The genesis of Whitworth College of Spokane was the coeducational Sumner Academy, founded in 1883 in Sumner, 12 miles south of Tacoma. Such a school had been the dream of founder George F. Whitworth (...
George Frederick Whitworth and his family were among the early pioneers to settle in the southern Puget Sound area. A native of England, he immigrated as a child with his family to the United States, ...
A short section of old railroad line, rusty but intact, hidden deep in the woods near Lake Sawyer in Black Diamond in Southeast King County, inspired this People's History contributed by Bill Kombol. ...
A year and a half after killing two teenage boys on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, and then disappearing into the deeply forested Wynoochee Valley (in southern Grays Harbor County), John Tornow -- a ...
Washington men and women served with distinction in France during the First World War. The main land fighting force from Washington was the 361st Infantry Regiment of the 91st Division. This regiment ...
University of Washington professor Hannah Wiley founded Chamber Dance Company in 1990 as the mainstay of a new Master of Fine Arts degree in dance. Her plan was for MFA candidates -- all professional ...
In 1855, Puget Sound Indian tribes signed the Point Elliott treaty. The treaty called for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish, and other tribes to give up their ancestral lands and move to a small re...
Lenny Wilkens left an indelible mark on professional basketball as a player and coach during his five decades in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, but n...
Lt. Charles Wilkes led the first U.S. Navy expedition to explore the Pacific Ocean in 1838. He surveyed Puget Sound and named dozens of bays, coves, rivers, islands, and land formations, including Ell...
The town of Wilkeson is located in Pierce County some 20 miles directly southeast of Tacoma. Starting in the 1870s, coal mining fueled the town's rise, was a predominant force in its history, and cont...
William Bell (1817-1887) was a member of the Denny party that went ashore at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The following spring he settled with his wife Sarah Ann Bell (1815-1856) and their four ch...
William Fetter (1928-2002) worked at Boeing in the 1950s and 1960s and invented early computer graphics applications. He also helped found a Seattle chapter of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T...
William Three Mountains the Elder (ca. 1823-1883) and his son, William Three Mountains the Younger (1864-1937), served as important leaders of the Spokane tribe from the fur trade and missionary perio...
Christina McDonald McKenzie Williams (1847-1925), the daughter of Hudson's Bay Company chief trader Angus McDonald (1816-1889), spent her childhood and young adulthood at Fort Colvile on the Columbia ...
Alice Jeanette Williams had a long and productive career as a political force in Seattle. She was the first woman chair of the King County Democrats and a 20-year member of the Seattle City Council (1...
John Williams (b. 1937) and Scott Williams (b. 1958) are the father-son team behind Kiona Vineyards, the pioneer winery on Red Mountain, near Benton City. John was a Hanford engineer in 1972 when he a...
Roberta Lynn Williams was one of the most influential personal-computer-game designers of the 1980s and 1990s, becoming known as the "Mother" and "Queen" of video adventure games. Williams began her c...
W. Walter Williams led the Seattle-based Continental Mortgage for nearly half a century, guiding the business from modest beginnings in the University District to its ranking as one of the top mortgag...
Walter B. Williams, son of W. Walter Williams (1894-1983), not only assumed leadership of Seattle's Continental Mortgage from his father, continuing to grow and strengthen the firm through the 1990s, ...
Over the course of his lifetime, much of it spent on the water, Joe D. Williamson (1909-1994) documented a wide swath of Northwest history with his camera, yet he did not consider photography his prim...
A Willits canoe, considered one of the finest canoes ever made, was the life's work of the Willits brothers: Earl Carmi (1889-1967) and Floyd Calvin (1892-1962). Born in the Midwest, they arrived in t...
August Wilson was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who lived the final 15 years of his life in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. His 10-play cycle of dramas covered each decade of ...
George Wilson played football at the University of Washington from 1923 to 1925. He ran, passed, caught passes, punted, and played linebacker on defense, a 60-minute player. In 1925 his teammates sele...
T. A. Wilson, known to many simply as "T," was a small-town boy from the Midwest who eventually became president and CEO of The Boeing Company in Seattle. Although his tenure at the company's helm beg...