<P> The Skid Road was built on that 450 foot wide slice of land from the top of First Hill to the logging mill on the point . Timber cut in nearby forests was greased and skidded down a long, steeply sloping dirt road . Since the building of the mill much of what is today's Seattle is the result of extensive terra - forming by the local people to make the hilly landscape of Seattle habitable . At the time of the building of the mill it was some of the only flat land available . The Skid Road became the demarcation line between the affluent members of Seattle and the mill workers and more rowdy portion of the population . The road became Mill Street, and eventually Yesler Way, but the nickname "Skid Road" was permanently associated with the district at the street's end . </P> <P> The 100 - block of East Hastings Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, the heart of that city's "skid road" neighborhood, lies on a historical skid road . The Vancouver Skid Road was part of a complex of such roads in the dense forests surrounding the Hastings Mill and adjacent to the settlement of Granville, Burrard Inlet (Gastown). </P> <P> The city began as a sawmill settlement called Granville, in the early 1870s . By at least the 1950s, "Skid Road" was commonly used to describe the more dilapidated areas in the city's Downtown Eastside, which is focused on the original "strip" along East Hastings Street due to a concentration of single room occupancy hotels (SROs) and associated drinking establishments in the area . The area's seedy origins date back to the early concentration of saloons in pre-Canadian Prohibition (1915--1919) and its popularity with loggers, miners and fishermen whose work was seasonal and who spent their salaries in the area's cheap accommodations and public houses . </P> <P> Opium and heroin use became popular early on; Vancouver was for many years the main port - of - entry for the North American opium supply . During the Great Depression, the railway rights - of - way and other vacant lots in the area were thronged by the unemployed and poor, and the pattern of social decay became well - established . In the 1970s, the endemic alcohol and poverty problems in the area were exacerbated by the expansion of the drug trade, with crack cocaine becoming high - profile in the 1980s as well as a reconcentration of the prostitution trade in the area because of the relocation of hooker strolls in conjunction with city policy for Expo 86 . </P>

Where does the name skid row come from