Topic: Pioneers
The 17th and final essay in our Turning Points series for The Seattle Times, HistoryLink director Walt Crowley looks back on the city's birth and the uses -- and misuses -- of history. It was publishe...
As a young girl in Maine, Mary Richardson set her mind to become a missionary. Upon marrying Elkanah Walker in 1837, the couple set out for the Oregon Country. They settled among the Spokane Indians t...
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 (...
"A Pioneer of Three States -- Adventurer, Prospector, Miner, Trader, Explorer, Promoter, Soldier and Public Official," was how Edward Warbass was once described ("San Juan's Best Known Pioneer"). He c...
This is a talk given by Brewster Denny (1924-2013) to the Pioneer Association of the State of Washington on November 2, 1996. Brewster Denny was the great grandson of Seattle pioneer Arthur Denny...
Soon after the creation of Oregon Territory in 1848, settlers north of the Columbia River began demanding a territory of their own. Congress acquiesced on February 8, 1853, with the creation of Washin...
The Wenas Valley in northwestern Yakima County has long been a transportation corridor for people traveling through the Yakima River Valley and across the Cascades. Indian tribes traveled through the ...
Marcus Whitman, a man with unwavering cultural and religious convictions, was one of the first missionaries in the Northwest. He and his wife, Narcissa, established a mission on Cayuse land near Walla...
Narcissa Whitman might have lived out her life in historical obscurity but for two developments. The first was her decision, in 1836, to marry a missionary named Marcus Whitman (1802-1847) and travel ...
William Bell (1817-1887) was a member of the Denny party that went ashore at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The following spring he settled with his wife Sarah Ann Bell (1815-1856) and their four ch...
Philip A. Woolley was a railroad developer from Elgin, Illinois, who moved to Washington just as the territory became a state in 1889. With the help of Territorial Attorney General James Bard Metcalfe...
Henry Yesler was a middle-aged man when he arrived at Elliott Bay in October 1852 and quickly established himself as the most important resident of the rain-swept little spot that would soon become Se...