had begun
with the Panic of 1893; in a short time, Seattle became a major transportation
center. On July 14, 1897, the S.S. Portland docked with its famed "ton of
gold", and Seattle became the main transport and supply point for the
miners in Alaska and the Yukon. Few of those working men found lasting wealth,
however; it was Seattle's business of clothing the miners and feeding them
salmon that panned out in the long run. Along with Seattle, other cities like
Everett, Tacoma, Port Townsend, Bremerton, and Olympia, all in the Puget Sound
region, became competitors for exchange, rather than mother lodes for
extraction, of precious metals. The boom lasted well into the early part of the
20th century and funded many new Seattle companies and products. In 1907,
19-year-old James E. Casey borrowed $100 from a friend and founded the American
Messenger Company (later UPS). Other Seattle companies founded during this
period include Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer. The Gold Rush era culminated in the
Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, which is largely responsible for the
layout of today's University of Washington campus.
A shipbuilding boom in the early part of
the 20th century became massive during World War I, making Seattle somewhat of
a company town; the subsequent retrenchment led to the Seattle General Strike
of 1919, the first general strike in the country. A 1912 city development plan
by Virgil Bogue went largely unused. Seattle was mildly prosperous in the 1920s
but was particularly hard hit in the Great Depression, experiencing some of the
country's harshest labor strife in that era. Violence during the Maritime
Strike of 1934 cost Seattle much of its maritime traffic, which was rerouted to
the Port of Los Angeles.
Seattle was also the home base of
impresario Alexander Pantages who, starting in 1902, opened a number of
theaters in
