The growth of cities

As a lifelong US history enthusiast, I came across a YouTube channel recently that I found interesting and fun. Cornerstone Timelapse is a channel with videos that depict animated histories of the growth of a few US cities. I think it showed up in my feed because I've watched many videos of Seattle history, and last week they added an animation of the growth of Seattle from 1851 to 2026.

I was impressed with the quality and accuracy of the video. It includes many key events in Seattle history, and provides a nice visual overview of some amazing engineering feats, such as the removal of Denny Hill to create the area now known as Belltown.

It also includes some brief allusions to big topics in Seattle history, such as the famous 1971 billboard that said "Will the Last Person Leaving SEATTLE — Turn Out the Lights." If you're unfamiliar, that billboard was put up by a couple of local real estate agents during the "Boeing bust" after the cancellation of the SST project, when Boeing was doing layoffs and the Seattle economy was tanking.

I couldn't find much information about the person behind this site, but apparently their name is Rahar Gurung and they create these videos using the open-source 3D modeling software Blender, working from historical maps and topographic data.

Creating a video like that is a huge amount of work, and they currently have six videos completed: Seattle, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas, and Chicago. If you're a fan of the history of any of these cities, check it out!