The West Seattle Branch was the first of the Carnegie branches opened by The Seattle Public Library. Since 1910, it has continuously served the community as a resource for knowledge and citizenship, w...
This file contains Bob and Ada Hallberg's memories of West Seattle's Alki Beach and the log rafts swimmers could sit on and dive off up until the 1950s. It is an exerpt of an oral history interview co...
This file contains contains H. Martin Smith's memories of West Seattle's Alki Point -- the lantern that stood in for a lighthouse before one was built -- and how as a child he played in the remains of...
This file contains recollections of swimming in West Seattle at the Lincoln Park pool and at the Alki Natatorium. Gertrude Stevens recounts how she learned to swim, Ada Hallberg talks about swimming i...
This file contains memories of West Seattle's Luna Park taken from oral history interviews conducted in 1999 by the Southwest Seattle Historical Society. Luna Park, Seattle's "Coney Island of the West...
This file contains recollections of the West Seattle Ferry by West Seattle residents Carroll Mage and George Shephard. They recall the days before the West Seattle Bridge existed -- when the quickest ...
This file contains reminiscences of community life in West Seattle. Ema Albert describes how the neighborhood pulled together to help a young widow during the Great Depression, and Doc Eastly recalls ...
This file contains a selection of memories and reflections on West Seattle businesses taken from oral history interviews conducted by the Southwest Seattle Historical Society. Owners and patrons descr...
This file contains reminiscences of the early days in West Seattle taken from interviews of West Seattle residents done for the Southwest Seattle Historical Society in 1999. In those days summer renta...
Little has been recorded about the architectural firm of Knapp & West, whose principals, Thomas L. West and Jacob Knapp, were both Seattle residents. The firm existed, apparently, from 1905 to 190...
For six decades in Washington, including 25 years on the Everett waterfront, the Western Gear Corporation designed and built cutting-edge industrial products for customers around the world. Its projec...
Built in Seattle in 1939 in an industrial area south of Pioneer Square, the Westinghouse Warehouse at 1051 1st Avenue S provided ample space for its first tenant, the Westinghouse Electric Supply Comp...
This People's History consists of a letter written in June 1958, describing life in Westport during the years following 1912. Westport is located in Grays Harbor County on a peninsula on the Pacific c...
The town of Westport is located in Grays Harbor County, on the south shore of Grays Harbor. Originally home to a large Chehalis tribal village, the Native peoples were decimated by a smallpox outbreak...
Weyerhaeuser is the world's largest producer of lumber. The firm arrived in the Pacific Northwest when Frederick Weyerhaeuser (1834-1914) and his partners purchased 900,000 acres of forest land in Wes...
On May 24, 1935, George H. Weyerhaeuser (1926-2022), age 9, was kidnapped off the street in Tacoma in broad daylight. His captors mailed a note to the Weyerhaeuser family, demanding $200,000 for the b...
Whatcom County was established on March 9, 1854, by the Washington territorial government from a portion of Island County. The name Whatcom derives from a Nooksack word meaning "noisy water" and it wa...
On February 1, 1996, a jury in Whatcom County Superior Court finds two defendants -- Bellingham newsstand owner Ira Stohl and store manager Kristina Hjelsand -- not guilty of obscenity charges. Stohl ...
In February 1900, Whatcom County purchased approximately 160 acres of land in North Bellingham from the State of Washington for $2,300 (on a mortgage) for use as a county poor farm. Before that, Siste...
Wheat has been cultivated in Washington since the 1820s and remains the most important agricultural product in much of eastern Washington -- and among the state's top five crops. It was first grown in...
Although dense primeval forest covered much of Whidbey Island, there were also fertile prairies that for centuries were used and maintained by Indigenous people. Most were on Central Whidbey, the ance...
Long before "environmentalism" became a common term, Aubrey Lee White of Spokane worked to ensure the enduring quality of the environment of his adopted city and its surroundings. The Maine native arr...
At the southwest edge of Seattle, in King County, a plateau stretches from Puget Sound in the west to the Duwamish River in the east, home of the White Center neighborhood that straddles SW Roxbury St...
The early history of the White Center Library followed a winding path. The library began in a private home in 1943 and moved to the basement of a fieldhouse in 1946, the year that the White Center Lib...