Topic: Recreation
A group of about a dozen British expatriates introduced golf to Washington in 1894 when they founded the Tacoma Golf Club and built the state's first golf course. By 1898, similar clubs had been estab...
Green Lake Park is a 323-acre park located in north Seattle, adjacent to Woodland Park. Famed landscape architect John Charles Olmsted included a boulevard around Green Lake in his 1903 plan for Seatt...
Tom Hornbein is known for one of mountaineering's epic achievements: the 1963 climb of Mount Everest's West Ridge with Willi Unsoeld (1926-1979), in which the two men traversed the 29,028-foot summit ...
Juanita Beach Park, located along Juanita Bay in Kirkland, has been a popular summer destination for most of a century. Originally settled by Dorr and Eliza Forbes, the park blossomed as a resort in t...
King County's parks and recreation division was created in 1938, and initially oversaw the development of 150 acres of small parks and playgrounds. Since then it has grown to encompass 26,000 acres of...
Roller-skating fun came to Bellevue's Crossroads area in 1962 at Howard and Ida Monta's Lake Hills Roller Rink. In 1963 they experimented with having teen dances at the rink, and thus began a rock 'n'...
The city of Lake Stevens in Snohomish County, about eight miles east of Everett, is named after the glacial lake it surrounds. The lake was named, on an 1855 map, for Washington Territory Governor Isa...
For more than 50 years, a community center named for Harlem Renaissance luminary Langston Hughes (1902-1967) and housed under the dome of a former synagogue has played a role in the artistic, cultural...
Longacres racetrack was founded by Seattle real estate magnates Joseph Gottstein (1891-1971) and William Edris and designed by B. Marcus Priteca. It opened in Renton on August 3, 1933. The track was l...
Luna Park, Seattle's "Coney Island of the West," enticed visitors with thrilling rides, garish amusements, and the "longest bar on the bay" for only six years, from 1907-1913. Once a decade, its ghost...
Luther Burbank Park, located on the northeastern tip of Mercer Island, was once home to the Luther Burbank School, a parental school for delinquent youths. The school closed in 1966, and the property ...
Edward J. Kowrach was a Catholic diocesan priest who retired in 1973 after serving 35 years as pastor of St. Anne's Church and as a chaplain at Lakeland Village, the state institution for the mentally...
In this People's History, former Seattle resident John M. Leggett offers his memories of Loyal Heights Playfield in Ballard in the 1930s and 1940s.
In the winter of 1937-1938, in cooperation with The Seattle Times, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway established the "Milwaukee Ski Bowl" at Snoqualmie Pass. The railroad cashed in on the ...
Morest L. (Morey) Skaret (b. 1913), a longtime resident of West Seattle, worked for several summers in the early 1930s as a lifeguard at the original swimming pool at Lincoln Park, earning 30 cents an...
Standing at an official height of 14,410 feet -- 14,411 feet by more recent, unofficial measurements -- Mount Rainier became the nation's fifth national park in 1899 and is an iconic symbol and centra...
This reminiscence of an adventure climbing Mount Si at midnight was written by longtime Seattle resident Dorothea (Pfister) Nordstrand (1916-2011). Nordstrand writes: This adventure dates from 1935. T...
On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted and drastically changed the surrounding environment. Despite the devastation to plant, animal, and human communities, ecological recovery developed over ...
The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust was established by Jim Ellis, Brian Boyle, and Ted Thomsen in 1991 to develop a greenway along Interstate 90 from Puget Sound to the Cascade Mountains -...
Natatorium Park – "Nat Park," as it was affectionately known – was a popular Spokane destination for nearly 80 years. Located along a bend in the Spokane River several miles...
Betsy Lindley interviewed Helen Hill (b. 1926) on August 7, 2000, for the Nordic Heritage Museum Vanishing Generation Oral History Project. Helen was born in Ballard and although she lived in many dif...
Holger Leander Berg, of Finnish heritage, grew up in Ballard and tells tales of his rambunctious childhood: harassing streetcar drivers with his Scout Troop, "creative" fishing around the Puget Sound,...
John Boitano (b. 1922) is a first generation Italian American from Ballard interviewed on August 4, 2000. In this Nordic Heritage Museum Vanishing Generation Oral History Project Interview by Richard ...
O. O. Denny Park, named for Orion Denny (1853-1916), son of Seattle founder Arthur Denny, is located on Finn Hill, northwest of Juanita, on the Eastside of Lake Washington. The property was Orion's co...