Keyword(s): Jim Kershner
ACT (A Contemporary Theatre) opened in the summer of 1965 in a former community hall at the base of Queen Anne Hill and has since become one of Seattle's most popular and artistically adventurous thea...
Air Washington was a consortium of 11 Washington community and technical colleges that received a $20 million federal grant from 2011 to 2015 to train students for aerospace careers. The colleges were...
For nearly a century, Washington has been the nation's leading apple-growing state. Washington's apple story began in the 1820s, when the first apple seeds were planted at Fort Vancouver. Early farmer...
The Appleway Bridge, also known as the Old I-90 Bridge, spanned the Spokane River near Stateline, Idaho, on the Washington side of the Idaho-Washington border. It was built in 1939 at a cost of $118,2...
Bob Betz (b. 1948) is a leader and pioneer in the Washington wine industry. After growing up in Seattle, he took several trips to Europe and fell in love with the culture of winemaking. He abandoned h...
The Black Diamond Library has been a civic institution in this small King County mining town since 1917. That year, volunteers gathered book donations and started a library in a room in the town's Pac...
The Boeing Company, founded in 1916, hit a low point in 1934 when it was forced out of the airline business and was forced to concentrate on its original airplane-manufacturing business. The company's...
Jerry Bookwalter (1940-2023) was a pioneer wine grower and winery owner who helped bring the Washington wine industry to prominence. He arrived from California in 1976 to manage Sagemoor Farms, which ...
Albert F. Canwell was a Republican Washington state legislator from Spokane who served one term in the House from 1946 to 1948. He was famous for being chairman of the Canwell Committee, officially ti...
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...
The Cedar Creek Bridge, designated as Clark County's Bridge No. 65 and located at milepost 3.8 on NE Etna Road, was built in 1946, demolished in 2016, and replaced in 2017 by a new bridge. It spans Ce...
James E. Chase was a popular and respected Spokane civic leader who went from shoe-shiner to the first African American mayor in Spokane's history. He was born in Wharton, Texas, in 1914, to a poor fa...
Cheney was first settled in 1878 under the name Willow Springs, soon to be changed to the less poetic designation of Section 13. That was the survey name given to a green, spring-filled oasis in Easte...
Chief Joseph (1840-1904) was a leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce Tribe who became famous in 1877 for leading his people on an epic flight across the Rocky Mountains. He was born in 1840 and ...
On August 16, 1811, Alexander Ross, a trader and explorer with Astor's Pacific Fur Company goes up the Columbia River and arrives at the mouth of Yakima River. There he encounters a number of Indians ...
On June 15, 1846, Britain and the United States sign the Treaty of Oregon establishing the 49th parallel as the primary international boundary in the Pacific Northwest. Since 1818, the entire region, ...
On September 25, 1880, the city of Cheney finally settles on its name after a string of four other names in the town's scarce two years of existence. This spot situated about 16 miles southwest of the...
On March 21, 1881, armed citizens from Cheney steal into Spokane Falls and make off with the entire Spokane County government.
On September 17, 1883, the town of Cheney celebrates the visit of Benjamin P. Cheney (1815-1895), a director of the Northern Pacific Railroad. He admires the town that had been named after him two ye...
On September 17, 1887, Gonzaga College, later to become Gonzaga University, opens on a muddy campus just east of downtown Spokane after seven years of planning, fundraising, and construction. On that ...
On April 15, 1888, Spokane enters the streetcar age as the city's first horse-drawn streetcar rumbles down Riverside Avenue toward a new development called Brown's Addition. The streetcar becomes the ...
On June 6, 1888, most of Ritzville's business district burns to the ground. At 4:30 p.m. a fire breaks out in the large American Exchange Hotel due to a defective flue. A southwest wind sweeps the fla...
On August 17, 1888, Roslyn miners strike for an eight-hour day, and the Northern Pacific Coal Company brings in trainloads of Black miners as strikebreakers. To protect the strikebreakers and to intim...
On February 4, 1889, the citizens of Roslyn, which began as a coal camp three years earlier, present a petition to Judge L. B. Nash requesting that their city be incorporated. He duly proclaims Roslyn...
On March 1, 1889, the Front Street Cable Railway Company line through the heart of Seattle's business district commences operations. It is one of several Seattle cable-car lines in this era. Its south...
On April 18,1889, a suspicious fire early in the morning devastates the town of Cheney, which had been in existence for only about a decade. Cheney is located about 16 miles southwest of Spokane Falls...
On June 3, 1889, a predawn fire breaks out in downtown Republic, located in Ferry County in North Central Washington. The fire quickly spreads throughout this just-established gold-mining boomtown. De...
In the summer of 1889, soon-to-be-famous British author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) visits Tacoma. He writes extensively about the still-raw pioneer city, including references to a horse-drawn streetc...