Topic: Roads & Rails
Sound Transit's mass transportation system has some of its roots in Tacoma's trolley systems of the 1890s. The Tacoma and Steilacoom Railway Company started in 1890. The company used steam engines to ...
Seattle's taxicab industry began in 1908 with a fleet of three Stearns Landaulets operated by the Seattle Taxicab Company. Competitors elbowed in, rate wars ensued in the 1920s, and Seattle Taxic...
Resembling a long rope frayed at each end, the Oregon Trail stretched across much of nineteenth century North America, linking the populated East Coast with the remote western edge of the continent. A...
In this reminiscence, Dorothea (Pfister) Nordstrand (1916-2011) relates the story of how she learned to drive in Seattle. The year was 1936, just 36 years after the first auto arrived in Seattle in 19...
In the heyday of railroad expansion, a bold new line out of Snohomish promised to transform the underserved agricultural towns of the Snohomish and Snoqualmie river valleys. The Snohomish Valley Railr...
In the spring of 1859, after five years of study and survey, the U.S. War Department appropriated funds for the construction of a military wagon road between Fort Walla Walla in Washington Territory a...
This account of life at a Cedar Falls railroad camp (in east King County) was originally recorded on June 15, 1993 as a part of the Cedar River Watershed Oral History Project. Dorothy Graybael Scott m...
The first Europeans to see the Olympic Peninsula were stunned by the thick conifer forests that stretched from shore to as far as the eye could see. Nearly 100 years later, thousands of Americans and ...
This speech on the history of the Seattle Waterfront Streetcar was given in 1992 by the streetcar's advocate and founder, George Benson, who was then president of the Seattle City Council. He presente...
Reginald Heber Thomson probably did more to change the face of Seattle than any one individual. During his exemplary career as city engineer and beyond, he leveled hills, straightened and dredged wate...
Trackless trolleys -- electric trolleys that have rubber tires rather than running on rails like streetcars -- have been a distinctive feature of Seattle's transit system since 1940. Seattle became th...
This chronology marks the major milestones in the evolution of Washington's transportation system over a century of progress, challenge, and innovation.
This is the second essay in a special series of essays commissioned by The Seattle Times to examine crucial turning points in the history of Seattle and King County. This segment examines the interpla...
Union Station is one of the most recognizable buildings in Tacoma, a former train station turned federal courthouse nestled in the heart of downtown. It was built by the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1...
The Cascade Mountains posed a formidable obstacle to wagon travel in the 1840s and 1850s. When waves of emigrants began arriving in the Northwest, they followed the Columbia River Gorge, the easiest (...
The Northwest's system of roads and highways did not evolve easily. At the turn of the twentieth century, few roads were paved or even improved and county projects were not coordinated with one anothe...
The Washougal River Bridge spans the Washougal River in Camas, in Clark County. It opened in 1908 as part of the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway (SP&S). This railroad was a joint enterprise of the...
The West Cashmere Bridge was built in 1929 across the Wenatchee River about a third of a mile west of the city limits of Cashmere in Chelan County. Cashmere lies entirely on the south side of the rive...
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. ...