Rainier Beach ( ) is a set of

neighborhoods A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neighbourh ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

that are mostly residential. Also called Atlantic City, Rainier Beach can include Dunlap, Pritchard Island, and Rainier View neighborhoods.Wilma (21 March 2001, Essay 3116) The neighborhood is located in the far southeastern corner of the city along

Lake Washington Lake Washington () is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the largest lake in King County, Washington, King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington (state), Was ...

. Its primary arterials are Rainier and Renton Avenues South (northwest- and southeast-bound). Neighborhood boundaries are informal and sometimes overlapping in Seattle; formal designations have not existed since 1910. Rainier Beach blends with the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Dunlap (also called Othello) on the north. On the east is

, and the South Beacon Hill neighborhood lies to the west. South of Rainier Beach is Rainier View, bounded by South Bangor Street on the north and the city boundary on its south, east, and west. The Lakeridge and

Skyway A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of Cover ...

neighborhoods of unincorporated King County lie to the southeast and southwest, respectively, of Rainier View. The city of Tukwila abuts Rainier View on the west. Bird's eye view of Rainier Beach, 1895. Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives.

History

What is now Rainier Beach neighborhood has been inhabited since the end of the last

glacial period A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betw ...

(c. 8,000 BC – 10,000 years ago). The (, 'Lake People' or 'People of the Large Lake') were related to, but distinct from, the ('People of the Inside') tribe of the Lushootseed (Skagit-Nisqually)

Coast Salish The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak on ...

Nations. Both are now (c. mid-1850s) of the Duwamish tribe. The village of ('little island') was, appropriately, on an island at the southwest shore of what is now called Lake Washington, at their trail through a valley that led to the villages of the ''Dkh^w'Duw'Absh'' on salt water at

Elliott Bay Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is in the U.S. state of Washington, extending southeastward between West Point in the north and Alki Point in the south. Seattle was founded on this body of water in the 1850s ...

and the estuarial

Duwamish River