Your view stretches from Elliott Bay out across Puget Sound toward the Olympic Peninsula. This shoreline has been the engine of Seattle's economy since the first settlers arrived in 1851. Arthur Denny and his party landed near here, assessed the harbor's depth, and concluded it could handle oceangoing ships — a conclusion that determined the city's future.
In the 1890s, the waterfront was lined with sawmill wharves, shipping piers, and the storefronts that supplied gold-seekers heading to the Klondike. For most of the twentieth century, it was obscured behind the Alaskan Way Viaduct, an elevated highway that carried traffic along the waterfront but cut the city off from the water. The viaduct came down between 2019 and 2020, replaced by a tunnel, and the waterfront has been redesigned as a public promenade — one of the most ambitious urban waterfront reclamations in American history.
Washington State Ferries dock at Colman Dock to your south, carrying passengers and cars to Bainbridge Island, Bremerton, and the Kitsap Peninsula. The ferries are not a tourist amenity; they are the daily commute for thousands of people who live across the Sound and choose a life tethered to the water.