168 years ago, the Denny Party landed at Seattle's Alki Point

ALKI POINT, Nov. 13, 1851 -- Rain, pouring in buckets, drenches all who stand above deck aboard the schooner Exact as it enters Duwamish Bay.

The skies are dim and gloomy, and the waters of the bay are rough.

Among the schooner's passengers are Arthur Denny, his wife, Mary Ann, and their three children. They have recently made a nine-month journey along the Oregon Trail from Illinois farm country to the Willamette Valley in the Oregon Territory.

The Dennys and their traveling companions -- a party totaling 22 with the children -- have asked to be dropped at a point on the western side of the bay. Arthur's brother, David, has already sent word that the Duwamish River valley is a fine location with room for a thousand settlers.

"Come at once," he wrote.

Along with the Dennys aboard the ship are Carson and Mary Boren and their daughter Gertrude, as well as Carson's sister Louisa; William and Sarah Bell and their daughters Laura, Olive, Virginia and Lavinia; Mary and John Low, with children Alonzo, John N.V., Mary and Minerva; and Charles C. Terry.

Landing at Alki in the morning, the party finds David Denny recovering from an ax wound, Lee Terry missing and the cabin in which they are all to stay unfinished.

It still lacks a roof.

After unloading all their worldly possessions on the beach, the women and children of the party sit down on a log. The women, feeling defeated to find no real shelter after their long trek, sob.

This was, according to most accounts, the scene that likely took place 168 years ago Tuesday, when the Denny party landed at Alki Beach and Seattle began its short but expansive history.

"That's a big day in Seattle history," says Leonard Garfield, executive director of the Museum of History and Industry. "It's Seattle, day one."

Arthur Denny and the other men were not pleased to find the cabin unfinished either, nor did Arthur find the site to his liking. But he and the others finished the cabin and spent that winter on the western shores of what was then called Duwamish Bay, but as soon as winter broke into spring, Denny, Boren and Bell set out to scout a better location, safer from tides and fit for a deep-water harbor.

To read more about David Denny's vital role in the early city, click here.

Though they were not the first settlers to come to the Puget Sound, this group was different, Garfield says.

Instead of seeking out land to farm, like most who crossed the Oregon Trail, the Denny party was looking for a place to build a community.

RELATED: Early photos of Native Americans in Seattle

David Denny's note, indicating how much room there was for people, not crops, said as much.

"That right there is a complete mind shift that was very different," Garfield says.

They were young, for one. The elder generation had stayed behind in Portland after the wagon journey, while the 20-somethings (the Bells and Lows were in their early 30s) made their way to the Puget Sound to find a place to build a settlement with access to shipping.

"This was a group of young people and I think that youthfulness, from day one, became characteristic of Seattle," Garfield says.

No sooner had most of the Denny party moved to the east side of Duwamish (Elliott) Bay (Charles Terry and John Low stayed at Alki, which they called New York, after Terry's hometown), than they essentially invited Henry Yesler to move to town and set up his new steam-powered sawmill, Garfield says.

Coupled with ample timber to harvest and mill, Yesler prospered and so did Seattle. By 1870, the population had cracked 1,000, and by 1890, it was a staggering 42,000 and counting.

"Their vision was a community that would grow into something," says Maria Denny, great-great-granddaughter of Arthur Denny. "And that's what they set about doing, right from the beginning."

Maria Denny, 53, checks the weather every Nov. 13 to see if it will rain, as it did on her ancestors when they landed here.

Her great-great-uncle, Rolland Denny, was just six weeks old at that landing, where natives greeted them and offered clam nectar to the infant, Maria Denny says.

After a warm welcome from those natives (excluding the 1856 Battle of Seattle, which saw two settlers killed and possibly as many as 28 natives), new settlers chose to name the city after a Duwamish chief named Sealth, who was not enthusiastic about having the town named for him, despite his encouragement that natives accommodate the settlers.

As elsewhere in the West, the influx of settlers in Seattle did much to harm and displace the native communities that had thrived here for centuries before.

From filling in the tide flats to cutting the ship canal and lowering Lake Washington (which essentially dried up the Black River) to cutting down hills that were thought to interfere with travel around the city, environmental interference alone made it hard -- if not impossible -- for natives to continue living the way they had.

But Seattle's first settlers and many of those to follow saw a grand city of the future and were prepared to topple anything that stood in the way.

And 164 years later, Seattle seems to have become the city that members of the Denny party envisioned and more, with room for not 1,000 people, but millions in the region.

Maria Denny thinks her ancestors would be pleased to see what the city has become in its relatively short lifetime.

"They were such entrepreneurs and such doers that I think they would be really impressed by our city," she says.

Of her connection to Seattle's earliest founders, Maria Denny is proud, she says.

"I didn't do anything to get it, but I kind of feel a responsibility to this community, certainly not an entitlement," she says. "It's something to feel good about."

*Note: Unless otherwise attributed, historical descriptions and other information was compiled from interviews, MOHAI photo captions and Historylink.org essays.

Senior editor Daniel DeMay can be reached at 206-448-8362 or danieldemay@seattlepi.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Daniel_DeMay.