Topic: Industry
This People's History was contributed by Diana Schafer Ford. It is about the migration to the West of her great grandfather Charles McDowell in the 1880s.
The discovery of gold in California in 1848 sent would-be millionaires on a quest for treasure throughout the West. By 1900, major strikes had been made in Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Alaska, and western C...
Grand Coulee Dam, hailed as the "Eighth Wonder of the World" when it was completed in 1941, is as confounding to the human eye as an elephant might be to an ant. It girdles the Columbia River with 12 ...
For 10 years beginning in 1929, most of the world experienced the largest economic depression in history. The Great Depression devastated national economies, threw millions out of work, and contribute...
Great Western Malting was founded in Vancouver, Washington, shortly after the repeal of Prohibition by a group of Washington and Oregon businessmen, most of whom were brewery owners. Prohibition had s...
Hanford's N Reactor, designed to produce both plutonium for weapons and electricity for the public, was the ninth and final reactor to be constructed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, located along ...
Harbor Island is a manmade feature of Seattle’s Elliott Bay. After its construction in 1909 it became a hub of ship-related work, including building or converting vessels for World War I. World ...
Upon the Hoquiam River, in Grays Harbor County, where the fresh water empties into the sea, is the little town of Hoquiam, Washington. From its earliest history through the rough-and-tumble era of lum...
Hoquiam Local No. 21 of the International Shingle Weavers' Union of America was the lone stable source of unionism in the Grays Harbor lumber industry during the early part of the twentieth century. T...
Housebuilding in Seattle and the surrounding region has progressed from the communal longhouses of Native Americans through the log cabins of the first settlers to simple, balloon-framed houses. Wood ...
The Isaacson Iron Works Plant No. Two/Jorgensen Forge facility, located at 8531 E Marginal Way S in Tukwila, is bounded on the east by Boeing Field and on the west by the Duwamish Waterway. The proper...
When coal was king in Black Diamond, a small mining town in the Cascade foothills of southeastern King County, immigrants from Italy provided much of the muscle power that operated the coal mines. The...
Since the 1980s, the area around Walla Walla in Southeastern Washington has become noted for its wine industry, with more than 100 wineries and nearly 2,000 acres of vineyards now flourishing in the W...
Located on the eastern shore of Tacoma's Thea Foss Waterway, the J. M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corporation built pleasure boats, fishing vessels, and an assortment of ships for the U.S. Navy and Coast G...
A first-generation American born to poor German immigrants, Henry John Kaiser worked hard and studied hard, taking advantage of every opportunity to better his situation until he became one of the cou...
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...
This is a tour of Seattle's historic South Lake Union neighborhood, including the Cascade neighborhood and portions of the Denny Regrade. It was written and curated by Paula Becker with the assistance...
Located in Houghton (now part of Kirkland), the Lake Washington Shipyards began in the 1870s as a small boat landing owned by boat builder Frank Curtis, who launched his first steamship there in 1901....
Sixteen men, all foreign-born, were killed on November 6, 1910, in an explosion at the Lawson Coal Mine in Black Diamond in east King County. The following is excerpted from the "State Inspector of Co...
For more than 60 years -- from 1860 until the 1920s -- San Juan County was the principal lime-producing area in the state of Washington. The San Juan Islands were ideal for the manufacture and transpo...
This story about Vern Nordstrand (1918-2009) and his job locating and returning stray logs to their log booms on Seattle's Lake Union and Lake Washington was contributed by Vern's widow, Dorothea Nord...
The city of Longview is located at the confluence of the Cowlitz and the Columbia rivers in western Cowlitz County, 66 miles upriver from the Pacific Ocean and 67 miles south of Olympia, the state cap...
J. E. Buchanan (1904-1986) wrote this account for The Pacific Northwesterner where it appeared in Vol. 25, No. 3 (Summer 1981). It is reprinted here with kind permission. Born in Iowa, Buchanan was br...
This reminiscence about Metaline Falls and the Lehigh Portland Cement Plant was written by Alfred Schaeffer (1914-2009), who served as plant manager from 1947 to 1969. This piece was originally printe...