Alki King County, Washington

Name: Alki
Address: Washington

Mapped Location

Alki: The mapped location is an approximation and should not be used for navigation or wayfinding.

Information

General information on Alki

Feature Type: Place

Official, historical, colloquial and alternative toponyms for Alki

A brief list of names that this geographic feature has been named

Name	Description
Alki	Official

Origin Notes and History of Alki

References to Alki that document the origin of its place name

ALKI POINT, now a part of Seattle, in King County. The first name given this place was "Point Roberts" by the Wilkes Expedition, 1841. It is not clear just what man was sought to be honored. In the crews of the expedition there were four men bearing the name of Roberts - Abraham, Humphrey, Owen, and William. It may have been any one of them. Furthermore it may have been the diplomat, Edward Roberts, who had gained fame in the Orient a few years before. Although the name appeared on a number of early charts, it was supplanted by the first settlers who made their homes there. On November 18, 1851, the famous Denny colony landed on that point. In the party there were twelve adults and twelve children. From that colony has grown the city of Seattle. The settlers were very ambitious. They called the place "New York." As the one little store and the few cabin homes grew so slowly they added a hyphen and the Indian jargon word Alki, meaning "by and bye." New York-Alki meant that it was to become the metropolis of the Pacific Coast in the near future. When a majority of the settlers moved to the east shore. of Elliott Bay and began the city of Seattle, those remaining at the point dropped the name "New York," but Alki Point has remained as a well-established geographic name. For a time the Government charts showed this point as Battery Point. See entry under that name.

Edmond S. Meany in Origin of Washington Geographic Names

Meany, Edmond S., Origin of Washington Geographic Names, 1923 University of Washington, pp 4 | Origin of Washington Geographic Names

A Selected Bibliography of Alki, King County, Washington

A compilation of essential readings detailing the history, geography, and culture of the region.

Westward to Alki the story of David and Louisa Denny by Gordon R. Newell

Westward to Alki: the story of David and Louisa Denny chronicles the grueling overland migration and foundational pioneer settlement of the dense, rain-drenched coastal basin of Puget Sound. Newell details how the region's formidable physical barriers—an unbroken, towering expanse of old-growth timber extending to the very edge of the tidal flats—strictly dictated the precarious survival of Seattle's earliest founders. By mapping the Denny party's initial, desperate winter encampment on the storm-battered, exposed shores of Alki Point and their subsequent, strategic relocation to the deeper, protected anchorages of Elliott Bay, the narrative highlights the immense physical labor required to carve a permanent foothold in this unforgiving maritime environment. The utter lack of viable overland routes forced these early homesteaders into a complete reliance on the deepwater highway of the Sound, immediately anchoring their economic survival to the arduous extraction of coastal timber for marine export. Ultimately, this biographical record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the severe winter climate and heavily forested, deeply indented aquatic topography of the Pacific Northwest inherently forged the resilient, strictly maritime-dependent origins of Washington's central metropolis.

[6], 122 pages : illustrations, coat of arms, maps, portraits ; 26 cm

Non-circulating [ 1 ]

Biographies · 1st ed · Superior Publishing Company, Seattle, 1977
Related Catalog Items: Alki · Alki Beach · West Seattle · City of Seattle · King County

King County

Political Boundaries

Last updated: 2017-01-02