Members of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes first inhabited the site of modern-day Seattle. They visited the area seasonally to harvest and dry salmon. The city itself was founded by the Denny party, made up of two dozen American settlers. They landed on the rainy beach at Alki Point in West Seattle in 1851. Within a year, the community moved east to a more sheltered site on Elliott Bay and began to clear the dense forest back from the shore.
In 1853 Washington Territory was created by splitting the Oregon Territory. That same year, settler Henry Yesler set up a steam-powered sawmill on the waterfront near today's Pioneer Square. Seattle's little settlement was just one of several scattered along the shores of Puget Sound. The sawmill's steam engine was soon belching smoke into the salty air, preparing lumber to build the homes, schoolhouses, churches, and shops of the settlement.
