Washington - 7.8 Million People Split by the Cascades
The Cascade Range cuts Washington State into two very different halves. West of the mountains the climate is wet and temperate, and the population is concentrated along Puget Sound. East of the crest the land flattens into the Columbia Basin, where irrigation from the Columbia River supports apple orchards, wheat, and wine grapes. Roughly 7.8 million people live in the state, with more than half of them in the Seattle metropolitan area around Puget Sound. Olympia, at the southern end of the Sound, serves as the state capital, while Seattle functions as the economic center.
Seattle proper has about 735,000 residents, and the broader metro counts close to 4 million when Tacoma, Bellevue, and Everett are included. The city hosts the headquarters of Amazon in South Lake Union and Starbucks in SoDo. Microsoft occupies a large campus in Redmond on the east side of Lake Washington, and Boeing assembles commercial aircraft in Everett and Renton, though it moved its corporate headquarters out of Washington in 2001. Bellevue has grown into a second downtown for the region, with Amazon, T-Mobile, and a cluster of technology firms anchoring its skyline.
Eastern Washington looks and functions differently. Spokane is the largest city east of the Cascades with about 230,000 people and serves as the regional center for the Inland Northwest. The Columbia Basin Project irrigates more than 600,000 acres through canals fed by Grand Coulee Dam. Walla Walla and the Yakima Valley produce wine grapes on a scale that puts Washington second only to California in national wine output, and the state leads the country in apple production by a wide margin. The Olympic Peninsula and Mount Rainier National Park draw tourism on the wet side, while the North Cascades and the dry Columbia Plateau pull a different crowd.
Washington has no state income tax, which has shaped its fiscal structure and its appeal to technology employers. Puget Sound itself is a working waterway, with the Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma handling container traffic, and the Washington State Ferries system operating the largest ferry fleet in the United States.
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The Cascade Range cuts Washington State into two very different halves. West of the mountains the climate is wet and temperate, and the population is concentrated along Puget Sound. East of the crest the land flattens into the Columbia Basin, where irrigation from the Columbia River supports apple orchards, wheat, and wine grapes. Roughly 7.8 million people live in the state, with more than half of them in the Seattle metropolitan area around Puget Sound. Olympia, at the southern end of the Sound, serves as the state capital, while Seattle functions as the economic center.
Seattle proper has about 735,000 residents, and the broader metro counts close to 4 million when Tacoma, Bellevue, and Everett are included. The city hosts the headquarters of Amazon in South Lake Union and Starbucks in SoDo. Microsoft occupies a large campus in Redmond on the east side of Lake Washington, and Boeing assembles commercial aircraft in Everett and Renton, though it moved its corporate headquarters out of Washington in 2001. Bellevue has grown into a second downtown for the region, with Amazon, T-Mobile, and a cluster of technology firms anchoring its skyline.
Eastern Washington looks and functions differently. Spokane is the largest city east of the Cascades with about 230,000 people and serves as the regional center for the Inland Northwest. The Columbia Basin Project irrigates more than 600,000 acres through canals fed by Grand Coulee Dam. Walla Walla and the Yakima Valley produce wine grapes on a scale that puts Washington second only to California in national wine output, and the state leads the country in apple production by a wide margin. The Olympic Peninsula and Mount Rainier National Park draw tourism on the wet side, while the North Cascades and the dry Columbia Plateau pull a different crowd.
Washington has no state income tax, which has shaped its fiscal structure and its appeal to technology employers. Puget Sound itself is a working waterway, with the Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma handling container traffic, and the Washington State Ferries system operating the largest ferry fleet in the United States.
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