It was my wife's and my last day in Seattle before we would meet up with my parents to road trip around some of Washington's beautiful national parks.
We really enjoyed our time in the city! It's definitely up there now as one of my favorite US cities that I've spent time in.
In this post, I'll be sharing some of the fun, quirky, and interesting things that we saw and did in Seattle which didn't get their own posts on the blog.
Waterfall Garden Park
Waterfall Garden Park is a 60-foot by 80-foot pocket park in downtown Seattle located near Pioneer Square.
The park is built on the site of the United Parcel Service (UPS), which began as the American Messenger Company in 1907.
UPS founder James Casey, along with his siblings, created the Annie E. Casey Foundation in honor of their mother. After UPS moved to a larger location, the foundation funded the park's creation to honor UPS employees and continues to maintain it for public use today.
Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park
The Klondike Gold Rush NHP is a US National Park unit located in downtown Seattle basically just across the street from Waterfall Garden Park.
When news of gold in the Canadian northwest spread across the world between1897–1898, it sparked a mass migration of roughly 100,000 people, often called “stampeders,” who hoped to strike it rich. Gold fever became so out of control that at times Seattle's trolly system couldn't run because all of the conductors had headed to Canada to seek their fortunes, and at one point, even the mayor of Seattle quit in the night to become a prospector!
Seattle was, at the time, a relatively unimportant city, but it soon became rich by positioning itself as the "Gateway to the Gold Fields," Seattle profited immensely from outfitting miners, selling goods, and providing passage north. This economic boom helped transform Seattle from a relatively modest port town into a major commercial center.
The museum tells the stories of quirky prospectors and Seattleites and displays artifacts from the period.
It was a crazy time in history, and although Seattle itself had no gold, the people who stayed in the city and catered to the prospectors were the ones who really struck it rich.
The Gum Wall
The gum wall is one of Seattle's most unique and disgusting landmarks.
Located in Post Alley under Pike Place Market, it began in the early 1990s when theatergoers waiting in line at the nearby Market Theater started sticking chewing gum to the brick wall.
Despite repeated cleanings by theater staff, the gum kept coming back, and eventually, it was embraced as a local oddity and allowed to grow. Over the years, the wall has accumulated thousands of pieces of chewed gum in every color imaginable. It's become embraced by the city as a piece of spontaneous and ever-changing urban art.
Seattle Art Museum
On the afternoon before our Seattle Underground walking tour, we had a little bit of time to kill, and after wandering around downtown for a while, we eventually decided to visit the city's art museum.
The museum contains classical and modern art, but the part that I enjoyed the most and found the most interesting was the large section dedicated to indigenous art from across the Pacific Northwest.
The Seattle Totem Pole
The Pioneer Square Totem Pole is a Tlingit artifact originally carved around 1790 to honor a woman named Chief-of-All-Women, who drowned in the Nass River.
The tribe, upon discovering the theft, demanded compensation, leading to a settlement of $500 (around $20,000 in today's money).
In 1938, the original pole was destroyed in a fire and a replica was commissioned from Tlingit artisans (at a fairly high upcharge I might add, and good for them!) by the U.S. Forest Service.
It was reinstalled in Pioneer Square in 1940 and today, the totem pole stands as a National Historic Landmark, symbolizing both Seattle's complex history and the enduring cultural heritage of the Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest.
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