Seattle Roots: Roosevelt High School’s Class of 1957

In 1957, Roosevelt’s sizable senior class lived entirely in northeast Seattle— within Roosevelt’s old high school district boundaries and in Seattle’s recently annexed Shoreline district to the north. By 1967, two-thirds of the class continued to live in Seattle and its north end and Eastside suburbs. And by 2007, two-thirds still lived within a 50-mile radius of Seattle. During the past 50 years, the trend has been for class members to disperse in successively greater outer rings—a common phenomenon in American urban growth. But after 50 years, for two-thirds of the class members to remain within a 50-mile radius of their high school homes is, I speculate, uncommon in the United States. Seattle’s strong economy—and, probably more importantly, its many amenities—would seem to explain why the class was so strongly anchored in place.