Seattle area code in 1988

If memory serves, the entire state was 206 in 1992 (when I moved to Washington).

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I'm afraid that's incorrect, but the city of Seatte proper, and most of the immediately surrounding area would have been 206 in the late eighties.

The sections outside of Seattle, west of the Cascades and east, north, and south of Lake Washington would have been 425. Due to vagaries in the phone system provider maps, some of those 425 numbers would be long distance and some would not. Everett and Bellevue would be the relevant metropolitan cities in the 425 area code.

East of the mountains would have been 509. Spokane, for instance. I'm not positive what the areas south of Tacoma and west of Puget Sound would have been, but it sounds like that doesn't matter to your story. I'm reasonably sure that 253 was around back then but I wouldn't stake my life on it. I didn't make a lot of calls to Tacoma back then. :-P

As I recall, all of Western Washington was 206 until the mid 90s. When I went away to college in 1991, I still dialed 206 to call my parents in Bellingham. Now they're 360.

Out of curiosity, I just checked Wikipedia (though I take it with a grain of salt), and it says 360 was introduced in 1995. It says that 425 and 253 were introduced in 1997 as a three-way split of the 206 area code. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_code_206

Regardless, as you say, Seattle proper has always been 206 and still is.

All of Western Washington was 206 until sometime in the early 90s. (Eastern Washington was 509.) The change in the early 90s added 360 (the rest of Western Washington) and possibly 425 (most of the east side of King County and part of Snohomish County). Seattle city has always been 206, although I think there's an additional area code in that area for cell phones or something.

{Wherever you go, there you are...}

It is 206... my mom has an old address book.

It seems my memory is faulty. Here's the Wikipedia Entry on Area Code 425.

So, yes, the answer is 206. Well, there was no question that the area code for Seattle proper was always 206. *heh*

The weirdness with some parts of it being long distance from other parts of it that were right next door is what got me thinking that it must have been multiple area codes when I was growing up, I suppose.

Something to remember:

Until we started to bring on all of these area codes in the mid/late 90s, all area codes used "0" or "1" as their middle number.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_Numbering_Plan_area_...

Interesting trivia: Area codes were assigned based on the length of time a rotary dial phone took to dial the area code. Densely populated areas like New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles had huge call volume and were assigned numbers (212, 312, 213) that could be quickly dialed from a rotary dial phone. On a rotary dial phone low digits (1, 2, 3, 4) could dial quickly as the time the rotary dial took to return to the home position was minimal. High digit numbers (7, 8, 9, 0) on rotary dial phones took much longer to return to the home position and were usually used in less densely populated areas like Vermont (802), rural Texas (915), Tennessee (901), and the Canadian Maritimes (902). This system became unnecessary when touch-tone phones arrived, as the tone allowed instant entry of digits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_codes

Finally, here is a sketch from "Almost Live", a local Seattle comedy show, discussing implementation of the new area codes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9jlo4Ht2YA

Thank you everyone, for all the helpful and interesting info!! (I somehow messed up my subscription settings and didn't get any emails to tell me I had responses to this thread. Sorry it took me so long to thank you all.)