Before the Denny Party landed their schooner at Alki Point, a neighborhood that today is still as popular as it once was, the area was inhabited by the Duwamish Tribe. The Duwamish are Indigenous peoples who have stewarded the land since the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago or circa 8,000 BCE.

As consistent with their Native protocol, the Duwamish routinely greet visitors to their land, and the encroaching white settlers were no exception. When the Denny Party first arrived at the area that has now become Seattle, they found dozens of Hudson’s Bay Company employees and a thriving Duwamish community numbering in the thousands.

Many accounts of the interaction tell of how the Duwamish taught the settlers how to subsist in this new climate, and helped them build structures in order to survive their first winter. The city of Seattle and all of King County owe their modern settlement of today to the generosity of these people.

Since the landing, the Seattle settlement had been chugging right along, as well as the formation of King County. On December 22, 1852, the county became official, according to the Oregon Territory legislature. When Washington Territory was formed a mere three months later, King County took its rightful place as the county seat of the new geographic region.

The eponym of King County is an interesting one, having once stood for something entirely different than what it does today.

Originally, the county was named for William Rufus Devane King, the newly elected Vice President of the United States. King died shortly after election and never got the chance to serve his country. Over the years, this left King County residents wondering why they still used his name when his principles did not serve their county’s moral fiber.

Devane King was a slaveholder who the King County City Council said, “earned income and maintained his lifestyle by oppressing and exploiting other human beings.”

The new Washington Territory differed from the Oregon one in that Black settlers were not banned from holding property and settling the area. This meant that Devane King’s ethos did not align with King County’s, and with much community support and tireless efforts from Council member Ron Sims, King County changed their eponym and logo in 1986 to honor a different, more widely-respected King: Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today’s logo, an image of Dr. King, and the eponym, his name, is now emblazoned on roadways, buildings, common spaces, parks, and more all throughout King County. It’s the result of decades of hard work and civic action that King County citizens are known for.