Prehistory and Hibulb village 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 (pronounced ). 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 long, and smaller structures. 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 () In Lushootseed, the modern city of Everett has two names: , or ,
Early history and American settlement as it passes
Port Gardner Bay in 1891|alt=A black-and-white photograph of two railroad tracks against an undeveloped hillside with trees and a small house. 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. The Snohomish were one of the signatory tribes of the
Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855, which ceded their lands to the
Washington territorial government and established the nearby
Tulalip Indian Reservation, to which many of the Snohomish would be removed. The first permanent American settler to arrive on the peninsula was Dennis Brigham, a carpenter from
Worcester, Massachusetts, who claimed a
homestead and built a cabin for himself. Several other families established their own homesteads, as well as a general store and a
sawmill that quickly went out of business. On August 22, 1890, the
plat for a townsite on the peninsula was filed by the
Rucker Brothers, who had moved north from Tacoma and had more modest plans for the area. By September, Colby had secured $800,000 in funding (equivalent to $ in dollars) from oil magnate
John D. Rockefeller and his railroad associate
Colgate Hoyt to begin acquiring land while avoiding property speculators. The Hewitt–Colby syndicate decided to use a name that would not identify a specific location, naming their planned city after
Everett Colby, the fifteen-year-old son of investor Charles L. Colby, who had displayed a "prodigious appetite" at a group dinner. The Rucker Brothers' plat was withdrawn after an agreement to donate half of their holdings was reached with Hewitt, who promised a series of industrial developments under the "Remarkable Document", which was also used to acquire property from other landowners in the area. Everett gained its first businesses in early 1891, as the new settlement on the Snohomish River attracted land speculators and commitments to build lumber mills and other industrial enterprises. The first
post office opened in July at a
general store on the bayfront, where the
Seattle and Montana Railroad was built in October. By the end of the year, Everett had gained its first school,
saloon, church, and sawmill. The Swalwell Brothers had begun selling property in Riverside along Hewitt Avenue, which was laid wide and became the main east–west thoroughfare from the riverfront when it was completed in June 1892. The Everett Land Company did not initially organize a municipal government, leaving local issues to be resolved by a "citizen's committee" formed by 21 residents on March 21, 1892. The area had an estimated population of 5,000 by the end of the year, shortly before the completion of the Great Northern Railway across
Stevens Pass on January 6, 1893. The railroad did not terminate in Everett as originally hoped by land speculators, instead continuing along the shoreline of Puget Sound to
Seattle.
Incorporation and early years filed by the Everett Land Company in 1892|alt=A map of a city with a grid of streets and marked lots. Several images and other maps are framed around the diagram. Following the acquisition of tidelands on the waterfront, which had been in dispute, the Everett Land Company allowed for a municipal government to be formed. The initial city boundaries were set by the company to avoid taxing the industrial areas and exclude the town of
Lowell, which predated Everett. On April 27, 1893, the citizens of Everett voted 670–99 in favor of
incorporating as a city, and elected Thomas Dwyer as
mayor. The incorporation was certified by the
Snohomish County government on May 4, 1893. The city's privately owned
streetcar system launched on July 3, 1893, with lines connecting the Hewitt Avenue commercial district to mills,
smelters, and areas as far as Lowell. The Everett Land Company ran into financial trouble within months of the city's incorporation as the impact of the
Panic of 1893 was felt in the region. The company's investment in the
Monte Cristo area yielded
ore of poorer quality than expected and it was unable to meet the promises in the "Remarkable Document", which was amended several times with the Rucker Brothers, by then junior partners in the company. Rockefeller called his investment into question and appointed Frederick Gates to begin divestment while Colby and Hoyt remained as the leaders of the company. Several of the major businesses in Everett closed or failed during the three-year peak of the economic depression, but work on
Alexander McDougall's
Whaleback was finished with the launch of in October 1894, the largest to be built on Puget Sound at the time. The Everett Women's Book Club was established in 1894 and opened the city's first
hospital and
public library, which would later expand into the
Everett Public Library system. Despite the economic turmoil, Everett continued to grow with the addition of new businesses as the area's lumber activities increased. Other industries also expanded in Everett, including a local
cannery, a
brick factory, and several ore smelters. The discovery of new mineral deposits in Monte Cristo fueled a population boom, along with the completion of the
Everett and Monte Cristo Railway under the ownership of Rockefeller. The city also benefited from the
Klondike Gold Rush, building several
steamboats to transport prospectors and entrepreneurs. In its early years, Everett launched a campaign to become
county seat by replacing
Snohomish, which had waned in importance following the completion of several railroads serving other cities in the county. An election to determine which city would be named county seat was scheduled for November 6, 1894, beginning a heated debate by citizens and newspapers. The initial count by the commissioners was announced on December 19 in Everett's favor, amid accusations of fraud and bought votes from both sides. Following an appeal from Snohomish, the
Washington Supreme Court declared the result to be invalid and blocked the move, but a recount by the commissioners in October 1895 remained in Everett's favor. A long legal battle was fought between the two cities and was decided in October 1895 by the Supreme Court, who ruled that Everett would become county seat per the legal and binding recount. In January 1897, the county government's records were moved by wagons from Snohomish to Everett, where a three-story
courthouse was opened on February 1, 1898.
Milltown and labor unrest After outside investors withdrew their shares in the Everett Land Company, its holdings were transferred in 1899 to the
Everett Improvement Company, controlled by James J. Hill and his trusted associate John T. McChesney.
Friedrich Weyerhäuser acquired Hill's timberland holdings in the Pacific Northwest and chose Everett for the site of his major lumber mill, which opened in 1902. By the end of the decade, Everett had 11 lumber mills, 16
shingle mills, and 17 combined mills—surpassing every other city in the state and earning it the nicknames of "Milltown" and the "City of Smokestacks". The
Weyerhaeuser Company opened its larger second mill, named Mill B, on the Snohomish River in April 1915 with a smokestack and the ability to process 1,000,000
board feet of timber. The city gained its first
interurban railway in 1903 with the opening of the
Snohomish Interurban. This was followed by the
Seattle Interurban on May 2, 1910, which ran hourly on an inland route via
Alderwood Manor. Everett became a first-class city in 1907 and had a population of nearly 25,000 residents by 1910, a quarter of whom were foreign-born. The local lumber economy prospered during the rebuilding of
San Francisco following the
1906 earthquake, which created a high demand for West Coast wood products. The city's growth was not hindered by the fire and a
new county courthouse opened in 1910 alongside the
Everett High School campus. Everett voters approved a new city charter in 1912 that reorganized the city government into a three-commissioner council with a ceremonial mayor. During the first decade of the 20th century, workers at mills and other factories began organizing
labor unions under the Everett Central Trades Council, which had 27 member trades and six unions by 1901. The council had 25 unions by 1907 and became affiliated with the
American Federation of Labor, using its influence to stage strikes and work stoppages that resulted in wage increases and safer conditions at mills, where 35 workers had died in 1909. Everett was also home to local
socialist groups and organizers, who published the
Labor Journal and
The Commonwealth on a weekly basis until 1914. Several survivors of the September 1907
anti-Indian riots in
Bellingham settled in Everett for two months, but were beaten and forcefully evicted by a mob. The city's labor unrest culminated in the
Everett massacre on November 5, 1916, the deadliest event in Pacific Northwest labor history. A strike of
shingle weavers began at local mills in May 1916 and continued for months with violent attacks from mill owners, which attracted attention from the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a radical socialist union who provided speakers at Everett events. The beatings drew anger from union members and other Everett citizens, prompting 300 IWW members to travel on the steamers
Verona and
Calista from Seattle to Everett on November 5, when they were confronted at the docks by McRae and his posse of 200 citizen deputies, who feared violence and arson from the group. After a heated debate followed by several minutes of gunfire, five people on the
Verona were killed and two deputies on the dock had been mortally wounded from
friendly fire; an unofficial death toll of twelve IWW members was determined from the recovery of underwater bodies. The shingle weavers strike ended on November 10, 1916, with no concessions from the mill owners, and local residents turned against the IWW for escalating the dispute. The labor tensions subsided with the entry of the U.S. into
World War I, despite an attempted comeback by the IWW in disrupting logging for the war effort. As a result of the massacre, the state government passed laws to prohibit citizens from advocating for
anarchy or violent overthrow, which were not repealed until 1999. The massacre was largely unacknowledged by local residents until the late 20th century, when book accounts were published and a
historic marker was installed overlooking the former docks. The city also acquired the private water system in 1915 and replaced it with a new supply from the
Sultan River basin that was fully activated four years later. Everett's central
commercial district grew from a handful of businesses into a busy downtown during the 1920s, including the construction of several multi-story office and retail buildings, two
junior high schools, a
modern city hall, and additions to the city's two hospitals. The six-story
Monte Cristo Hotel opened in 1925 with 140 guest rooms, elaborate furnishings, and a
banquet hall that would host civic functions for several decades. The county's first radio station, KFBL (now
KRKO), began broadcasting on August 25, 1922, and was among the earliest in the state. In 1924, a third mill at the Weyerhaeuser complex, which employed 1,500 people and contributed to $28.125 million (equivalent to $ in dollars) in annual timber output by the end of the decade. The widespread adoption of the automobile lead to the construction of new roads out of Everett and Snohomish County to neighboring regions. The earliest iteration of the
Stevens Pass Highway opened in 1925, providing the second automobile crossing of the
Cascade Mountains in the state and access to new timberland and other resources. The highway was later improved with the opening of the
Hewitt Avenue Trestle in 1939, crossing the Snohomish River and Ebey Island on an elevated
viaduct. The
Pacific Highway (part of
U.S. Route 99) was completed in 1927 with the opening of four bridges across the Snohomish River delta to
Marysville. Everett was also among the first cities in the U.S. to replace its streetcars with
buses, doing so in 1923, and the last train on the Seattle–Everett Interurban ran on February 20, 1939. Everett experienced a major rise in unemployment as demand for lumber products dropped, with an estimated 32 percent of
property taxes left unpaid in 1932. Charitable organizations in the area set up relief programs and provided work for unemployed residents, including commencing work on a park and
golf course in North Everett that later became
American Legion Memorial Park. The federal
Works Progress Administration employed local workers to construct a new downtown public library, develop parks, expand schools, and improve streets. The works program also built a new county airport, later named
Paine Field, that opened southwest of Everett in 1936 to serve commercial uses. The airport was appropriated for military use during
World War II, but was later turned over to county ownership. The first suburban-style
supermarket opened on Evergreen Way (part of U.S. Route 99) in 1950 and was followed by
strip malls and similar
big box stores along the highway by the end of the decade. The areas surrounding the highway were developed into suburban housing and made up the bulk of the city's then-largest
annexation, of near Madison Street on December 31, 1959. A second round of South Everett annexations completed in 1961 and 1972 added to the city, including the Lowell area, and boosted its population to over 50,000. Everett's second high school,
Cascade High School, opened in 1961 to serve the annexed areas. The new suburban neighborhoods were linked via
Interstate 5, which opened from North Seattle to Everett in February 1965 and bypassed U.S. Route 99 with a six-lane freeway roughly following the former interurban railway. The freeway was extended around the east side of Downtown Everett in January 1968 and Interstate 5 was completed within Washington with the opening of the section connecting the city to Marysville in May 1969. The
Boeing Company opened its first Everett factory in 1943 as part of its wartime production for the
B-17 program. The company moved to the Everett–Pacific Shipyard in 1956 and grew to be the city's largest single employer by 1965, with 1,728 employees. Boeing approved early development of its
Boeing 747 passenger jetliner in March 1966 and purchased near Paine Field in June to build its
assembly plant for the plane, which would become the world's first "jumbo jet". Work on the first 747 plane, named the "City of Everett", began at the unfinished factory in January 1967. It was unveiled in September 1968 and made its maiden flight on February 9, 1969. The Everett factory was expanded several times to accommodate later Boeing programs, including the
767,
777, and
787 Dreamliner. By the end of the decade, Everett had annexed additional areas to stretch the city boundaries west to Mukilteo and south to Silver Lake. The city instead deepened its connections to the aerospace and high-tech industry, opening facilities in the 1980s for
Hewlett-Packard,
Fluke, and other electronics firms. Downtown Everett also declined as an activity center as retailers and car dealerships moved to suburban areas, despite the opening of a large
hotel and several high-rise office building. A city landfill southeast of Downtown Everett was turned into a recycling plant for millions of rubber
tires, nicknamed "Mount Firestone", which caught fire in September 1984 and burned for seven months as the incident gained national media attention.
Naval base and downtown revival , a U.S. Navy facility opened in 1994 under the
Strategic Homeport program|alt=A military base with a baseball field and several buildings against a backdrop with a large body of water. Boeing recovered from its sales slump and increased employment at its Everett plant to 18,000 people in 1980 as it prepared to unveil the Boeing 767, the second family of jetliners to be produced in Everett. A neighboring
industrial park along Seaway Boulevard was developed in the 1980s as demand for commercial space in the city grew. The Port of Everett began developing a new shopping and retail complex on Port Gardner Bay as it looked to diversify away from industrial uses, but the project ran into financial issues as Everett-area employers failed or laid off workers amid an aerospace slump in 1981–82. The
U.S. Navy selected the former shipyard site on Port Gardner Bay as the site of a new military base in 1984 under the
Strategic Homeport program.
Naval Station Everett and its pier were constructed between 1987 and 1994 alongside auxiliary facilities located to the north in
Smokey Point. The first ships arrived in September 1994. Naval Station Everett was the long-term home of several
aircraft carriers, including the . The city underwent an urban revival in the 1990s, fueled by the upcoming centennial celebrations and a third expansion of the Boeing plant for the Boeing 777 program. The plant expansion was completed in 1993, enlarging the world's largest building by volume to covering . Everett's inner neighborhoods grew with new residential and commercial development, including Downtown Everett, where a beautification and restoration program had begun in the 1980s. The downtown program included a
road diet for Colby Avenue,
planter boxes on widened sidewalks, and new parks. Several new office buildings were completed in Downtown Everett, including the 11-story
Everett Mutual Tower, and other historic buildings were renovated or restored. Everett was recognized as an
All-America City by the
National Civic League in 2002 and has been a member of the
Tree City USA program since 1993. The city's Delta neighborhood underwent extensive environmental cleanup that began in the 2000s with funds from
Asarco after the discovery of
soil contamination from the shuttered smelter. Everett was identified as a key transport hub under the regional
Sound Transit system, which was approved in a ballot measure in 1996 after an earlier failed attempt. The transit agency opened a multimodal train and bus center,
Everett Station, in February 2003 to replace scattered downtown facilities for
Amtrak,
Greyhound, and local transit. It would also serve as the northern terminus for
Sounder commuter rail and
Sound Transit Express buses, which both connect Everett to Seattle. A section of Interstate 5 was rebuilt by the state government from 2005 to 2008 by adding new lanes and improving several interchanges at a cost of $263 million. Everett remains home to one of the most congested stretches of I-5, which is also among the worst in the United States for travel delays. Downtown Everett remained a center for new development in the 2000s and 2010s, with several projects completed by local governments and private developers. The
Everett Events Center (now Angels of the Winds Arena) opened in 2003 as an indoor sports venue,
convention center, and community
ice rink. The county government redeveloped its Everett office campus by building a new administrative center, jail,
parking garage, and public
plaza that opened in 2005. In the 2010s, two new downtown hotels were opened along with several apartment buildings that were encouraged by relaxed zoning policies. As the region's
homeless population grew, Everett added two
supportive housing buildings in downtown to provide 150 units of low-income housing with access to social services. Boeing selected Everett as the main site of its 787 Dreamliner and
747-8 programs, which did not require major building expansions. The
Boeing 777X program launched in 2013 with plans to build a wing assembly center adjacent to the Everett plant, which opened in 2016. Commercial passenger service at Paine Field resumed at a new terminal on March 4, 2019, after earlier plans from the 1980s onward were blocked by nearby residents.
Contemporary redevelopment The city government began planning for a major redevelopment of a former landfill on the Snohomish River waterfront in the late 1990s, but the project was stalled as private developers declined to move the project forward. The original concept for the property was an entertainment center with shopping, housing, offices, and parks. The
riverfront project was ultimately divided into three sections: a southern portion for 235
single-family homes that was constructed in 2016; a center portion with commercial space, apartments, a movie theater, and a small park; and a northern portion with 190
townhomes. A similar redevelopment plan for the Port of Everett's on the bayside waterfront, known as Port Gardner Wharf, was shelved in 2007 by the developer's financial issues. A new development, named Waterfront Place, began construction in 2018 with a hotel, apartments, restaurants, and shops adjacent to the city's public
marina.
Providence Regional Medical Center, formed from a merger of Everett's two hospitals in 1994, completed a major expansion of its North Everett campus in 2011 by opening a 12-story medical tower. The
first U.S. case of
coronavirus disease 2019 was identified in a Snohomish County resident at Providence Regional Medical Center on January 20, 2020. As the coronavirus pandemic worsened in the state, mayor Cassie Franklin declared the first
shelter-in-place order for Washington state on March 21, 2020. In response to a projected revenue shortfall of $14 million caused by the shelter-in-place order, which later spread statewide, the city government laid off 160 employees in May 2020 and plans to cut services. The city's original 2020 budget had already been constrained due to a projected deficit caused by a spending gap identified in 2017. The first portions of the redeveloped Everett waterfront, a 142-room hotel, opened in 2019 and was followed by apartments and restaurants. The opening of the first apartment building was delayed due to a large fire in July 2020 that destroyed the entirety of the unfinished four-story structure. New residential buildings were also completed in downtown Everett and the waterfront, adding 650 apartments in the early 2020s. The Everett Housing Authority announced plans in 2024 to redevelop the Baker Heights public housing complex into a mixed-income neighborhood with 1,500 residential units, offices, and retail with buildings as tall as 15 stories. ==Geography==