The Mobile Homes in Seattle Today are a Far Cry From How the City Got Its Start If only starting a new city was as easy as calling your Seattle mobile home dealer, ordering your custom new home with a few clicks of a button, and then watching it roll onto your property without even breaking a sweat. Alas, this is not the story that history wrote about Seattle. Westward Expansion was made of blood, sweat, tears, and death. Even reaching the Seattle area in the 1850s, let alone making a life there, was an arduous task. But those that did were rewarded because being able to call the lush landscape of the Pacific Northwest home was a dream come true. First Peoples of Seattle The white settlers who founded the city of Seattle were not the first to inhabit the Pacific Northwest region. Seattle is founded upon the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people, specifically the Duwamish and Suquamish Tribes. They lived in longhouses, (not Seattle mobile homes), and hunted, gathered, traded, and lived relatively peacefully and certainly sustainably upon the land. They used cedar for ceremony, medicine, food, and housewares, and revered salmon, as it was the main staple of their diet. These First People still reside in Seattle, and though their lives look a little different today, the same values and practices of their culture and traditions are fiercely preserved. Sadly, the Duwamish Tribe is still not federally recognized, and many Seattleites and beyond stand with them in support as they seek to have the promises made to them in the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott upheld. The Denny Party It was the dead of winter, 1851, when the Denny Party’s schooner, Exact, landed at Alki Point. One member of the party, David Denny, traveled overland to the area to scout ahead, instead of sailing up from Portland, Oregon with the rest of his party. They had all come a long way, traversing the Oregon Trail from the East Coast, and then continuing on up to the area that would soon become the Washington Territory. Denny was to build a cabin that would shelter the pioneers for the winter, but when the rest of the party arrived, they found him feverish inside the roofless structure, in the rain, and with a wound he received from building the cabin. Needless to say, when the women and children stepped off the schooner to the miserable sight, they wept openly upon the banks of the Seattle shoreline. Chief Sealth, the leader of the Duwamish, was a friend to the settlers, and many accounts tell of his kindness in protecting them and how his tribe helped the newcomers survive in this foreign landscape. With Indigenous help, the Denny’s made it through the winter and then relocated across the bay to the eastern shore’s more protected harbor. On May 23, 1853, the new “Town of Seattle” (Seattle being an anglicized version of the Chief’s name) was platted and filed, marking the beginnings of the settlement that was named for Chief Sealth and would grow unimaginably into a bustling metropolis. A Turning Point There’s an important date in Seattle’s history, and on June 6, 1889, 116 acres of the city’s business district burned to the ground. Up until that point, in the first six months of 1889, it was estimated that the Town of Seattle, which had been incorporated into an official city in 1869, was receiving 1,000 new residents a month. That rate of population growth is a phenomenal figure for the historically hard-to-reach, remote wilderness of the northernmost portion of the Pacific Northwest. And with abundant timber from Henry Yesler’s steam-powered sawmill that fueled the region’s rapid building, Seattle was ripe for the picking when it came to fire. The Great Seattle Fire did not discriminate, and all of the timber that fueled the town’s industry, ironically, fueled the flames. The fire burned all day and night, and remarkably, no one was hurt. By the next morning, Seattlites were already at work in the rebuilding process, and city lawmakers smartly adopted new building codes that stated that all new buildings should be made of brick, stone, and steel. In many cases, they built the new building atop the wreckage and used the opportunity to straighten and widen the streets, properly forecasting Seattle’s growth and making the city even more grandiose than before.. You would think the Great Seattle Fire would have dampened the enthusiasm for Seattle—but it didn’t. Residents still kept coming, and haven’t stopped to this day.

Seattle is never short on offering things to do for residents and visitors, and once you’ve fully mobilized and have your new mobile home in Seattle squared away, check out some of these local favorites:

Dick’s Drive-In, The Pink Door, Canlis, Pike Place Chowder, Frelard Tamales, Off the Rez Cafe, Plum Bistro, and Sushi Kashiba are all Seattle institutions when it comes to flavorful, unique, and grub-worthy places to grab a bite. These restaurants span the gauntlet from fine-dining to food truck, and with chefs preparing flavors from across the globe, there’s bound to be something for every appetite.

Enjoy one of Seattle’s lovely green spaces. Discovery Park, Olympic Sculpture Park, Green Lake Park, Carkeek Park, and Alki Beach are stand-outs.

Ride a Washington State Ferry to easily get out on the water—a Seattle must. Sailings from Seattle reach the city of Bremerton, Bainbridge Island, and Vashon Island. You can also take a ride on the King County Water Taxi to head over to the residential haven of West Seattle.

The glass observation deck at 500 feet up atop the Space Needle provides an unparalleled view of the city. The Great Wheel and Smith Tower are two other great places to scope out a bird’s eye view as well.

Take a day trip to Mount Rainier National Park. This 2-hour and 20-minute drive offers Instagram-worthy scenic vistas of the highest point in Washington. Mount Rainier, a stratovolcano rises 14,411 feet into the sky.