In the spring of 1859, after five years of study and survey, the U.S. War Department appropriated funds for the construction of a military wagon road between Fort Walla Walla in Washington Territory a...
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government took unprecedented steps to support the visual arts, music, writing, and theater. Separate agencies dedicated to each were established ...
The mountain wilderness that rims the Puget Sound Basin has beckoned adventurous residents since the late 1800s. Hiking, backpacking, and mountain and rock climbing grew steadily there until Worl...
This is the story of a "working man," Joseph Pfister (1883-1947), born in Wisconsin to immigrants from Switzerland, and his wife, Mary (Gierhofer) Pfister (1888-1962), born in Austria and brought to A...
This story was published in the Tacoma Ledger on November 13, 1892. It was submitted by Liz Russell. Nancy Russell Thomas was born on September 15, 1832, in Ashland, Ohio. She came west with her paren...
This account of life at a Cedar Falls railroad camp (in east King County) was originally recorded on June 15, 1993 as a part of the Cedar River Watershed Oral History Project. Dorothy Graybael Scott m...
The first Europeans to see the Olympic Peninsula were stunned by the thick conifer forests that stretched from shore to as far as the eye could see. Nearly 100 years later, thousands of Americans and ...
Dr. Carl Schlicke, M.D., wrote this article about Spokane surgeon Dr. William Witten Robinson, M.D. (1897-1957), whose career and practice were almost destroyed in 1929 when he testified against anoth...
This reminiscence by Vern Nordstrand (1918-2009) is about a club formed by a few seniors at Ballard High School, located in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, in 1937. Vern Nordstrand worked at Boei...
Alfred Schillestad, son of Seattle pioneer Ole Schillestad, left a unique visual record of early life along the shores of Salmon Bay in the sketchbooks he created as young man. Two of Alfred Schillest...
This recollection of the history of The Seattle Repertory Theatre was written by Douglas Q. Barnett (1931-2019), a theater person who witnessed first hand the trials and tribulations of The Rep in its...
In February 1970, a group of young Vietnam war protestors calling themselves the Seattle Liberation Front found themselves in legal hot water when they were charged with inciting a riot through the st...
This speech on the history of the Seattle Waterfront Streetcar was given in 1992 by the streetcar's advocate and founder, George Benson, who was then president of the Seattle City Council. He presente...
Founded in 1939 as the Show Box, Seattle's historic Showbox Ballroom (1426 1st Avenue) is one of the city's few extant entertainment venues that can lay claim to having provided music fans such an ast...
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 ...
Robert A. Clark authored two books and numerous magazine articles dealing with the Old West. He operates Arthur H. Clark Company, in Spokane, publishers of books on the American frontier experience. H...
The Spokesman-Review is Spokane's major daily newspaper, with roots that stretch back to The Spokane Falls Review, established in 1883 and The Spokesman, established in 1890. These rival papers consol...
Snuqualmie Charlie (sia'txted) (ca. 1850-?) told the Snoqualmie Tribe's story regarding the origin of the Humpback Salmon to Anthropologist Arthur C. Ballard (1876-1962) in 1916.
This account of the strange journey of Willie Keil (1836-1855) over the Oregon Trail was written by Dorothea Nordstrand (1916-2011) and first appeared in Adventure West in November 1994.
Ralph Munro served as Secretary of State from 1980 to 2001. This story of the chandelier in the Capitol Building in Olympia also involves another person, Jack Metcalf (1927-2007), a Washington state s...
The Ulin family arrived in Seattle in 1869, and Erick Ulin Sr. worked as a ship carpenter. The Spray family arrived in 1875. Carl Wade, third cousin to the Sprays, contributed this account of these tw...
This is an exerpt from an interview with Dotty DeCoster conducted by HistoryLink's Heather MacIntosh in April 2000. DeCoster was an outspoken member of the Women's Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
This remembrance of the poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) was written by one of his former students, James Knisely. Knisely is author of a novel, Chance, An Existential Horse Opera (Mwynhad Press, 200...
Among Washington's most illustrious architects of his generation, Paul Thiry exerted a major influence in the emergence of the "Northwest style" of architecture as an early proponent of modernist desi...