Topic: Environment
Beginning in the 1930s, Northwest skiers attempted to get a permanent ski lift built on Mount Rainier to make it the center of Washington skiing, efforts that were resisted by the National Park Servic...
Washington's soils and climate make it one of the most productive agricultural states in the union. When explorers and fur traders from the East Coast and Europe reached the Northwest in the late 1700...
At the turn of the twentieth century, Washington farmers and ranchers realized they still had much to learn about the land. Washington State College (later University) in Pullman became the center of ...
The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (A-Y-P) Exposition was held in Seattle at the University of Washington campus from June 1 to October 16, 1909. Planning for its extensive landscaped grounds and many buildings...
The ledge of level land on Seattle's central waterfront owes its existence to the Alaskan Way seawall, extending from just north of Broad Street south to Washington Street below Pioneer Square. The so...
The Alpine Lakes Wilderness covers more than 414,000 acres within the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee national forests in the northern Cascade Mountains of Washington. The wilderness inc...
Tony Angell is an eminent Pacific Northwest painter and sculptor whose work has often centered on birds, especially ravens and crows. He is also an author. Since 1971, he has been Washington State Dir...
Dee Arntz is one of Washington state's foremost wetlands advocates. She worked in government throughout her career, specializing in program management and grant administration, and when she moved to S...
John Arum was an environmental attorney and outdoorsman who gained prominence in his adopted state of Washington as an advocate for wilderness preservation and Native American tribal rights. He worked...
The company mill town of Barneston, located in King County 40 miles southeast of Seattle, manufactured 15 million to 25 million feet of timber annually for most of a quarter-century. Established in 18...
It was his night, April 9, 2010, and Wolf Bauer looked every bit the star of the show. The Mountaineers club was honoring him as a "Living Legend." At age 98, he was short but straight and steady, his...
This People's History, written by Stephen Miller, tells of the life of John Beal, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who suffered physical injuries and severe psychological harm while serving in Vietnam, but...
Fabled Pacific Northwest mountaineer Fred Beckey (1923-2017) was a virtual unknown to the general public thanks to his eccentric, lone-wolf lifestyle and reticence to engage in self-promotion. Bu...
Considered one of the Pacific Northwest's most influential landscape architects, Tom Berger was born in northern California on March 7, 1945. He moved with his parents and six siblings to Port Orchard...
About 100 million years ago, in the late Mesozoic Era, the Okanogan terrane (microcontinent) docks against the North American continent. This collision adds to the land mass of North America and exten...
About 16,900 years ago, the Vashon glacier begins to melt and recede from lands that will come to be known as the Puget Sound region and the Columbia Basin region. By 15,000 years ago, the glacier has...
Beginning about 7,000 years ago, the climate become more like the modern era, relatively wetter and cooler than in the previous 3,000 years. With this change the ecosystems of the Puget lowland began ...
Approximately 5,600 years ago, a massive landslide removes .7 cubic miles of earth from the summit of Mount Rainier. The ensuing mudflow, which spreads as far as modern-day Kent, is called the Osceola...
In about 1450, an immense landslide tumbles off Table Mountain in Skamania County and completely blocks the Columbia River, shoving it a mile off course. A lake forms behind the dam extending as far a...
On January 26, 1700, at about 9:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time a gigantic earthquake occurs 60 to 70 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast. The quake violently shakes the ground for three to five minut...
In the early 1700s, European horses arrive on the Columbian plateau, having moved north through tribal trade networks from Pueblo villages located in present-day New Mexico. The Plateau tribes, who fo...
On May 11, 1792, American fur trader Robert Gray (1755-1806) enters the major river of the Pacific Northwest in his ship the Columbia Rediviva. Indian peoples have lived and navigated along Wimahl ("B...
Around May 14 through 17, 1792, American fur trader Robert Gray (1755-1806) explores Grays Bay on the Columbia River shore of present-day Wahkiakum County, and charts the outlet of Grays River where i...
In about the year 1800, oral tradition holds that Native Americans set a huge forest fire that consumed as much as 250,000 acres in the area between Mount Rainier, Mount Saint Helens, and present-day ...
On October 16, 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition reaches the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers at present-day Pasco, beginning the final leg of 4,000-mile journey of exploration from St. ...
On October 22, 1805, Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery encounter Celilo Falls, at the beginning of a 55-mile stretch of the Columbia River that will prove to be the most difficult and dangero...
On November 19, 1805, Captain William Clark (1770-1838) of the Lewis and Clark Expedition visits the future site of Long Beach. Clark records in his journal that at the most northerly point the expedi...
In the summer of 1808, Jacques Raphael "Jaco" Finlay (1768-1828) guides five Iroquois trappers from eastern Canada across the Continental Divide. Finlay, a "free hunter" and former and future clerk fo...