The Seattle Historical Society was founded in 1914 with a pioneer costume party at the First Hill home of Emily and Morgan Carkeek.

COURTESY OF MICHAEL MASLAN

The Golden Potlatch parade of 1911 mounted a variety of floats and costumes featuring symbols of pioneer life including this one of a home built in a cedar stump. Here the parade heads north on First Avenue from Pioneer Square.

Had there been a photographer on shore or on board the schooner Exact that day, he may have been anxious about recording an event that Mrs. Alexander Fay later remembered as more pathetic than heroic. Bound for Olympia, Fay watched most of her fellow passengers stumble ashore, many still seasick. For a newspaper interview she recalled: "I remember it rained hard that last day and the starch got took out of our bonnets and the wind blew and when the women got into the rowboat to go ashore, they were crying . . . and the last glimpse I had of them was the women standing under the trees with their wet sun-bonnets flapping over their faces and their aprons over their eyes."

Later this arrival was resurrected as "Founders Day" by both the children of the Denny Party and "second wave" pioneers like Morgan and Emily Carkeek. This English couple grew passionate about elevating the class of their adopted city, and so the Seattle Historical Society was launched in the Carkeek mansion atop First Hill on Nov. 13, 1914. Its first historical exhibit was an array of costumes draped on the women attending.

COURTESY OF LAWTON GOWEY

Surviving pioneer Carson Boren stands before the pylon dedicated on "Founders Day" Nov. 13, 1905, near the Alki Beach site where the Denny Party landed in the fall of 1851.

For years, "Founders Day" continued to be celebrated in the Carkeeks' home. After they passed, the remembrance was marked at various locales, returning in 1929 to the landing site, first at the Stockade dinner house, later at the Alki Fieldhouse.

Much earlier, the Stockade figured in the grandest of promotions for the Denny Party. On Nov. 13, 1905, their landing was commemorated with the unveiling of a granite pylon paid for by Lenora Denny, one of David's daughters. Originally set in the front lawn of the Stockade, it has since been moved across Alki Way to a site above the beach.

A more substantial claim to Seattle's birthday materializes not from the beach but from the valley. On Sept. 15, 1851 — 10 days before Denny, John Low and Lee Terry landed at the future West Seattle — Luther Collins led Jacob Mapel and Henry Van Asselt a short way up the Duwamish River to mark claims at and near what is now Georgetown and Boeing Field. Years earlier, Collins had settled with his family in the Nisqually Valley but was stimulated to move north when he could not persuade Van Asselt to take a claim near him.

The battle over shaping the city's myth was devised later for the most part by anxious descendents. In promoting their forebears — the late-comers by 10 days — the Denny advocates promoted a kind of second founders day: Feb. 15, 1852. On that day, Carson Boren, Arthur Denny and William Bell explored the protected eastern shore of Elliott Bay, and to the forested hill behind it they soon moved. This eventually became the central business district of the city, and the fulfillment of at least Denny and Bell's dreams. Boren preferred to hunt. They were clearly the first to arrive in the "original corporate limits of the city." They and a newcomer, Doc Maynard, built their homes in the spring. A little more than one year later, Denny and Doc registered the plats for the city, although the borders were not made official city limits until Dec. 2, 1869 — another day of origin.

For this sesquicentennial we have chosen to use the confusions surrounding our origins and extend our 150th year to at least three years. My favorite sites for reviewing our first century and a half in detail are on historylink.org — where the research of staff historian Greg Lange does the best job of sorting out the dates and claims — and at the Museum of History and Industry, where a large new exhibit — "Metropolis 150" — gives the patient visitor a revealing look back. While you're there, take a moment to revisit the museum's old diorama of the Denny Party landing. This dollhouse history is a more fitting illustration for our myth of origins than any photograph.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.