Rainier Valley, Seattle

The Rainier Valley is a district in southeast Seattle. It is located east of Beacon Hill; west of Mount Baker, Seward Park, and Leschi; south of the Central District and north of Rainier Beach. It is part of Seattle's South End.

History

White explorers and settlers first arrived in the area in the 1850s, and an explorer named Issac Ebey surveyed the area in 1850, with Ebey's assessment printed in an Oregon newspaper to entice other settlers. Native Americans had several encampments in the area prior to the settlers, and a permanent village at the south end of the valley.

Italians were prominent in the north Valley in the early 20th century, the Central Valley was mostly settled by the same settlers and northern-European immigrants (primarily British and Scandinavian) who settled most of Seattle. Japanese farmers lived in the Valley since its inception and established two historic Japanese-American nurseries in the Valley - Mizukis and Holly Park, with Holly Park Nursery. Two housing projects were completed in the Valley during World War II named; Holly Park and Rainier Vista. The housing projects were completed by the Seattle Housing Authority to house Boeing and shipyard workers during the war. Following the war through the Boeing crash of 1971, the Valley boomed with middle-class residential construction and with all of this construction, the Valley continued its historic diversity. Interracial couples in the 1950s found the Valley more accepting than the northern half of the city because of the relative lack of "deed covenants" found in the South End (covenants ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the 1960s).

The Civil Rights Act precipitated a "white flight" from the valley despite its historic diversity. The general exodus of whites from the valley, Beacon Hill, and Seward Park, which began in the mid-60s, was primarily over by the mid-80s, when some historic "children of the Valley" began to return to it, as well as other new residents. With the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, a wave of Vietnamese immigrants opened businesses along abandoned areas of Martin Luther King Jr. Way South, extending four miles south of the official Little Saigon neighborhood on South Jackson Street. Additional population growth was seen with the arrival of Filipinos throughout the Valley, though their businesses are fewer. St. Edward Roman Catholic Church is the cultural heart of the Filipino community in the Valley.

The Valley neighborhoods lying along Rainier Avenue South rival any other part of Seattle for age, since they are near the historic streetcar (removed in 1937) that in 1892 connected downtown Seattle to Columbia City and then later to Renton, known as the "Rainier Valley and Renton Railroad." The railroad, the reorientation of the Duwamish River