Everett, Washington

Everett (/ˈɛvərɪt/ EV-er-it; Lushootseed: dᶻəɬigʷəd [d͜zəˈɬi̞ɡʷəd]) is the county seat of and the most populous city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is 25 miles (40 km) north of Seattle and is one of the main cities in the metropolitan area and the Puget Sound region. Everett is the seventh-most populous city in the state, with 110,629 residents as of the 2020 census. The city is primarily situated on a peninsula at the mouth of the Snohomish River along Port Gardner Bay, an inlet of Possession Sound (itself part of Puget Sound), and extends to the south and west.

The Port Gardner Peninsula has been inhabited by the Snohomish people for thousands of years, whose main settlement, hibulb, was located at Preston Point near the mouth of the river. Modern settlement in the area began with loggers and homesteaders arriving in the 1860s, but plans to build a city were not conceived until 1890. A consortium of East Coast investors seeking to build a major industrial city acquired land in the area and filed a plat for "Everett", which they named in honor of Everett Colby, the son of investor Charles L. Colby. The city was incorporated in 1893, shortly after the arrival of the Great Northern Railway, and prospered as a major lumber center with several large sawmills. Everett became the county seat in 1897 after a dispute with Snohomish contested over several elections and a Supreme Court case. The city was the site of labor unrest during the 1910s, which culminated in the Everett massacre in 1916 that killed several members of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The area was connected by new interurban railways and highway bridges in the 1920s, transforming it into a major commercial hub, and gained an airport at Paine Field in 1936. The city's economy transitioned away from lumber and towards aerospace after World War II, with the construction of Boeing's aircraft assembly plant at Paine Field in 1967. Boeing's presence brought additional industrial and commercial development to Everett, as well as new residential neighborhoods to the south and west of the peninsula that was annexed by the city. Boeing remains the city's largest employer, alongside the U.S. Navy, which has operated Naval Station Everett since 1994.

Everett remains a major employment center for Snohomish County, but has also become a bedroom community for Seattle in recent decades. It is connected to Seattle by Interstate 5 and various public transit services at Everett Station, including the Sounder commuter train, Amtrak, and commuter buses. Everett stages several annual festivals and is also home to minor league sports teams, including the Everett Silvertips at Angel of the Winds Arena and Everett Aquasox at Funko Field.

The earliest humans entered the Puget Sound region approximately 12,000 years before present after the recession of the Vashon Glacier. The earliest evidence of human habitation on the Port Gardner Peninsula dates back to approximately 2,000 years before present. The Snohomish people, who had many villages along the Snohomish River and around Possession Sound, had their principal settlement at Preston Point, known in the Lushootseed language as hibulb (pronounced HEE-bulb). The village of Hibulb, located below the bluff at the mouth of the Snohomish River, was one of the largest Snohomish settlements and the tribe's most important. It held considerable influence over other settlements and had the largest potlatch house in the Snohomish's territory; it was also heavily fortified by a large cedar palisade to deter attackers. The village also had four large cedar longhouses, each around 100 feet (30 m) long, and smaller structures.

The Snohomish consider hibulb to be their place of origin and references it in the creation myth for the deity dukʷibəɬ. The tribe's population was estimated to be over 6,000 prior to several smallpox and measles epidemics in the early 19th century that severely affected the Puget Sound region. A massive landslide at Camano Head (Lushootseed: x̌ʷuyšəd) in the 1820s destroyed several villages and caused a tidal wave that washed away portions of Hibulb.

In Lushootseed, the modern city of Everett has two names: dᶻəɬigʷəd, the name of Forgotten Creek near the waterfront; or hibulb, which comes from the name of Preston Point and the village. The name hibulb itself originates from hibuləb, which means "water bubbling out of the ground." It is related to the word bələwəb, meaning "boiling" or "bubbling." In 2013, the City of Everett and Tulalip Tribes installed signage at Legion Park to display illustrations of the Hibulb village and its history; the park is atop the bluff that overlooks the village site.

The first Europeans in the area were explorers from the 1792 Vancouver Expedition, who landed on a beach on the modern Everett waterfront and claimed the land for England on June 4, the birthday of King George III. Puget Sound was further explored and charted by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1824 and the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes in 1841, ahead of a larger American presence in the area.