Short answers, pulled from the story.
Erasmus M. Smithers founded the town of Renton in 1875 after discovering coal deposits beneath the soil. He named the settlement after Captain William Renton, a local lumber merchant who invested heavily in the coal trade.
The completion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in 1916 lowered the lake surface and diverted the Cedar River into Lake Washington instead. This engineering project eliminated drainage through the Black River which resulted in the river largely disappearing as a consequence.
World War II brought a population surge that transformed Renton from a small town into a major manufacturing center. Population numbers jumped from 4,488 in 1940 to 16,039 just ten years later due to the opening of the Boeing factory during the war years.
The 2020 census recorded 106,785 people living in Renton with White alone population dropping slightly to 41.86% and Asian population growing significantly to 25.96%. African Americans make up 10.15% of the total population while mixed race individuals comprise 11.64% of the community.
The first IKEA store in the Pacific Northwest arrived in 1994 inside a former Boeing building. That original structure was replaced by a new store on the same site in 2017.