Why Is Seattle Called The Emerald City?

Seattle’s nickname was adopted in 1982, after the Seattle-King County Convention and Visitors Bureau, while putting together an ad campaign, ran a competition to come up with a slogan for the city. Athough no-one in Seattle was tempted by the prize of a weeks vacation in Seattle, The winning entry, from Sarah Sterling-Franklin of Carmel, California was "Seattle, the Emerald City. Seattle is the jewel of the Northwest, the queen of the Evergreen State, the many-faceted city of space, elegance, magic and beauty". This catchy, trips-off-the-tongue slogan soon caught people's attention and the nickname was born.

Seattle could be described as emerald in colour, as it is lush with greenery, though technically, with only 2,962 square feet of green space per capita, it ranks as only America’s 46th Greenest City. A long way behind Minneapolis with an amazing 105,843 square foot of green space per capita. Sorry Seattle. However, the city does rank 6th in the greenest (cleanest and most sustainable) cities in America. Go Seattle!

On average it rains 150 days of the year. Though this doesn’t quite get it the title of America’s rainiest city. That award goes to Rochester New York with 167 days of rain a year. In fact, most years, Seattle is less rainy than Portland, Cleveland and Pittsburgh too!

If the though of all that rain makes you think you should avoid Seattle, think again! On top of the 150 days of rain it also gets 150 days of sunshine, and the people of Seattle buy more pairs of sunglasses per capita than any other US city! So, in spring and summer you should expect sunny days (just always keep an umbrella close by)

Seattle is birthplace of Starbucks (Pike Place Market 1971), also Jimmy Hendrix, Boeing, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Kenny Logins and famous computerist Bill Gates. Seattle is thought to have been originally called New York, though the name Seattle was adopted, after a local tribal Chief. Seattle is home to more dogs than children and it is the most literate city in America with over 80% of adults having library cards. Seattle is also the setting for a number of film and TV shows, but Sleepless in Seattle is the answer everyone would give in a quiz about films set in Seattle, so we’ll just stop there.