Douglas Q. Barnett (1931-2019) was the founder of Black Arts/West and instrumental in the development of theater in Seattle's African American community during the 1960s. Black Arts/West opened on Apr...
The city of Black Diamond, located along the Cascade Mountain range, in King County, 25 miles southeast of Seattle, was built as a company town for the Black Diamond Coal Company in the late 1800s.
This article about the east King County coal towns of Black Diamond and Franklin is reprinted from The Coast, Vol. 3, No. 2 (March 1902).
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...
George G. Black founded the Black Manufacturing Company in Seattle in 1902. After the maker of "Black Bear" overalls and work clothing outgrew locations in Pioneer Square and Belltown, Black built a n...
The Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party was the party's first outside California and the second outside Oakland, where the party was founded in 1966. Nineteen-year-old Aaron Lloyd Dixon (b. 194...
Blaine (Whatcom County) is located in extreme Northwestern Washington; the northern edge of its city limit is the Canadian border. The area was originally inhabited by a band of Native Americans known...
David Blaine and Catharine Paine Blaine came to Seattle from Seneca Falls, New York, the site of America's first women's rights convention, in which Catharine Paine participated. The Blaines were Meth...
Blake Island, a 476-acre Washington State Park, lies in Puget Sound approximately eight miles from downtown Seattle. It is located in east central Kitsap County, four miles off Alki Point, between the...
Alden J. Blethen purchased The Seattle Daily Times, a newspaper with a minuscule circulation, in 1896. Moving from Minneapolis to Seattle, Blethen then built the paper's circulation by introducing lar...
Prentice Bloedel was a leader of the timber industry. He left a brief teaching career to join the management of his family's far-flung timber empire and led the industry's forest-conservation efforts....
Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island is internationally recognized for its evocative beauty as a landscape of environmental rehabilitation, as well as a place offering an experience "bound to, and enm...
On November 8, 1966, Washington state voters adopted Initiative 229, repealing the so-called "Blue Law," which had been enacted in 1909. This action legalized the operations of thousands of businesses...
Seattle's Blue Moon Tavern first opened its doors at 712 NE 45th Street near the University of Washington on or near April 15, 1934. Founded by Hank Reverman (1912-2009), the tavern was an instant hit...
James Knisely contributed this reminiscence of Seattle's renowned Blue Moon Tavern, located in the University District on NE 45th Street. The Blue Moon has been the favored watering hole of poets, boh...
The mining of clay deposits in southeastern King County was big business from the late nineteenth century until the 1980s, when production slowed and mining sites were sold or repurposed. In this orig...
Kenny Boas, a laid-back piano player, was born and raised in Seattle's Central Area. Boas hung out and performed, often as the only Jewish musician, with jazz heavyweights including Floyd Standifer (1...
This piece by Bob Tschida, describing how he and his friends "would always have a gunnysack tucked over our belts" as they roamed Tacoma, first appeared in the Tacoma Historical Society's City of Dest...
Bobo the gorilla entertained visitors to the Great Ape House at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle for 15 years. He was a mainstay attraction for both young and old. A somewhat grumpy gorilla, Bobo love...
Bobo (1951-1968) was a beloved gorilla who for 15 years entertained visitors to the Great Ape House at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. Before moving to the zoo, Bobo lived with a human family. Bobo's hum...
Bob’s Chile Parlor was a gambling den in downtown Seattle in the 1950s and 1960s — when city officials turned a blind eye to illegal vice and Seattle beat cops extorted payoffs from c...
Boeing's little known 307 Stratoliner, affectionately dubbed "the flying whale" for its portly lines, ushered in a new aviation era when it entered into airline service in mid-1940. It was the first i...
Boeing, the oldest major aircraft manufacturer, entered the jet airliner business third, after the British and Russians. Success long eluded Boeing in the art and science of building and selling airli...
The Boeing 747 was one of the most ambitious projects ever taken on by the aerospace company. More than twice as big as the Boeing 707, the four-engine jumbo-jet was originally able to carry more than...