Seattle and Kung Fu

So what does Seattle and Kung Fu have in comon?  Well that’s why I started this blog was to tell you.  More than you think.  Both have quite a history and have endured the test of time.  They both have been born out of necessity and have evolved to serve and protect those involved. 

Seattle was litterally claimed from the sea. 

Seattle began filling in the vast tideflats south of Pioneer Square in the early twentieth century, producing Harbor Island and the area now occupied by Union Station, King Street Station, Seattle’s sports stadiums, and much of the city’s industrial base. Growing resentment of railroad and shipping monopolies led King County voters to create the Port of Seattle in 1911 in order to guide harbor development for the public interest.

Maritime development was aided by completion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in 1917, allowing passage from Puget Sound to the fresh waters of Lake Union and Lake Washington. The shipping slump after World War I and during the Great Depression retarded further improvements. Thanks to federal aid, however, the city replaced the wooden Railroad Avenue with a seawall and Alaskan Way in the mid-1930s.

World War II boosted shipping and led the Port to develop the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Today’s central waterfront pier numbers also date from the 1940s, when the federal government imposed a uniform system in order to better manage shipments of troops and supplies.

The State and City constructed the Alaskan Way Viaduct in the early 1950s to divert Highway 99 traffic from downtown streets, but it also walled the harbor off from the city. Meanwhile, port activity stagnated as shipping technologies outstripped Seattle’s antiquated facilities. Little new was built on the waterfront other than the Edgewater Hotel, which was begun (but not quite finished in time) for the 1962 World’s Fair.

Chinese first arrived in Seattle around 1860. The Northern Pacific Railway completed the project of laying tracks from Lake Superior to Tacoma, Washington, in 1883, leaving many Chinese laborers without employment. In 1883, Chinese laborers played a key role in the first effort at digging the Montlake Cut to connect Lake Union‘s Portage Bay to Lake Washington‘s Union Bay.

Seattle’s Chinese district, located near the present day Occidental Park, was a mixed neighborhood of residences over stores, laundries, and other retail storefronts.^[20] In fall 1885, with a shortage of jobs in the West, many workers turned violently anti-Chinese, complaining of overly cheap labor competition. In the Pacific Northwest, this had the unusual character that the anti-Chinese mobs included significant numbers of the native Indians as well as European-Americans.