lands where memory, power, and place intersect.