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West Point (Seattle)
Encyclopedia
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, USA, jutting into Puget Sound
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...
from the Magnolia
Magnolia, Seattle, Washington
Magnolia is the second largest neighborhood of Seattle, Washington by area. It occupies a hilly peninsula northwest of downtown. Magnolia is isolated from the rest of Seattle, connected by road to the rest of the city by only three bridges over the tracks of the BNSF Railway: W. Emerson Place in...
neighborhood. It also marks the northern extent of Elliott Bay
Elliott Bay
Elliott Bay is the body of water on which Seattle, Washington, is located. A line drawn from Alki Point in the south to West Point in the north serves to mark the generally accepted division between the bay and the open sound...
; a line drawn southeastward to Alki Point marks the western extent of the bay. At the point itself is the 1881 West Point Lighthouse
West Point Lighthouse
The West Point Light, also known as the Discovery Park Lighthouse, is a 23-foot-high lighthouse on Seattle, Washington's West Point which juts into Puget Sound and marks the northern extent of Elliott Bay. Opening on November 15, 1881, and featuring a fourth-order Fresnel lens, it was the first...
, the first manned light station
Lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....
on Puget Sound. Just to the east is King County
King County, Washington
King County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population in the 2010 census was 1,931,249. King is the most populous county in Washington, and the 14th most populous in the United States....
's sewage treatment
Sewage treatment
Sewage treatment, or domestic wastewater treatment, is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater and household sewage, both runoff and domestic. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove physical, chemical and biological contaminants...
plant, and beyond that, Discovery Park
Discovery Park (Seattle)
Discovery Park is a 534 acre park in the peninsular Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is the city's largest public park and contains 11.81 miles of walking trails. United Indians of All Tribes' Daybreak Star Cultural Center is within the park's boundaries...
, formerly the U.S. Army's Fort Lawton
Fort Lawton
Fort Lawton is a United States Army fort located in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The fort was included in the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure list.-History:...
.
The original Duwamish Indian name for West Point, transliterated variously as PKa'dz Elue, Oka-dz-elt-cu, Per-co-dus-chule, or Pka-dzEltcu, means "thrust far out." West Point was given its current name in 1841 by U.S. Navy lieutenant Charles Wilkes
Charles Wilkes
Charles Wilkes was an American naval officer and explorer. He led the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 and commanded the ship in the Trent Affair during the American Civil War...
, commander of the United States Exploring Expedition.
In 1992, construction workers at the sewage treatment plant discovered archaeological remains
Archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved , and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological record.Beyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a 'site' can vary widely,...
of early Washington
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
.