Keyword(s): John Caldbick
The 5th Avenue Theatre, built by Pacific Theatres, Inc., was one of the most lavishly appointed theaters on the West Coast when it opened in September 1926. The theater is located in downtown Seattle ...
Like all sizeable American cities, Seattle since its earliest days has attracted its share of prostitution, gambling, illegal drug and liquor sales, and a variety of other behaviors and activities tha...
Official corruption began in Seattle's early days and continued with only sporadic interference for more than 100 years. Territorial laws, and later state laws, banned various vices, but were largely ...
Of the nearly 140 public general-aviation airports in Washington state, 35 are operated by port districts, comprising 33 landing fields and two seaplane bases in 29 different port districts dispersed ...
In the waning weeks of World War I, a Naval Aviation Ground School seaplane hangar was built on the University of Washington campus. When the war ended the navy withdrew, and for nearly 30 years the s...
The Seattle Public Library's Ballard Branch Library No. 2 opened to the public on June 8, 1963, replacing a 1904 structure that had been paid for by steel baron Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) and had ser...
The city of Battle Ground lies near the geographical center of Clark County, 16 miles northeast of Vancouver. The city is sheltered by the Cascades to the east and the Coast Range to the west, and the...
After a long journey by wagon train from Illinois, William and Sarah Bell and their four daughters arrived in Portland, Oregon Territory, on October 15, 1851. There Bell met Arthur A. Denny (1822-1899...
When the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) built the Richland Substation in Benton County in 1949, there were only two federally owned hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River -- the Army Corps of...
The city of Bremerton, home to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility, was founded in 1891 by German immigrant William Bremer. The main part of the city is on the Kitsa...
The opening of Seattle's Lake Washington Ship Canal in 1917 spurred the development on Lake Union of a number of boat-building yards that for more than 40 years used traditional methods and materials ...
Walter Alvadore Bull was in the first wave of non-Indian settlers in the Kittitas Valley just east of the Cascade Range in Central Washington. A 30-year-old bachelor and Union veteran of the Civil War...
William Owen Bush was the eldest son of George Bush (1790?-1863), of Irish and African American descent, and Isabella James Bush (1809?-1866), a German American. In 1844 he accompanied his parents and...
The city of Camas (originally La Camas) takes its name from the camas lily, the bulbs of which were a staple of the Native American diet from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast. Camas lies along th...
On January 23, 1851, Bishop Augustin Magloire Alexandre (A. M. A.) Blanchet (1797-1887) consecrates as a Catholic cathedral a rustic missionary church on land adjacent to the Hudson's Bay Company's Fo...
In late March 1853, a steam-powered sawmill built by pioneer Henry L. Yesler (1810?-1892) is fired up for the first time, fed by logs taken from the heavily wooded areas surrounding the then-tiny sett...
In the early-morning hours of November 19, 1856, Nisqually Chief Quiemuth (d. 1856), a half-brother of Chief Leschi (1808-1858), is murdered in Olympia. Both Leschi and Quiemuth had fought white settl...
On January 23, 1857, the Washington Territorial Legislature passes an act incorporating the City of Vancouver, a Clark County settlement of just over 918 acres located on the north bank of the Columbi...
The 8th federal census, taken in 1860, is the first to formally include Washington Territory (established in 1853), although the 1850 count had estimated the population north of the Columbia River by ...
The winter of 1861-1862 is by far the worst in Washington Territory's short history since the arrival of the first non-Native settlers. In November and December of 1861 heavy rains cause extreme flood...
On January 14, 1861, the Washington Territorial Legislature creates Snohomish County from the only remaining mainland portion of Island County. When first established by the Oregon Territorial Legisla...
On April 12, 1861, forces of the Confederate States of America shell the Union Army-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, setting off the bloody Civil War that will not end until almo...
On January 11, 1862, the Washington Territorial Legislature in Olympia formally incorporates the "City of Walla Walla," the largest community in the then-vast Walla Walla County, which was created eig...
In 1870, the 9th Decennial Census of the United States is the first census taken since the Civil War brought an end to the country's near-century of slavery. For the first time, all African Americans ...
In 1871, Lowell Mason Hidden (1839-1923) opens the Hidden Brick Company in Vancouver, and his timing could not be better. Mother Joseph (1823-1902), head of the Sisters of Providence mission in the Pa...
On March 10, 1871, David Longmire (1844-1925), who as a child in 1853 was a member of the first wagon train of settlers to enter the Yakima Valley, purchases a homestead in the Wenas Valley from Augus...
On November 12, 1875, the Washington Territorial Legislature enacts a law that incorporates the City of Tacoma, sets its metes and bounds, establishes its form of governance, and prescribes several ot...
On September 5, 1876, Seattle pioneer Henry L. Yesler (1810?-1892) enters a not-guilty plea to a charge of illegal gambling. The charge arises out of his attempt to dispose of much of his property thr...