Topic: Environment
By 1903, Seattle had five major public parks but city officials wanted more. They hired the Olmsted Brothers, a landscape architecture company from Massachusetts, to help create more parks. John C. Ol...
Over the past thousands of years, many varieties of mammals lived in what is now Washington. Several important fossils of prehistoric mammals have been discovered in different parts of the state. (Thi...
A retired municipal bond lawyer, James R. Ellis never held public office, never headed a major corporation, and was never rich. Yet, as a citizen activist for more than half a century, he left a bigge...
A lawyer by trade, Jim Ellis (1921-2019) was a civic activist who helped transform Seattle into one of America's great cities. One of his contemporaries was Emmett Watson (1918-2001), a Seattle newspa...
Helen Engle is an environmental activist with a formidable resume of involvement, especially in issues involving South Puget Sound. Early on she joined the Seattle Audubon Society and in 1969 co-found...
In his more than three decades as the head gardener at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood, Carl S. English Jr. created and nurtured the gardens that now bear his name. Sar...
This eulogy for Jim Ellis (1921-2019) was given by fomer Washington Governor Gary Locke (b. 1950) on December 8, 2019 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Ellis was a giant in the cre...
Seattle's original Washelli Cemetery was Seattle's second municipal cemetery, established on the site of Capitol Hill's present Volunteer Park in 1885. The present Evergreen Washelli Cemetery straddle...
Homer Venishnick, born in Renton, Washington in 1926, comes from a long line of fishermen whose livelihoods have hinged on the ebb and flow of local rivers. Today he lives in a house he built 50 years...
A Harvard-educated biologist, Kathy Fletcher worked for the Carter White House and spent five years as a staff scientist in various environmental organizations. Since the early 1980s, she has devoted ...
Despite the rainy reputation of the Pacific Northwest, fire has figured prominently in the natural and economic history of the region. Fire was once a natural part of the environment, and Native Ameri...
Fort Dent Park in Tukwila was once a winter village for the Duwamish Indian tribe. After being partially vacated following the signing of the 1855 Point Elliott treaty, the site briefly became home to...