Longtime owner, editor, and publisher of the Wenatchee Daily World and a major instigator of the Grand Coulee Dam, Rufus Woods was a titan of twentieth-century Pacific Northwest development. He was th...
William P. Woods was a civil engineer who worked his way up from pipefitter's helper to corporate leader in the natural gas industry. A native of Selma, Alabama, he was named president of the Washingt...
In this People's History Gerald Elfendahl of Bainbridge Island remembers the Bainbridge Island journalist and defender of human rights Walter C. Woodward Jr. (1910-2001). Woodward was an exemplary jou...
Woodway is a community located in the southwestern corner of Snohomish County, just south of Edmonds. It is known informally as the Town of Woodway and has a population (in 2008) of about 1,050. In Ma...
Philip A. Woolley was a railroad developer from Elgin, Illinois, who moved to Washington just as the territory became a state in 1889. With the help of Territorial Attorney General James Bard Metcalfe...
Randall E. Rydeen's (1906-1998) account of work and life at Cedar Falls was recorded on May 20, 1993 by Marian Arlin. The following is an excerpt from the Oral History Project of the Cedar River Water...
Walt Sickler (b. 1927) worked for Seattle City Light for 40 years. In 1989, he retired as the Director of Operations, in charge of all the dams, power transmission systems, and shops. His first job wa...
Eastern European Jews formed the Seattle branch of the Workmen's Circle in 1909. Known as the Arbeiter Ring in Yiddish, the Workmen's Circle was officially a socialist worker's organization but served...
This story, prepared by museum historian Lorraine McConaghy, Ph.D., begins with a Ouija board held in the collection of Seattle's Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI). The simple wooden board meas...
The U.S. entry into World War I, at the time called the World War or the Great War, proved a boon economically to Washington, but cost the state in lives and in the loss of civil liberties. The Great ...
Isolated in the far northwest of Washington state, San Juan, a county of islands located between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., only slowly learned of the momentous events taking place half a world away...
Leading up to and during World War II, three army general hospitals were constructed in Washington to treat those wounded or injured in the conflict. The first to open was Barnes General Hospital on t...
Before and during World War II the military purchased or leased a number of municipal or local airports in Washington for use as military airfields. The army and navy expanded runways, built hangars, ...
This is a letter written on August 10, 1945, by William J. "Bill" Nass (1924-1986), a 21-year-old soldier stationed in Shanghai, China. He wrote this letter home to his parents in Seattle immediately ...
Fearing a second world war, the United States began to build up its armed forces in the late 1930s, helping to revitalize the Depression-becalmed economy of the Puget Sound region. The area's aircraft...
This is the little-known story of the vital roles played by federal convicts and Italian prisoners of war in supporting the U.S. war effort at Hanford and the Tri-Cities during World War II. The natio...
On May 5, 1942, with the United States at war with Japan, the U.S. War Defense Command announced the forced removal of Japanese and Japanese American families from the West Coast. Within months, some ...
The bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan on December 7, 1941, set in motion a series of events and decisions that led to what has been called the worst violation of constitutional rights in American histo...
In the far northwest corner of Washington, residents of San Juan County (an archipelago of small, rural islands in the Salish Sea), responded quickly to the nation's needs during World War II with ene...
Bagley Wright was a Seattle philanthropist, businessman, and civic leader. Wright's deft business skills, strongly held artistic preferences, deep financial means, and equally deep commitment to his c...
Tacoma's Wright Park originated in 1886 as a donation of 20 acres by Charles B. Wright, the president of the Tacoma Land Company. The donation was made "upon condition ... that said land shall forever...
Pastor Patrinell "Pat" Staten Wright is a Seattle treasure -- as a sublime vocal soloist, as the founding director of the Total Experience Gospel Choir, and as a long-time youth mentor and active comm...
Vim Wright, as she preferred to be called, saw a lot in her 76 years. From an impoverished childhood in Istanbul, to society life in Baltimore with adoptive parents, to eventually becoming a primary p...
Virginia Wright was an iconic figure in Seattle's art community – a collector, educator, gallerist, curator, fundraiser, supporter, and founder of the Virginia Wright Fund, which championed...