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Seattle's waterfront had been occupied by Native Americans for
thousands of years before white settlers arrived in the mid-1800s. The
natives fished for salmon, dug clams, lived relatively happy lives, and
rarely entered the deep forests of huge (200-ft) trees rising straight from
the saltwater shore. The American settlers started cutting down those trees
right after their arrival. A sawmill was followed by a waterfront business
district, warehouses, canneries, and factories; shipyards soon followed.
After the Klondike Gold Rush, the port grew; trade with Alaska has been one
of the mainstays of Seattle's economy ever since. In 1916 William Boeing
built his first airplane in a local barn---and the rest is history. The
greater Seattle area has benefitted from the presence of Boeing plants for
three-quarters of a century. More recently, Microsoft and other high-tech
companies have had a major impact on the local economy and on the local
lifestyle, turning a mainly blue-collar region into a white-color one.
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