Seattle: A Geek History

While the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and its iconic Space Needle heralded the emerging Space Age, the nearby Museum of Pop Culture now highlights everything from comic books to science fiction. Emerald City Comic Con, meanwhile, was founded in 2003 and has since evolved into one of the premier popular culture conventions in the United States. Add the first flying saucer sighting, Star Trek in the park theater performances, and DC superhero Green Arrow into the mix, and it’s easy to see that Seattle’s geek roots run deep.

1962 Seattle World’s Fair

The summer-long event started as a commemoration of the 1909 A-Y-P Exhibition before evolving into a celebration of science and the future that transformed the city’s landscape.

Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

Seattle sponsored the first world’s fair held in the state of Washington in 1909, an event that showcased the city as the gateway to the north following the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897.

Artists Republic of Fremont

The Seattle neighborhood of Fremont contains over a dozen public art displays within its borders, and considers itself to be an independent ImagiNation as well as Center of the Universe.

Bill Speidel and the Seattle Underground

After an 1889 fire leveled twenty-five blocks of Seattle, the city decided to elevate the streets and sidewalks, creating an underground that became a popular tourist attraction during the 1960s.

Charles Simonyi Space Gallery

The standalone gallery adjacent to the Museum of Flight in Seattle contains the Full Fuselage Trainer, a wingless Space Shuttle mockup that served as a training facility for astronauts.

Devolution: When Sasquatch Attack

Author Max Brooks explores the tragic events in a small, isolated community when a volcanic eruption displaces a family of Sasquatch, resulting in a kill-or-be-killed struggle for survival.

Emerald City Comicon

The Seattle-based comic book convention has grown from 2,500 attendees at a one-day event in 2003 to tens-of-thousands converging annually and a reputation as one of the best in the country.

It Happened at the World’s Fair

Elvis Presley visited the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair for ten days in September to film his twelfth Hollywood musical, and local teenage fans screamed and swooned the entire time he was there.

Jeffrey Veregge: Of Gods and Heroes

The S’Klallam Tribe artist has found success as a comic book illustrator, and even has a large mural featuring Marvel superheroes on display at the Native American Museum in New York.

Kenneth Arnold and the First Flying Saucer

Kenneth Arnold reported the first documented UFO sighting on June 24, 1947, while traveling past Mount Rainier near Seattle, giving rise to the phrase “flying saucers” in the process.

Magic: The Gathering

The popular trading card game began as a tale of two cities on opposite ends of the country, with Richard Garfield designing the game in Philadelphia and a Seattle-based company producing it.

Museum of Pop Culture

The Seattle museum was established by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen as the Jimi Hendrix-themed Experience Music Project but later expanded its focus to include sci-fi and fantasy.

Outdoor Trek (and Wars Outdoors)

The Seattle theater troupe Hello Earth Productions began performing episodes of Star Trek in various local parks in 2010 before taking on the space fantasy epic Star Wars a few years later.

Rain City Superhero Movement

During the early half of the 2010s, Seattle had a team of real-life superheroes patrolling the streets, confronting drug dealers, helping the homeless, and protecting their local communities.

Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont

Created by author J.A. Jance, the fictional J.P. Beaumont made his debut in the 1985 mystery novel Until Proven Guilty and has remained a staple of the Emerald City for the next forty years.

Star Trek: The Seattle Frontier

In the 1985 novel Star Trek: Ishmael, the twenty-third century Spock of the USS Enterprise is stranded in 1867 Seattle with his memory erased while the Klingons plot to alter Earth’s history.

Suciasaurus Rex: Washington’s First Dinosaur

In May 2012, two paleontologists from the Burke Museum in Seattle uncovered a partial dinosaur fossil in the state of Washington despite the region being underwater millions of years ago.

The Seattle Gum Wall

Since the early 1990s, both residents and tourists have been leaving their gum on the walls of Post Alley, located near Pike Place Market, creating a tourist attraction in known worldwide.

Who Killed Rosie Larsen?

The 2011 AMC drama The Killing is set in Seattle and follows the investigation of a teenage girl’s murder, as well as the aftershocks the crime has on those connected to her life and death.