Rainier Beach is a set of

neighborhood A neighbourhood (British English, Irish English, Australian English and Canadian English) or neighborhood (American English; see spelling differences) is a geographically localised community within a larger city, town, suburb or rural area, ...

s in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

that are mostly residential. Also called Atlantic City, Rainier Beach can include Dunlap, Pritchard Island, and Rainier View neighborhoods.Wilma (21 March 2001, Essay 3116) The neighborhood is located in the far southeastern corner of the city along

Lake Washington Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It borders the cities of Seattle on the west, ...

. Its primary arterials are Rainier and Renton Avenues South (northwest- and southeast-bound). Neighborhood boundaries are informal and sometimes overlapping in Seattle; formal designations have not existed since 1910. Rainier Beach blends with the

Rainier Valley The Rainier Valley is a district in southeast Seattle. It is located east of Beacon Hill; west of Mount Baker, Seward Park, and Leschi; south of the Central District and north of Rainier Beach. It is part of Seattle's South End. History ...

neighborhood of Dunlap (also called Othello) on the north. On the east is

, and the South Beacon Hill neighborhood lies to the west. South of Rainier Beach is Rainier View, bounded by South Bangor Street on the north and the city boundary on its south, east, and west. The Lakeridge and

Skyway A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclo ...

neighborhoods of unincorporated

King County King County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Washington, and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the st ...

lie to the southeast and southwest, respectively, of Rainier View. The city of Tukwila abuts Rainier View on the west. Bird's eye view of Rainier Beach, 1895. Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives.

History

What is now Rainier Beach neighborhood has been inhabited since the end of the last

glacial period A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betwe ...

(c. 8,000 BC – 10,000 years ago). The ''Xacuabš'' (''hah-chu-ahbsh'', Lake People or People of the Large Lake) were related to, but distinct from, the ''Dkh^w'Duw'Absh'', People of the Inside, tribe of the Lushootseed (Skagit-Nisqually)

Coast Salish The Coast Salish is a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one of the Coa ...

Nations. Both are now (c. mid-1850s) of the Duwamish tribe. The ''Xacuabš'' village of ''tleelh-chus'' (little island) was, appropriately, on an island at the southwest shore of what is now called Lake Washington, at their trail through a valley that led to the villages of the ''Dkh^w'Duw'Absh'' on salt water at

Elliott Bay Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is in the U.S. state of Washington, extending southeastward between West Point in the north and Alki Point in the south. Seattle was founded on this body of water in the 1850s ...

and the estuarial

Duwamish River