Seattle

The most populous city in Washington and in the Pacific Northwest, with 784,777 residents in 2025 and a metropolitan area of more than 4.15 million. It is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington, which shapes almost everything about how the city is laid out. It is the northernmost major city in the United States, about 100 miles south of the Canadian border, and the county seat of King County, the most populous county in the state. As a gateway for trade with the Asia-Pacific region, the Port of Seattle was the fourth-largest port in North America in container handling as of 2021.