Everett, Washington
Everett is the county seat of and the most populous city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is north of Seattle and is one of the main cities in the metropolitan area and the Puget Sound region. Everett is the seventh-most populous city in the state, with 110,629 residents as of the 2020 census. The city is primarily situated on a peninsula at the mouth of the Snohomish River along Port Gardner Bay, an inlet of Possession Sound, and extends to the south and west.
The Port Gardner Peninsula has been inhabited by the Snohomish people for thousands of years, whose main settlement,, was located at Preston Point near the mouth of the river. Modern settlement in the area began with loggers and homesteaders arriving in the 1860s, but plans to build a city were not conceived until 1890. A consortium of East Coast investors seeking to build a major industrial city acquired land in the area and filed a plat for "Everett", which they named in honor of Everett Colby, the son of investor Charles L. Colby. The city was incorporated in 1893, shortly after the arrival of the Great Northern Railway, and prospered as a major lumber center with several large sawmills. Everett became the county seat in 1897 after a dispute with Snohomish contested over several elections and a Supreme Court case. The city was the site of labor unrest during the 1910s, which culminated in the Everett massacre in 1916 that killed several members of the Industrial Workers of the World.
The area was connected by new interurban railways and highway bridges in the 1920s, transforming it into a major commercial hub, and gained an airport at Paine Field in 1936. The city's economy transitioned away from lumber and towards aerospace after World War II, with the construction of Boeing's aircraft assembly plant at Paine Field in 1967. Boeing's presence brought additional industrial and commercial development to Everett, as well as new residential neighborhoods to the south and west of the peninsula that was annexed by the city. Boeing remains the city's largest employer, alongside the U.S. Navy, which has operated Naval Station Everett since 1994.
Everett remains a major employment center for Snohomish County, but has also become a bedroom community for Seattle in recent decades. It is connected to Seattle by Interstate 5 and various public transit services at Everett Station, including the Sounder commuter train, Amtrak, and commuter buses. Everett stages several annual festivals and is also home to minor league sports teams, including the Everett Silvertips at Angel of the Winds Arena and Everett Aquasox at Funko Field.
History
Prehistory and Hibulb village
The earliest humans entered the Puget Sound region approximately 12,000 years before present after the recession of the Vashon Glacier. The earliest evidence of human habitation on the Port Gardner Peninsula dates back to approximately 2,000 years before present. The Snohomish people, who had many villages along the Snohomish River and around Possession Sound, had their principal settlement at Preston Point, known in the Lushootseed language as . The village of Hibulb, located below the bluff at the mouth of the Snohomish River, was one of the largest Snohomish settlements and the tribe's most important. It held considerable influence over other settlements and had the largest potlatch house in the Snohomish's territory; it was also heavily fortified by a large cedar palisade to deter attackers. The village also had four large cedar longhouses, each around long, and smaller structures.The Snohomish consider to be their place of origin and references it in the creation myth for the deity. The tribe's population was estimated to be over 6,000 prior to several smallpox and measles epidemics in the early 19th century that severely affected the Puget Sound region. A massive landslide at Camano Head in the 1820s destroyed several villages and caused a tidal wave that washed away portions of Hibulb.
In Lushootseed, the modern city of Everett has two names:, the name of Forgotten Creek near the waterfront; or, which comes from the name of Preston Point and the village. The name itself originates from, which means "water bubbling out of the ground." It is related to the word, meaning "boiling" or "bubbling." In 2013, the City of Everett and Tulalip Tribes installed signage at Legion Park to display illustrations of the Hibulb village and its history; the park is atop the bluff that overlooks the village site.
Early history and American settlement
The first Europeans in the area were explorers from the 1792 Vancouver Expedition, who landed on a beach on the modern Everett waterfront and claimed the land for England on June 4, the birthday of King George III. Puget Sound was further explored and charted by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1824 and the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes in 1841, ahead of a larger American presence in the area.The Snohomish were one of the signatory tribes of the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855, which ceded their lands to the Washington territorial government and established the nearby Tulalip Indian Reservation, to which many of the Snohomish would be removed. The first permanent American settler to arrive on the peninsula was Dennis Brigham, a carpenter from Worcester, Massachusetts, who claimed a homestead and built a cabin for himself. Several other families established their own homesteads, as well as a general store and a sawmill that quickly went out of business. Over the next several years a handful of loggers moved to the area, but plans for a settlement were not conceived until 1890.
During an Alaskan cruise via the Inside Passage aboard the steamship Queen of the Pacific in July 1890, lumberman Henry Hewitt Jr. and railroad executive Charles L. Colby drew up plans for an industrial city on Port Gardner Bay. Hewitt and Colby had previously met in Wisconsin, where they operated lumber and maritime businesses, respectively, and in Tacoma, Washington, from which the voyage began. The pair sought to build an industrial center at a site they speculated would be the first ocean port for Great Northern Railway, to be constructed by James J. Hill, and turn it into a "Pittsburgh of the West". On August 22, 1890, the plat for a townsite on the peninsula was filed by the Rucker Brothers, who had moved north from Tacoma and had more modest plans for the area.
By September, Colby had secured $800,000 in funding from oil magnate John D. Rockefeller and his railroad associate Colgate Hoyt to begin acquiring land while avoiding property speculators. The Hewitt–Colby syndicate decided to use a name that would not identify a specific location, naming their planned city after Everett Colby, the fifteen-year-old son of investor Charles L. Colby, who had displayed a "prodigious appetite" at a group dinner. The Everett Land Company was incorporated in Pierce County on November 19, 1890, and acquired of property from the Rucker Brothers a week later. Several businesses had already been established on the peninsula, generally dividing themselves between the Bayside facing Port Gardner and Riverside facing the Snohomish River. The Rucker Brothers' plat was withdrawn after an agreement to donate half of their holdings was reached with Hewitt, who promised a series of industrial developments under the "Remarkable Document", which was also used to acquire property from other landowners in the area.
Everett gained its first businesses in early 1891, as the new settlement on the Snohomish River attracted land speculators and commitments to build lumber mills and other industrial enterprises. The first post office opened in July at a general store on the bayfront, where the Seattle and Montana Railroad was built in October. By the end of the year, Everett had gained its first school, saloon, church, and sawmill. The Swalwell Brothers had begun selling property in Riverside along Hewitt Avenue, which was laid wide and became the main east–west thoroughfare from the riverfront when it was completed in June 1892. The Everett Land Company did not initially organize a municipal government, leaving local issues to be resolved by a "citizen's committee" formed by 21 residents on March 21, 1892. The area had an estimated population of 5,000 by the end of the year, shortly before the completion of the Great Northern Railway across Stevens Pass on January 6, 1893. The railroad did not terminate in Everett as originally hoped by land speculators, instead continuing along the shoreline of Puget Sound to Seattle.
Incorporation and early years
Following the acquisition of tidelands on the waterfront, which had been in dispute, the Everett Land Company allowed for a municipal government to be formed. The initial city boundaries were set by the company to avoid taxing the industrial areas and exclude the town of Lowell, which predated Everett. On April 27, 1893, the citizens of Everett voted 670–99 in favor of incorporating as a city, and elected Thomas Dwyer as mayor. The incorporation was certified by the Snohomish County government on May 4, 1893. The city's privately owned streetcar system launched on July 3, 1893, with lines connecting the Hewitt Avenue commercial district to mills, smelters, and areas as far as Lowell.The Everett Land Company ran into financial trouble within months of the city's incorporation as the impact of the Panic of 1893 was felt in the region. The company's investment in the Monte Cristo area yielded ore of poorer quality than expected and it was unable to meet the promises in the "Remarkable Document", which was amended several times with the Rucker Brothers, by then junior partners in the company. Rockefeller called his investment into question and appointed Frederick Gates to begin divestment while Colby and Hoyt remained as the leaders of the company. Several of the major businesses in Everett closed or failed during the three-year peak of the economic depression, but work on Alexander McDougall's Whaleback was finished with the launch of in October 1894, the largest to be built on Puget Sound at the time. The Everett Women's Book Club was established in 1894 and opened the city's first hospital and public library, which would later expand into the Everett Public Library system.
Despite the economic turmoil, Everett continued to grow with the addition of new businesses as the area's lumber activities increased. Other industries also expanded in Everett, including a local cannery, a brick factory, and several ore smelters. The discovery of new mineral deposits in Monte Cristo fueled a population boom, along with the completion of the Everett and Monte Cristo Railway under the ownership of Rockefeller. The city also benefited from the Klondike Gold Rush, building several steamboats to transport prospectors and entrepreneurs.
In its early years, Everett launched a campaign to become county seat by replacing Snohomish, which had waned in importance following the completion of several railroads serving other cities in the county. An election to determine which city would be named county seat was scheduled for November 6, 1894, beginning a heated debate by citizens and newspapers. The initial count by the commissioners was announced on December 19 in Everett's favor, amid accusations of fraud and bought votes from both sides. Following an appeal from Snohomish, the Washington Supreme Court declared the result to be invalid and blocked the move, but a recount by the commissioners in October 1895 remained in Everett's favor. A long legal battle was fought between the two cities and was decided in October 1895 by the Supreme Court, who ruled that Everett would become county seat per the legal and binding recount. In January 1897, the county government's records were moved by wagons from Snohomish to Everett, where a three-story courthouse was opened on February 1, 1898.