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...
In the heyday of railroad expansion, a bold new line out of Snohomish promised to transform the underserved agricultural towns of the Snohomish and Snoqualmie river valleys. The Snohomish Valley Railr...
Thanks to Seattle's damp and soggy weather, coffee has always been a cherished commodity. The city's first commercial roasting operations began producing fresh-roasted coffee more than 100 years ago, ...
This history of Harborview Medical Center and its predecessor hospitals by Josephine Ensign, who teaches health policy and health humanities at the University of Washington, is part of her larger work...
The first protean ideas for a Seattle domed stadium arose 12 years before the Kingdome's long-anticipated groundbreaking in 1972. Although many local sports fans and business leaders enthusiastically ...
In 1954 three Klineburger brothers -- Gene (b.1920), Bert (b.1926), and Chris (b.1927) -- bought the Jonas Brothers taxidermy studio in Seattle and by the early 1960s turned it into one of the largest...
The Mountaineers is a Western Washington-based organization that has had a major impact on outdoor recreation and wilderness preservation in the state. Started in Seattle in 1906 primarily as a mounta...
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...
Ezra Meeker is an enduring figure in Washington's history as a pioneer, successful hops farmer, merchant, mayor of Puyallup, and influential advocate for preserving the Oregon Trail. His brother ...
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 ...