Showing 1 - 20 of 117 results
Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (1909): The Olmsted Legacy
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 began several years before opening day. In October 1906, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition Company hired landscape architect John C. Olmsted (1852-1920) of the prestigious Olmsted Brothers firm of Brookline, Massachusetts, to design the grounds. The A-Y-P Exposition Company leased the southern portion of campus where the forest had been cut over once, but where second-growth trees and dense underbrush covered the slope from about 41st Street to the lakeshore. Olmsted developed a plan that would serve the needs of the fair as well as those of the university after the exposition ended. His plan differed from other world's fair plans in that it relied on the natural scenery, including Mount Rainier and Lake Washington and Lake Union, for focal points around which he laid out the buildings, roads, and paths. By the time of the fair's opening in 1909, gardeners had transformed the forest into a park with avenues, paths, cascading water emptying into the Geyser Basin (now Drumheller Fountain), buildings, and beautiful vistas looking out onto Seattle's distinctive natural surroundings. A hundred years later, elements of the Olmsted design remain as legacies of the exposition.
File 8873: Full Text >
Barneston -- Thumbnail History
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 1898, the town prospered along the Cedar River until the City of Seattle disallowed all human habitation within the watershed in order to keep the water pure. Barneston was razed in 1924.
File 2489: Full Text >
Bauer, Wolf G. (b. 1912)
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 handshake firm, his eyes twinkling as he mingled with old friends, his long white eyebrows sprouting from his head like wings. More than 230 turned out at the club's Seattle headquarters, paying $100 each for the dinner program. They were mostly climbers, because Bauer is recognized as an important pioneer of their sport in the Pacific Northwest. He started the Mountaineers' first climbing course and helped create the Mountain Rescue Council. He also launched kayaking in the region and was an outstanding skier. But as his biographer, Lynn Hyde, would remind the audience that night, his biggest contributions were as a conservationist.
File 9440: Full Text >
Beckey, Fred (b. 1923): A Northwest Mountain Climbing Legend
The Pacific Northwest's fabled mountaineer, Fred Beckey, is -- partially due to his eccentric lone-wolf lifestyle and reticence to engage in self-promotion -- a virtual unknown to to the general public. But within certain mountain-climbing (and backpacking) circles the name "Beckey" has for over half a century been uttered in both reverential tones and scornful terms. He is a gifted pathfinder who revels in taking uncharted routes, specializing in first ascents (e.g. conquering previously unconquered peaks), and authoring climbing guidebooks that are considered the bibles of the genre. A veteran of the U.S. Army's pioneering WWII ski patrol, the 10th Mountain Division, and a member of the International Himalayan Expedition's 1955 climb on Mt. Everest, Beckey remains an avid climber in his eighties. As a historian of the natural environment, most recently in his 2003 book, Range of Glaciers, as a lecturer, and as a popularizer of the wilds, he has directly increased the public's appreciation for the environment. The man's cranky nature and background as a roving rogue have, however, carved out a controversial reputation.
File 9373: Full Text >
Bicycle Tree at Snohomish (1890-1927) -- a Slide Show
This slide show presents the vintage postcard collection of Peter Blecha on the enormous and curious "bike tree," located in Snohomish County within what is now Snohomish city limits. The slide show was written and curated by Peter Blecha and funded by the Henry M. Jackson foundation.
File 8526: Full Text >
Blake Island -- Thumbnail History
Blake Island, a 476-acre Washington State Park, lies in Puget Sound approximately eight miles from downtown Seattle. It is located in east central Kitsap County, four miles off Alki Point, between the south end of Bainbridge Island and the north end of Vashon Island. Blake Island, with its five miles of beach shoreline and magnificent views of the Olympic Mountains and Seattle skyline, is only accessible by boat. The island was an ancestral camping ground of the Suquamish Indian tribe. Later, it was logged and eventually sold to William Trimble and his family. Tragedy ended the Trimble family's interest in Blake Island. After years of neglect, the property became a marine state park in 1959.
File 5491: Full Text >
Bloedel, Prentice (1900-1996)
Prentice Bloedel was a leader of the timber industry. He left a brief teaching career to join the management of his family's far-flung timber empire and led the industry's forest-conservation efforts. Bloedel guided the firm into a merger with H. R. MacMillan Export Co., which became the giant MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. Prentice and Virginia Bloedel were important patrons of the arts in Seattle, a tradition carried on by their daughter Virginia Wright. The Bloedels created the Bloedel Reserve, a botanical showcase of gardens, pools, lawns, and arbors on Bainbridge Island.
File 5227: Full Text >
Bobo the Gorilla (1951-1968)
Bobo the gorilla entertained visitors to the Great Ape House at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle for 15 years. He was a mainstay attraction for both young and old. A somewhat grumpy gorilla, Bobo loved to charge the impact-resistant window near his nest whenever children were present. Of course, this thrilled the children to no end. Bobo's birthdays were always big occasions, as many people loved seeing Bobo swat his birthday cake all over his cage.
File 1369: Full Text >
Bretz, J Harlen (1882-1981)
J Harlen Bretz was a geologist whose ideas about the origins of the "scablands" of Eastern Washington evoked ridicule when he first proposed them, in the 1920s, but eventually revolutionized the science of geology. Bretz argued that the deep canyons and pockmarked buttes of the scablands had been created by a sudden, catastrophic flood -- not, as most of his peers believed, by eons of gradual erosion. It was a bold challenge to the prevailing principle of "uniformitarianism," which held that the earth was shaped by processes that can be observed in the present. Since a flood of the almost Biblical proportions envisioned by Bretz had never been seen, it was dismissed as a throwback to the pre-scientific doctrine of "catastrophism." Not until the 1940s did other geologists begin to present new evidence supporting the flood theory. Satellite imagery in the 1970s provided the final vindication. Bretz had the satisfaction of living long enough to see his once heretical ideas become the new orthodoxy. In 1979, at age 96, he received the Penrose Medal, geology's highest honor. He later reportedly told his son: "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over" ( Smithsonian).
File 8382: Full Text >
Burgerville (Vancouver)
Second-generation Vancouver restaurateur George Propstra, the son of a Dutch immigrant, opened the first Burgerville USA on March 10, 1961. By 2008, the Vancouver-based fast-food chain had grown to 39 stores, from Albany, Oregon, to Centralia, Washington, and east to The Dalles, Oregon, with visions of moving into the Seattle market by 2011. In a commercial sense, the opening of the first Burgerville, on Vancouver's McLoughlin Heights underscored the line in President John F. Kennedy's inauguration speech seven weeks earlier that "the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." The new eatery, with a simple, easy-on-the-wallet menu and little waiting time, was immediately popular with teenagers and signaled that Baby Boomers would be a substantial customer base for the fast-food industry.
File 8791: Full Text >
Calvary Cemetery (Seattle)
Calvary Cemetery, located in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle, was the city's first major Catholic cemetery. The cemetery was dedicated in 1889 and remains active today. In all, more than 40,000 Catholics have been buried there.
File 978: Full Text >
Cape Disappointment State Park
Cape Disappointment State Park juts into the Pacific Ocean at the tip of the Long Beach Peninsula, in the southwesternmost corner of Washington state. This is the place where Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery ended their long journey to the sea. They carved their names and the date -- November 18, 1805 -- on a tree, pausing to watch the powerful surf breaking on the rocks below. Exactly 200 years later, members of the Chinook Tribe, art patrons, politicians, and community leaders gathered here to dedicate the first phase of the Confluence Project, designed by famed artist and architect Maya Lin to commemorate the Lewis-Clark Expedition. For Lin, Cape Disappointment is a study in convergence: water and land, river and ocean, white explorers and Native Americans, past and present. "Here is where we hold up a mirror to the Lewis and Clark story," she says. "Our journey begins here" (Confluence Project website).
File 7602: Full Text >
Cedar Falls -- Thumbnail History
Cedar Falls, originally a City Light company town, is located in the upper Cedar River watershed, 30 miles southeast of Seattle. The town's history also encompasses nearby communities that housed railroad workers, water department personnel, and loggers. A diverse collection of families lived in the rural setting for much of the twentieth century, but by the 1960s, the town began fading away. Now the center of operations for the Seattle Public Utilities, the townsite will soon (2001) be the home of the Cedar River Watershed Education Center.
File 2537: Full Text >
Cedar River Cybertour
This is a Rivers in Time "Cybertour" of the Cedar River, home of Seattle's watershed since 1901. Curated by Alan J. Stein. Presented by King County, Seattle Public Utilities, and Seattle City Light.
File 7043: Full Text >
Cedar River Education Center -- Slide Show
This Slide Show documents the opening of the Cedar River Education Center, located in eastern King County on Rattlesnake Lake, on October 2, 2001. Written and photographed by Alan Stein and sponsored by Seattle Public Utilities with Friends of the Cedar River Watershed.
File 7037: Full Text >
Cedar River Watershed (King County) -- Environmental Overview
The Cedar River watershed, located in the eastern central portion of King County, Washington, is nearly 24 miles long, and roughly 10 miles wide. It has been in use as Seattle's main water supply since 1901. This has resulted in many changes to the land, water, forests, and animal habitats within the 91,400-acre environment.
File 2486: Full Text >
Collins, Dorothy Priscilla (Patsy) Bullitt (1920-2003)
Dorothy Priscilla "Patsy" Bullitt Collins, a member of one of Seattle's oldest and wealthiest families, devoted much of her life to working for the public good, donating first her time and energy and then -- after receiving a multi-million-dollar inheritance -- giving away a great deal of her money. "I don't give back; I give forward," she once said, explaining her attitude toward philanthropy. She embraced the idea of stewardship, supporting projects that touched the future in some way, whether by nurturing a love of reading in children, preserving the legacies of the past, or setting aside open spaces for generations to come. Self-deprecating and unpretentious to her core, she shunned the spotlight but left an indelible imprint on the cultural life of her hometown by the time of her death in June 2003.
File 4214: Full Text >
Columbia National Wildlife Refuge
The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project did more than turn half a million acres of arid Eastern Washington into lush farmland. It also created an enticing stopover for millions of migrating birds. Land once dominated by sagebrush and dust now sparkles with reservoirs. Seepage from canals and pipes has given rise to marshes, bogs, and ponds. Drainage ditches, designed to carry excess water from farm fields, function as creeks in a landscape redesigned by hydraulics. These manufactured lakes and artificial wetlands form the heart of the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, a 30,000-acre haven for more than 200 species of birds and waterfowl, including many that previously bypassed the region entirely.
File 7459: Full Text >
Columbia River Cybertour
This Cybertour of the Columbia River focuses on state and national parks and wildlife areas. It was written and curated by Cassandra Tate and photographed (except for historical pictures) by Glenn Drosendahl. It was made possible by a grant from the Peach Foundation and an appropriation by the Washington State Legislature.
File 7611: Full Text >
Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area
The Columbia River Gorge is a symphony of water and rock, a 90-mile-long passageway sliced through the Cascade Mountains by a river on its way to the sea. The mountains divide the Pacific Northwest into two dramatically different regions; the Gorge is a link that brings them together. On the eastern end are the treeless, scorch-colored hills of the arid Columbia Basin. To the west lie mossy forests of spruce and fir, set off by basalt cliffs ribboned with waterfalls. Congress paid tribute to the Gorge's natural beauty by designating it a National Scenic Area in 1986. But the Gorge is more than just scenery. Native Americans gathered here to fish, trade, and socialize for thousands of years. The Northwest's first railway, first system of locks, and first modern highway were all built in or near the Gorge. Today the area is a laboratory for an experiment in public policy, with the federal government, two states, six counties, dozens of communities, and scores of special interest groups involved in a delicate dance to balance environmental protection and economic development.
File 7567: Full Text >
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Okanogan terrane docks against North American continent 100 million years ago.
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 extends the coastline of the Pacific Northwest about 50 miles farther west. Before the Okanogan terrane docking, the coastline ran along the present-day Idaho-Washington border. In the formation of the Pacific Northwest region over millions of years, there have been some 50 terrane dockings. These dockings, along with plate-tectonics (the sinking of the Pacific plate underneath the North American plate), tremendous volcanic episodes, and the advance and retreat of glaciers contributed to the Puget Sound landscape that we know today.
File 5086: Full Text >
Retreating glaciers create Puget Sound and Grand Coulee as the Ice Age ends about 15,000 years ago.
About 15,000 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 11,000 years ago, the glacier has retreated to the border of present-day Canada. During its advance, the glacier had carved out Lake Washington, Lake Tapps, Lake Sammamish, Puget Sound, and Hood Canal. The other major shaper of the land -- the pushing of the Pacific Plate underneath the North American plate, and the docking of terranes (fragments of continents) had already occurred long ago.
File 5087: Full Text >
Osceola Mudflow from Mount Rainier inundates the White River Valley approximately 5,600 years ago.
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 Mudflow. This is the largest mudflow of postglacial age in the history of Mount Rainier.
File 5095: Full Text >
Landslide blocks the Columbia River in about 1450.
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 as 100 miles. The river will eventually breach the dam causing a 100-foot-deep flood downstream and creating the Cascades rapids. This is the most recent of four documented slides in the 14-square-mile Cascade Landslide Complex and will be called the Bonneville Landslide.
File 7797: Full Text >
Earthquake of enormous magnitude hits the Pacific Northwest coast on January 26, 1700.
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 minutes and is felt along the coastal interior of the Pacific Northwest including all counties in present-day Western Washington. A tsunami forms, reaching about 33 feet high along the Washington coast, travels across the Pacific Ocean and hits the east coast of Japan. Japanese sources document this earthquake, which is the earliest documented historical event Western Washington. Other evidence includes drowned groves of red cedars and Sitka spruces in the Pacific Northwest. Indian legends corroborate the cataclysmic occurrence.
File 5098: Full Text >
European horses arrive on the Columbia plateau in the early 1700s.
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 formerly traveled by foot or by canoe, will gradually adopt this new form of transportation, which will transform many of their traditional lifeways.
File 9433: Full Text >
Native Americans set a huge forest fire in about 1800.
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 Centralia.
File 5497: Full Text >
The North West Company establishes Spokane House in 1810.
In 1810, the Canadian North West Company establishes a fur-trading post called Spokane House where the Little Spokane River joins the Spokane River, about 10 miles downstream from the current location of the city of Spokane in Eastern Washington. Spokane House is the first longterm non-Indian settlement in what is now Washington state. For 16 years it is the headquarters for the fur trade between the Rockies and the Cascades, and a major commercial and social center in the region.
File 5099: Full Text >
David Douglas arrives at Fort Vancouver to begin two years of botanical exploration on April 20, 1825.
On April 20, 1825, David Douglas (1799-1834) arrives at Fort Vancouver, the Hudson's Bay Company's new Columbia River headquarters, in the company of chief factor Dr. John McLoughlin (1784-1857). The young Scotsman is a collector for England's Horticultural Society, dispatched to the Northwest Coast to bring back specimens and seeds of the marvelous and new (to Europeans) plants of the region, for introduction into British gardens and forests. For the next two years, Douglas will use Fort Vancouver as a base for botanical explorations through much of present-day Washington and Oregon, where he will collect thousands of specimens of plants ranging from tiny, rare mosses and herbs to the giant and abundant tree that now bears his name, the Douglas fir ( Pseudotsuga menzeisii, not actually a fir, but a member of a Pacific Rim genus).
File 7298: Full Text >
David Douglas makes the first recorded ascent of the Cascade Mountains above the Columbia River Gorge in September 1825.
On September 3, 1825, exploring naturalist David Douglas (1799-1834) sets out from an Upper Chinookan village at the Cascades of the Columbia River to climb the mountain ridges above the Cascades in present-day Skamania County. Guided by the brother of his friend Chumtalia, a chief of the village, Douglas reaches the summit after a laborious two-day ascent. Several days later he makes an easier climb to the summit on the south bank of the river. Douglas's summit ascents are the first known of the mountain range that divides Washington into two distinct climate zones. Douglas is also the first writer to refer to the range as the the Cascade Mountains.
File 7300: Full Text >
Earthquake shakes Puget Sound on June 29, 1833.
On June 29, 1833, an earthquake shakes the Puget Sound region. William Tolmie, recently the Hudson's Bay Company officer in charge of Fort Nisqually, records the event in his journal. Tolmie's journal entry records the first eyewitness account of an earthquake in the region.
File 5104: Full Text >
Seattle residents celebrate July 4, 1854, and adopt names for Lake Union and Lake Washington.
On the Fourth of July, 1854, most of Seattle's few hundred residents gather to celebrate near a lake called "tenas Chuck" ("little waters"). Thomas Mercer (1813-1898) addresses the group and proposes naming the larger lake to the east, known variously as hyas Chuck, Geneva, and D'wamish, as Lake Washington. He also proposes renaming tenas Chuck as Lake Union because he believed that a canal would ultimately connect it to Lake Washington and to Puget Sound. Villagers approve of the new names, which are formally adopted a few weeks later.
File 1445: Full Text >
Tourists visit Snoqualmie Falls for the first time in the summer of 1855.
In June or July, 1855, the first group of tourists visits Snoqualmie Falls, a spectacular waterfall located on the Snoqualmie River in eastern King County.
File 202: Full Text >
Sand Point on Lake Washington is first surveyed on August 29, 1855, and opened for settlement.
On August 29, 1855, the area around the later-named Sand Point on the western shore of Lake Washington was surveyed, so that settlers could homestead the land and acquire it from the federal government. Indians had preceded the settlers by thousands of years, gathering various plants and animals from the point that juts into the lake. But the six-man survey crew led by William A. Strickler was perhaps the first group of EuroAmericans to walk over and explore Sand Point. After the survey was completed, the land was opened for settlement, but it would be 13 years before the first homesteader would settle on the point.
File 2215: Full Text >
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species becomes available for sale on November 22, 1859.
Near the end of 1859, a year full of stabilizing events in the Pacific Northwest, Charles Darwin's revolutionary book, On the Origin of Species, is released to the book trade in Great Britain. Although it will take some years for his ideas and books find their way to the Northwest, by the end of the nineteenth century Darwin's explanation for the diversity of species will be accepted broadly by natural scientists in the Northwest. By 2009, the sesquicentennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species, there will be two copies of the first edition in Washington state libraries: one at the Spokane Public Library and another at Whitman College in Walla Walla.
File 9103: Full Text >
Michael Sullivan and Samuel Calhoun build the first dike in Skagit County in 1863.
In 1863, Michael H. Sullivan (1840?-1912) and Samuel Calhoun build the first dike in Skagit County. They prove that the treeless flats between the Sullivan and Swinomish sloughs, once thought useless marshland, are potentially rich farmland.
File 5653: Full Text >
Surveyors discover coal at Newcastle (east King County) in October 1863.
In the fall of 1863, surveyors discover coal on the north bank of Coal Creek in the Newcastle area. The surveyors are Philip H. Lewis and Edwin Richardson.
File 149: Full Text >
Coleman Party reaches the summit of Mount Baker on August 17, 1868.
On August 17, 1868, the Coleman party reaches the summit of Mount Baker, the first climbers in recorded history to do so. Mount Baker is one of the most striking and powerful features of the northwest corner of Washington. The party includes Edmund Coleman, an experienced climber from England; John Tennant, the first white settler on the Nooksack River and part of an earlier Coleman party attempt to climb the mountain; Thomas Stratton, a customs officer from Port Townsend; and David Ogilvy, a citizen of Victoria B.C. The party is gone for 14 days, and returns to the little settlement on Bellingham Bay.
File 7088: Full Text >
Drought desiccates and forest fires burn Pacific Northwest from June to October 29, 1868.
From June 1 to October 29, 1868, a drought desiccates the Pacific Northwest. Forest fires rage from British Columbia through Washington, Oregon, and California. Sailing ships report smoke more than 1,000 miles offshore.
File 5581: Full Text >
Earthquake strikes Puget Sound region on June 29, 1869.
On June 29, 1869, just before 8 p.m., the Puget Sound region had an earthquake that was felt from Astoria, Oregon, to San Juan Island and perhaps all the way to Victoria, British Columbia. At Seattle the earthquake is described by the Portland Oregonian as “much heavier than any before known in this vicinity."
File 2302: Full Text >
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A Trip to Point Roberts, Summer 1909
This essay presents a description of a trip to Point Roberts (Whatcom County) on a summer day near the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Point Roberts is a five-square-mile peninsula that is part of the United States, but that is not connected by land to the mainland of the United States. It extends from British Columbia, Canada, into the Pacific Ocean. Written by an unknown author, the article is reprinted from "Northwest Corner of the U.S.," The Blaine Journal, Homeseeker's Edition, April 1909, p. 8.
File 9124: Full Text >
Butch the Lake Sammamish Seal by Nan P. Campbell
Just 50 years ago last October my husband, Bruce, and I moved to the west side of Lake Sammamish, and became a neighbor of a harbor seal named Butch. This retelling of his story is for my children, and their friends who grew up with a free spirited seal as a special friend. It is for my granddaughters who swim in the lake each summer, and imagine how it must have been when their mother and aunt were little girls. It is also for those of any age who still ask me, “What ever happened to that seal that lived in Lake Sammamish?”
File 5542: Full Text >
Creating Cal Anderson Park by Kay Rood
Cal Anderson Park, a beautifully renovated and expanded park on Seattle's Capitol Hill, re-opened on September 24, 2005. Originally one of Seattle's Olmsted-designed parks (named "Lincoln Park,"), it had by 1993 deteriorated into weeds, trash, and a graffiti-covered rest room, and was avoided by community members as a druggy and dangerous place. Kay Rood and the community organization Groundswell Off Broadway was a prime mover in the process of organizing to rebuild the park into a beautiful community asset with an undergrounded reservoir, a playground, community buildings, a water feature, paths, gardens, and benches. This is Kay Rood's story of the long process of rebuilding the park, which is named for Cal Anderson, Washington's first openly gay legislator.
File 7603: Full Text >
Dorothea Nordstrand recalls the old Celilo Falls
Nordstrand's reminiscence on Celilo Falls the way they were before the Dalles Dam was built in 1957 first appeared in Columbia magazine, Vol 15, No. 3. In 2009 Dorothea Nordstrand was awarded AKCHO's (Association of King County Historical Organizations) Willard Jue Memorial Award for a Volunteer, for contributing these vivid reminiscences to various venues in our community, including HistoryLink.org's People's History library.
File 5442: Full Text >
Dorothea Nordstrand Remembers School Days on Green Lake (Seattle) in the 1920s
In this reminiscence, Dorothea (Pfister) Nordstrand (b. 1916) recalls school days in the 1920s in the marshy land of Seattle's Green Lake neighborhood. In 2009 Dorothea Nordstrand was awarded AKCHO's (Association of King County Historical Organizations) Willard Jue Memorial Award for a Volunteer, for contributing these vivid reminiscences to various venues in our community, including HistoryLink.org's People's History library.
File 3081: Full Text >
Dorothea Nordstrand Remembers Thornton Creek (Seattle) in the 1930s
Thornton Creek rose somewhere near Meridian (near Seattle's Green Lake),
meandered through some very black, boggy wetland, thence along or maybe
under, what is now the South parking lot of Northgate Mall, and ran its
sparkling way eastward until it emptied into Lake Washington. In this reminiscence, originally published in the Jet City Maven, Dorothea Nordstrand recalls what it was like living along the creek during the 1930s. In 2009 Dorothea Nordstrand was awarded AKCHO's (Association of King County Historical Organizations) Willard Jue Memorial Award for a Volunteer, for contributing these vivid reminiscences to various venues in our community, including HistoryLink.org's People's History library.
File 3273: Full Text >
Dorothea Nordstrand's Grandmother's Rose
In this People's History, Dorothea Nordstrand tells the story of the beautiful climbing rose that her grandmother brought from Austria more than 100 years ago. To this day (2003) the rose blooms in Seattle. Her grandmother was Frances (Franza in Austria) Bettinger Geierhofer. She was born February 3, 1863, in Eberschwang, Austria. She and Dorothea's grandfather, Frank (Franz in Austria) Geierhofer, and their first three children, John (Johann), Dorothea's mother Mary Annie (Maria Anna), and Frances (Franza) came to America in 1891, entering at the port of Baltimore. In 2009 Dorothea Nordstrand was awarded AKCHO's (Association of King County Historical Organizations) Willard Jue Memorial Award for a Volunteer, for contributing these vivid reminiscences to various venues in our community, including HistoryLink.org's People's History library.
File 4139: Full Text >
Dorothy Graybael Scott Remembers Fire, Wind, Snow, and Floods at Cedar Falls, 1922-1940
This excerpted account of man-made and natural disasters at Cedar Falls (east King County) was originally recorded on June 15, 1993, as a part of the Cedar River Watershed Oral History Project. Dorothy Graybael Scott moved to Cedar Falls in 1922, as a young girl. Her father, Carl Graybael, worked for the Milwaukee Railroad in Cedar Falls, as a substation operator. Cheryl Meyer conducted the interview at Mrs. Scott's North Bend home.
File 2455: Full Text >
Fish Story: Memories of the Cedar River
Homer Venishnick, born in Renton, Washington in 1926, comes from a long line of fishermen whose livelihoods have hinged on the ebb and flow of local rivers. Today he lives in a house he built 50 years ago. "I started it, dug the hole, 50 years in April this year. Cost me $24 dollars to dig the hole. I'm still working on it."
File 2078: Full Text >
Having Fun in Cedar Falls, 1922-1940
Dorothy Graybael Scott's account of family and social 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 moved to Cedar Falls in 1922, as a young girl. Her father, Carl Graybael, worked for the Milwaukee Railroad in Cedar Falls, as a substation operator. Cheryl Meyer conducted the interview at Mrs. Scott's North Bend home.
File 2457: Full Text >
Hazel Wolf Remembers the McCarthy Era
Hazel Wolf (1898-2000), Seattle's quintessential activist, championed many causes in her 101 years. First an advocate of women's rights, she went on to support labor and environmental issues. She was a member of the Communist party long before it was illegal, and suffered the ire of McCarthy-era red-baiting in the 1950s. Hazel recalled these difficult times in a 1999 speech, transcribed in part below. (Note: Hazel Wolf died on January 19, 2000.)
File 2274: Full Text >
History, History Everywhere: A Remembrance of Growing Up in Snohomish County's Robe Valley
This reminiscence of growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in Snohomish County's Robe Valley was written by Joan Rawlins Biggar Husby. Robe Valley is located about 10 miles east of Granite Falls on the Mountain Loop Highway. Husby writes, "Growing up in the forties and fifties surrounded by Robe Valley history and the changes it wrought gave us Rawlins kids a hands-on perspective."
File 8494: Full Text >
Mementos of a Seattle City Light Skagit River tour
Beginning in the 1920s, Seattle City Light offered tours of its hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River to promote public support of the project. This file contains mementos (a sketch, a program, a tour pass) of a visit by the Women's City Club of Seattle on May 16, 1929. City Light Superintendent J. D. Ross (1872-1939) and City Councilman Otto A. Case personally escorted the excursionists over the project.
File 2894: Full Text >
Our (Issaquah) Swimming Hole in the Summer of '63
In this People's History account, Issaquah High School graduate and "Native Washingtonian" Mike Atkins relates how he and some pals took advantage of the destruction of Pete Rippe's barn during the Columbus Day Storm of 1962 to dam Issaquah Creek for a swimming hole. It captures a time before the Clean Water Act prohibited such grassroots public works projects.
File 7400: Full Text >
Pine Lake Resort (Sammamish Plateau, King County)
During the first decades of the twentieth century, Pine Lake in Sammamish was a featured attraction for early settlers of the Sammamish Plateau. Until suburban sprawl reached the area in the 1970s, the lake, located about 20 miles east of downtown Seattle, was quite rural. Between the 1910s and the 1960s it was home to a small resort on its eastern shore. The earliest name of the resort is lost to history. In 1932, Reiff French bought it and named it French’s LaPine Resort, but it was more commonly known as Pine Lake Resort. This account of the resort is based on interviews with Alvin "Mick" Macko, who began operating the resort in 1957. It is a reprint of Phil Dougherty's "City's Popular Park Once Home to 16-cabin Pine Lake Resort" ( Sammamish Scene, April 7, 2004, p. 32). It appears here with the kind permission of the Sammamish Heritage Society.
File 7492: Full Text >
Puget Sound Gardening with Charles Malmo
This note on the luscious Seattle nurseries of Charles Malmo is based on the extensive collection of photographs, newspaper clippings, and catalogs on Malmo's firm found in the library of Seattle's Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI). It was prepared by MOHAI historian Lorraine McConaghy, Ph.D. Charles Malmo was born in Norway, and immigrated to the United States in 1878, coming to Seattle in 1891. Two years later -- in 1893 -- he founded the first Malmo nursery and opened the first Malmo seed store at 916 2nd Avenue in Seattle. Malmo claimed to be the first nurseryman in the Pacific Northwest to propagate nursery stock of ornamental shrubs, which had previously been imported from Japan, Holland, and England.
File 8161: Full Text >
Riverfront Shangri-La: The Barrows Family 1890-1917
This People's History is based on Heather MacIntosh's interview of Homer Venishnick in January 2000, in Renton, Washington. In 1890, Captain Edwin R. Barrows took one look at the idyllic landscape at the head of the Black River and knew immediately, "this was Shangri-La, where my family would live for generations." His great-grandson Homer Venishnick (b. 1926) imagines his great-grandfather's thoughts as he holds a photograph of Captain Barrows house on the Black River, taken around 1900. The family came together on the river over the next several decades, fishing for work and for pleasure.
File 2092: Full Text >
Roosevelt tours Olympic Peninsula -- A Reminiscence by Mary Lou Hanify
Mary Lou Hanify was a teenager in 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Port Angeles to look at the wilderness area proposed for Olympic National Park. More than 30 years later, Hanify wrote about FDR's historic visit for The Seattle Times Sunday magazine. In 1994, she revised her story for the book Sturdy Folk, edited by Mavis Amundson and published by Western Gull Publishing, a division of the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles, Washington. Portions were published on July 14, 1968, in The Seattle Times Magazine. This memoir is reprinted from the book with kind permission.
File 8693: Full Text >
Royal Riblet: Man Against the Corporation
William E. Barr wrote this account of an early environmental lawsuit brought by a Spokane-area citizen that alleged air pollution for the Autumn 1987 issue of The Pacific Northwesterner. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the publishers. Barr was the Collection Development Librarian for the Eastern Washington University Library and earned several degrees in history from Washington State University. His interest in the lawsuits brought by Royal Riblet (1871-1960) began when, for a high school history class assignment, he attended a session of Mr. Riblet's first lawsuit in April 1951.
File 7538: Full Text >
The Klineburger Brothers and the High Lonesome Ranch (Sammamish)
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 taxidermist studios in the world. But their business was much more than taxidermy. The brothers went on to establish their own fur manufacturing company, and introduced fur parkas to the world. In 1962 they established Klineburger Brothers Worldwide Travel, and through it booked hunting trips worldwide. In 1960 Chris established the High Lonesome Ranch on 50 acres on the Sammamish Plateau in present-day Sammamish, where he recreated an old west frontier town and entertained many of his clients, which included dignitaries from all over the world, for the next several decades.
File 8306: Full Text >
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