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Diablo Dam incline railway climbing Sourdough Mountain, 1930. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, 2306.
Children waving to ferry, 1950. Courtesy Museum of History and Industry.
Loggers in the Northwest woods. Courtesy Washington State Digital Archives.
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2/27/2025
Building Up
When Columbia Center opened in Seattle 40 years ago this week, on March 2, 1985, it became the tallest building in the Pacific Northwest, towering over the nearby Smith Tower, a previous title-holder. The new skyscraper's dominating presence on the Seattle skyline led to a 1989 voters' initiative to cap growth limits downtown. New zoning laws have effectively repealed the cap on height limits, but so far no taller building has been proposed.
Seattle's first steel-framed skyscraper was the 14-story Alaska Building, completed in 1904. In 1910 work began on the Smith Tower, which opened in 1914. The pyramid-capped monolith was twice as tall as King Street Station, whose 242-foot clock tower had made it the city's loftiest structure. For almost 50 years the Smith Tower was heralded by many as the "tallest building west of the Mississippi," even though in 1931 a Kansas City skyscraper topped it by 19 feet.
Seattle's skyline remained relatively unchanged until the opening of the Space Needle for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Although it was north of downtown, the space-age structure immediately became the recognizable symbol for Seattle, so much so that when the Seattle First National Bank Building claimed the crown as the city's tallest structure in 1969, it was often referred to as "the box the Space Needle came in." Since then, Seattle's skyline has changed dramatically, and in recent years the South Lake Union neighborhood has become home for the newest wave of tall buildings.
Crashing Down
This week in 1910 incessant snowfall prevented two trains bound from Spokane to Seattle from proceeding past the town of Wellington, close to Stevens Pass. On February 28 the snow turned to rain, and at 1:42 a.m. on March 1, thunderstorms dislodged a half-mile-wide snow shelf high above. Wet snow and ice roared down the hillside, gathering boulders, trees, and stumps along its deadly path. The avalanche barely missed the town of Wellington, but slammed into the two trains. Locomotives, carriages, and 125 passengers and crew members were swept down the mountainside in what became the deadliest avalanche disaster in U.S. history.
The gruesome task of retrieving the mangled bodies -- 96 in all -- from the wreckage was directed by Great Northern Railway Superintendent James H. O'Neill, who days earlier had led an unsuccessful effort to clear the tracks and free the trains from their alpine prison. Great Northern boss and "Empire Builder" James J. Hill monitored events from his offices in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Later that year Wellington was renamed Tye, to disassociate it from the horrific disaster. The depot closed after a new tunnel was built in the Cascades in 1929, and the town eventually faded away into memory. The disaster site and old railroad grade were reclaimed by the forest, but thanks to the efforts of Ruth Ittner and her hardy band of volunteers, you can explore the area by hiking the Iron Goat Trail, which opened in 1993.
On March 2, 1853, President Millard Fillmore established Washington Territory, carving it out of Oregon Territory. When Oregon gained statehood in 1859, Washington Territory was expanded to include all of present-day Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming. President Lincoln severed these in 1863, creating Idaho Territory and establishing Washington's current boundaries, and residents later began to campaign for admission to the union, which finally came in 1889.
Washington towns and cities that celebrate anniversaries this week include Winlock, which incorporated on February 28, 1883; Prosser, which incorporated on March 2, 1899; and East Wenatchee, whose voters approved incorporation on February 28, 1935. In King County, SeaTac and Federal Way both got their start on the same day, February 28, 1990, while nearby Burien became a city exactly three years later, on February 28, 1993. And on February 28, 1996, Edgewood incorporated.
On March 2, 1899, Congress approved the creation of Mount Rainier National Park, 369.3 square miles of land overshadowed by an active volcano more than 14,000 feet tall. Although the summit was considered sacred by some Native Americans, the mountain's imposing height proved attractive to climbers of all sorts, with some seeking to sound out or to make their voices heard.
In 1911 Virgil Bogue proposed a plan for Seattle that would have created an elegant Beaux-Arts Civic Center in the recently regraded area of Belltown. Downtown business owners blanched at the prospect of seeing their property values decline, and on March 5, 1912, voters nixed Bogue's improvement plan. Instead of a bustling commercial district, the neighborhood instead became home to warehouses, apartments, and other undistinguished structures. It wasn't until recently that the neighborhood began experiencing the kind of growth dreamed of a century earlier.
On February 28, 2001, the Puget Sound region was rocked by the Nisqually quake, one of the strongest temblors in more than 50 years. Hardest hit was Olympia, closest to the epicenter, where many older buildings -- including the State Capitol -- sustained serious damage. In Seattle, the Alaskan Way Viaduct remained standing, but the aged structure and the seawall below it came under intense scrutiny. But the biggest quake damage in Seattle occurred in Pioneer Square, where residents were still reeling from events that had transpired the night before.
On February 29, 2008, four local women bought the Seattle Storm WNBA franchise, ending months of uncertainty about the championship-winning team's future. Since then, Storm players won their second WNBA title in 2010, their third in 2018, and their fourth in 2020.
Seattle's Harborview Hospital was dedicated on February 27, 1931.
"Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization. The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet."
--Ada Louise Huxtable
