Burien ( BEWR-ee-ən) is a suburban city in King County, Washington, United States, located south of Seattle upon Puget Sound. As of the 2010 Census, Burien’s population was 33,313, which is a 49.7% increase since captivation in 1993. An annexation in 2010 increased the city’s population significantly, and as of 2019 the population was an estimated 51,500.

Settlement in the Burien area dates to 1864, when George Ouellet (1831–1899), a French-Canadian born in Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce, Quebec, purchased his first of several house patents for homestead sites directly from a federal land office. Ouellet had first arrived in the Washington Territory at Port Madison upon Bainbridge Island, off the Kitsap Peninsula, in 1858. Three years after purchasing his homestead in the Burien area, he married 14-year-old Elizabeth Cushner, who was born in the Washington Territory, and started a family. Several years later, the Ouellet relations moved to the White River Valley, near Auburn.

A popular local symbol recounts that an in advance settler named Mike Kelly gave the community its first pronounce after he emerged from the trees and said, “This is truly a sunny dale.” Today, a few long-time residents still refer to the Burien area as Sunnydale.

In 1884, Gottlieb Burian (1837–1902) and his wife Emma (Wurm) Burian (1840–1905), German immigrants from Hussinetz, Lower Silesia, who owned two taverns in downtown Seattle, arrived in Sunnydale. The tiny community was without bigger roads or announcement buildings and was reached primarily by trails. Burian built a cabin upon the southeast corner of Lake Burien and reportedly formed the community into a town bearing his name (misspelled exceeding the years). A real estate office was built and soon attracted large numbers of other residents to Burien.

In the yet to be 1900s, visitors from Seattle came by the Mosquito Fleet to Three Tree Point, just west of town, to sunbathe and swim.