Topic: Environment
Seward Park encompasses an entire peninsula that juts into Lake Washington from southeast Seattle, plus its isthmus and some mainland acreage along the shore. The 300-acre site includes 120 acres of u...
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a profound shift in thinking about Seattle's central waterfront. As the central business district struggled with declining customers and community groups advocated f...
Beginning in the early 1970s, when Buster Simpson camped out in buildings about to be demolished in downtown Seattle and made art out of the readily available materials in his rapidly changing ecologi...
The Pacific Northwest has rarely suffered from a shortage of committed political activists or spirited community leaders, but longtime Seattle organizer Yalonda Sinde remains one of the most effective...
The Snoqualmie-Skykomish watershed encompasses 1,532 square miles of forests, meadows, hills, and valleys that have been shaped by environmental forces and by generations of human activities. The wate...
From 1931 to 2010, the 1931 South Park Bridge, also known as the 14th Avenue South Bridge, spanned the Duwamish Waterway, linking the Seattle neighborhood of South Park with land in the City of Tukwil...
The Spokane River is a tributary of the Columbia River, its shores important as a cradle of the oldest known continuously occupied human habitation in present-day Washington. It begins at Lake Coeur d...
The word "amateur" has acquired a somewhat pejorative connotation in recent times, implying a dabbler who lacks the knowledge or skills of the professional. Yet in earlier days, an amateur was of...
Ira Spring had the great good fortune to spend a lifetime doing what he enjoyed most -- hiking, climbing, and skiing throughout the Pacific Northwest and documenting his way in words and pictures. He ...
With a surface area of 600 acres, Steamboat Rock is something more than a "rock." A massive basalt butte, several miles long and 800 feet high, it looms like a battleship above Banks Lake, a manmade r...
Helen Thayer was the first woman and oldest person to make a solo journey to the magnetic North Pole. She competed internationally as a world-class discus thrower, and in 1975 became the U.S. National...
In 1954 three Klineburger brothers -- Gene (b.1920), Bert (b.1926), and Chris (b.1927) -- bought the Jonas Brothers taxidermy studio in Seattle and by the early 1960s turned it into one of the largest...
The Mountaineers is a Western Washington-based organization that has had a major impact on outdoor recreation and wilderness preservation in the state. Started in Seattle in 1906 primarily as a mounta...
The mountain wilderness that rims the Puget Sound Basin has beckoned adventurous residents since the late 1800s. Hiking, backpacking, and mountain and rock climbing grew steadily there until Worl...
After arriving in the Puget Sound area in 1955, Joan Thomas developed a passion for preserving Washington's environment, particularly water quality. She found a myriad ways to pursue her goal, first a...
The first purpose-built company town in Washington Territory's timber industry was Teekalet (now Port Gamble), a sawmill-centered community founded in 1853. By 1860 there were numerous sawmills i...
Chris Smith Towne is a Seattle-based community and environmental activist and consultant. Her career trajectory began in Bellevue as a member of Bellevue's Park's Board and as a Bellevue City Council ...
Dave Towne's natural optimism and gregariousness played a big part in his long, successful career in land management and parks and recreation that made lasting changes to the city of Seattle from the ...
The first tree farm in the United States grew out of research undertaken in the 1930s by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, one of the nation’s largest private landowners. After studying the econo...
The Union Bay Natural Area, located along the north shore of Lake Washington adjacent to the University of Washington's East Campus, occupies what was for many years Seattle's largest garbage dump and...
Three Seattle City Light dams on the Upper Skagit River in the Cascade Mountains today (2000) produce 25 percent of the electrical power consumed in Seattle. (The dams are located in southeast Whatcom...
Seattle attorney William J. "Bill" Van Ness Jr. worked under U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (1912-1983) from 1966 to 1977 on the U.S. Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. He served fi...
Viretta Park is located in the Denny Blaine neighborhood in Seattle and has elicited more attention, both locally and internationally, than its tiny size should warrant. The 1.8-acre site is on a stee...
Doug Walker was a Seattle software entrepreneur -- cofounder of Walker, Richer & Quinn (WRQ) -- who became a linchpin in Puget Sound philanthropy, with national conservation commitments that include c...