Puget Sound region
The Puget Sound region is a coastal area of the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. state of Washington, including Puget Sound, the Puget Sound lowlands, and the surrounding region roughly west of the Cascade Range and east of the Olympic Mountains. It is characterised by a complex array of saltwater bays, islands, and peninsulas carved out by prehistoric glaciers.
The Puget Sound region has been called "Ish River country", perhaps most famously by poet Robert Sund, owing to its numerous rivers with names ending in "ish", such as the Duwamish, Samish, Skokomish, Skykomish, Snohomish, and the Stillaguamish. The ish ending is from Salish language meaning "people of".
The Puget Sound region was formed by the collision and attachment of many terranes ("microcontinents") to the North American Plate between about 50 to 10 million years ago. About 15,000 years ago, the Puget Sound region was covered by a lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. This time period is known today as the Vashon Glaciation. The ice was about 3,000 feet (900 m) thick in the vicinity of Seattle. By the time Captain George Vancouver found the Sound, early native people had already been there for over 5,000 years.
Logging started as early as 1853. In the 1880s logging railroads cut their way into Puget Sound. 1886 the St. Helens fire burned 300,000 acres (1,200 km2). Mount Rainier National Park started in 1899. The 1902 Yacolt fire burned 600,000 acres (2,400 km2). Olympic National Park was established in 1938.
George Vancouver explored Puget sound in 1792. Vancouver claimed it for Great Britain on 4 June 1792, naming it for one of his officers, Lieutenant Peter Puget. It became part of the Oregon Country, and became U.S. territory when the 1846 Oregon Treaty was signed.
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