Topic: Calamities
The 2014 Carlton Complex fire, the largest single wildfire in Washington history, burned 256,108 acres, destroyed 353 homes, and caused an estimated $98 million in damage. The fire caused no direct fa...
In this People's History, Dorothea (Pfister) Nordstrand (1916-2011) recalls the time her father, riding from the Green Lake neighborhood to downtown Seattle to look for work on January 5, 1920, was in...
Mount St. Helens once was the fifth-highest mountain in Washington. Now, because of a huge eruption on May 18, 1980, it is only the 30th highest peak in the state. There were many signs that the mount...
Early buildings in what is now the state of Washington were mostly constructed of wood. There were no organized fire departments and not much water that could be used in the event of fire. Seattle's d...
Michael Atkins relays the story of William Hamilton, an Irishman who came to Seattle in 1909. One of Hamilton's grand nieces in Ireland posted a query on a usenet group on the internet. Intrigued, Atk...
The misnamed "Spanish Flu" pandemic peaked in late 1918 and remains the most widespread and lethal outbreak of disease to afflict humankind worldwide in recorded history. (Note: In September 2021 it w...
This People's History consists of contemporary newspaper accounts of the Franklin Mine Disaster of August 24,1894, and portions of the investigative report by the official state mines inspector. With ...
The stretch of coast between Tillamook Bay in Oregon and Vancouver Island, encompassing the mouth of the Columbia River and the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, has claimed since 1800 more than...
Most of downtown Spokane (then known as Spokane Falls) was destroyed by fire on August 4, 1889. The conflagration broke out in an area of flimsy wooden structures and quickly spread to engulf the subs...
In 1999, 90-year old John Parker of Port Ludlow penned this account of the 1921 explosion of the Hitt's Fireworks factory in the Rainier Valley. One woman working at the plant was killed.
Marvin Klegman, an 11-year-old crossing guard at Lowell Elementary School in Tacoma, shielded a 6-year-old boy from falling bricks during a 7.1-magnitude earthquake on April 13, 1949. In saving kinder...
Sixteen men, all foreign-born, were killed on November 6, 1910, in an explosion at the Lawson Coal Mine in Black Diamond in east King County. The following is excerpted from the "State Inspector of Co...
Despite persistent rain in the Pacific Northwest, fire has figured prominently in the history of the region. Fire was once a natural part of the environment, and Indigenous people used it in their que...
Seven men were killed and six seriously injured on April 26,1907, in an explosion at the Pacific Coast Company's coal mine at Morgan Slope in Black Diamond in east King County. The following is the in...
On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted and drastically changed the surrounding environment. Despite the devastation to plant, animal, and human communities, ecological recovery developed over ...
This file contains Seattle historian and photographer Paul Dorpat's Now & Then photographs and reflections on Seattle's Great Fire of 1889.
Less than four years after Washington Territory achieved statehood, what was known as America's "Gilded Age" came to an agonizing end when the nation was struck by the worst economic crisis it had yet...
This People's History presents the full official investigative report prepared by the state Inspector of Coal Mines after an explosion at the Roslyn Mine on October 3, 1909, claimed the lives of 10 mi...
This essay describes the 1862 smallpox epidemic among Northwest Coast tribes. It was carried from San Francisco on the steamship Brother Jonathan and arrived at Victoria, British Columbia, on Mar...
Two members of HistoryLink's staff, Alyssa Burrows and Chris Goodman, happened to be at the Speakeasy Cafe the night it burned down. This is Alyssa'a first-hand account of the confused scene as the bu...
On April 23, 1899, two ships collide in the early morning darkness on Commencement Bay. The Glenogle is a 400-foot ocean liner bound for Asia. The City of Kingston is a 246-foot da...
On June 6, 1889, at about 2:45 p.m., what became known as the Great Seattle Fire started when a pot of glue burst into flames in a small cabinet shop on Front Street (today's 1st Avenue). The blaze qu...
On June 7, 1889, the sun rose over a stunned and devastated Seattle. The day before, a massive fire had ravaged the city's commercial core and its waterfront. Seattle had been booming, and over the pr...
Kenneth Knoll was 12 years old when the influenza epidemic came to Spokane. This catastrophic event so impressed him that he felt compelled to describe it 70 years later. His essay is based mainly on ...