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Adams, Brock (1927-2004)

Brock Adams represented the state of Washington for 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and six in the U.S. Senate, and served as the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. He began his career as a lawyer in Seattle, and in 1961 was appointed to the position of U.S. Attorney. In 1964 he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives. In Congress he criticized the Vietnam War, became a key player in restructuring the nation's railroad system after Penn Central collapsed, and worked to support AIDS research. He served as Secretary of Transportation under President Jimmy Carter (b. 1924) and won a Senate seat in 1986 by defeating Republican incumbent Slade Gorton (b. 1928).
File 5739: Full Text >

Appleway Bridge (Old I-90 Bridge)

The Appleway Bridge, also known as the Old I-90 Bridge, spanned the Spokane River near Stateline, Idaho, on the Washington side of the Idaho-Washington border. It was built in 1939 at a cost of $118,259 and was part of the Appleway, the main highway route between Spokane and Coeur d' Alene, Idaho. This route was also known as Primary State Highway 2 (PSH 2), and US 10. The bridge continued to serve as the main route over the Spokane River between Spokane and Coeur d'Alene even after US 10 became designated as part of the Interstate 90 route, under the new federal interstate system. In 1977, a new limited access freeway portion of I-90, with a pair of new modern bridges, was completed just south of Appleway Bridge. After that, Appleway Bridge was transferred to Spokane County, and it continued to serve as a secondary route over the river, connecting East Appleway Avenue on the Washington side with West Seltice Way on the Idaho side. The bridge's condition deteriorated over the decades. In 2007, Spokane County imposed weight restrictions on the bridge, restricted it to two lanes and designated the bridge for replacement. In 2010, the county accepted a $6.2 million bid for a replacement bridge at the same location. Removal work began in late May 2010 and by August the Appleway Bridge was gone. The new bridge is expected to be constructed by the spring of 2012.
File 9435: Full Text >

Barstow Bridge (Stevens and Ferry counties)

The Barstow Bridge, a surplus military bridge, was placed across the Kettle River in 1947, after floods damaged several earlier bridges. The bridge is located in Northeast Washington on the border between Stevens and Ferry counties, not far from the Canadian border. Since it was a bit short in length, an additional structure was added on to enable it to span the river. After more than 60 years in service, the Barstow Bridge is scheduled to be removed in 2010. It has been put up for sale. If a willing buyer is not found, the bridge will be demolished. The Barstow Bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
File 8983: Full Text >

Beck, Dave (1894-1993), Labor Leader

Dave Beck was a key leader of the Teamster's Union on the West Coast for some 40 years, from the late 1920s to the early 1960s. He moved to Seattle at age 4 and began his career as a child delivering newspapers and later driving a laundry truck. In the 1920s, he became a full-time organizer for the Teamsters in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia and by the 1930s led the region's Teamsters. His support of the Newspaper Guild strike of 1936 (against the Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other papers) was a major cause of its victory. As president of the Teamsters, Beck held to a business-union philosophy, opposed radicals and union democracy, and was thus favored by conservative elements in the community such as the Chambers of Commerce. He ended his career in a corruption scandal (concerning the use of union funds) for which he served a two year (1962-1964) prison sentence on McNeil Island. After prison he retired to private (and a moderate public) life.
File 2972: Full Text >

Book of the Fortnight Archives (HistoryLink.org), 2004-2007

This is a compilation of books on Pacific Northwest history and related topics that have been profiled on HistoryLink.org's Book of the Fortnight page since 2004. Presented by University of Washington Press and Washington State University Press. During this era the "book of the fortnight" feature appeared less often than every fortnight.
File 7140: Full Text >

Bridges of Washington State: A Slideshow Primer of Technology Through Time

In Washington state, bridges are ubiquitous. As of August 4, 2010, there were 9,415 bridges on the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) inventory. These include all bridges 10 feet and longer, all bridges owned by state and local agencies, and docks and transfer facilities owned by Washington State Ferries. The inventory includes only a few federally owned bridges and it only includes railroad bridges that cross public roadways. Bridges are added and removed from the inventory every year at the rate of about 100 a year. Forest roads and hiking trails also incorporate bridges. This slideshow offers a brief overview of Washington bridges and bridge technology as it evolved over time.
File 8860: Full Text >

Canwell, Albert F. (1907-2002)

Albert F. Canwell was a Republican Washington state legislator from Spokane who served one term in the House from 1946 to 1948. He was famous for being chairman of the Canwell Committee, officially titled the Legislative Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in Washington State, which sought out communists and other subversives during the "Red Scare" era. Canwell, who had worked various jobs including farmworker, freelance journalist, and police photographer, campaigned for the House seat on an anti-communist platform. He helped write the resolution establishing his committee. Canwell chaired both of the committee's hearings in 1948, which targeted alleged Communist influence in the state's labor movement and at the University of Washington. Three UW professors were fired because of the committee's work. Canwell ran for office many times afterward but never won another race. He was one of the defendants in the sensational John Goldmark libel suit in 1963. He ran his own "intelligence service" in Spokane for decades and continued to gather information on people and groups he deemed subversive. He died, unrepentant and unapologetic, in Spokane in 2002.
File 9887: Full Text >

Clarkston -- Thumbnail History

With a 2010 population of 7,265, Clarkston is the urban center, though not the county seat, of tiny Asotin County in the southeast corner of Washington. At the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, it is a twin town with Lewiston, Idaho, just across the Snake River. In 1896 the Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company, an irrigation and hydro-electric venture, founded and laid out Clarkston, one of the few early examples of urban planning in the Pacific Northwest. Lewiston has always been the older, larger, and more industrial of the two towns, which since 1899 have been linked by a series of bridges over the Snake River. Although rivals in some respects, the two cities see their interests as mutually connected and in fact maintain a joint Chamber of Commerce. The final dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers provided enough slack water to enable commercial shipping to both cities. Clarkston, the easternmost port in Washington, bustles with huge wheat barges, trains, trucks, and river cruise ships.
File 9947: Full Text >

Deep-draft Ports of Washington

Of Washington's 75 public port districts, only 11 -- the ports of Seattle, Grays Harbor, Vancouver, Everett, Tacoma, Bellingham, Kalama, Longview, Olympia, Port Angeles, and Anacortes -- have deep-draft facilities capable of accommodating large ocean-going freight and passenger vessels. All 11 were created in a 15-year period following the 1911 passage of the Port District Act. International trade through these ports, initially dominated by forest products exports, has evolved to encompass a diverse range of goods and materials, with imports far outstripping exports in dollar value. Containerization, which came into widespread use in the early 1960s, revolutionized port operations and brought fundamental change to labor/management relations. Today (2010) Washington's marine terminals move approximately 7 percent of all U.S. exports and 6 percent of all imports and provide tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Through a century of change and progress, Washington's deep-draft ports have remained the primary portals through which Washington connects to the world economy.
File 9529: Full Text >

Dore, John Francis (1881-1938)

John Francis Dore served as Mayor of Seattle twice during the Great Depression. He entered office a staunch advocate of fiscal economy (budget cuts), but he lost reelection after he alienated the unemployed (by allying himself with business) and city workers (by cutting their pay). Later, he changed his positions and with labor support, won election a second time.
File 2720: Full Text >

Ebey Slough Bridge (1925-2012)

The Ebey Slough Bridge in Snohomish County is one of four bridges built between 1925 and 1927 to link Everett and Marysville and complete the last section of the Pacific Highway in Washington state. Upon their completion, motorists could for the first time drive on one road through Western Washington from the Oregon border in Clark County to the Canadian border in Whatcom County. The bridge crosses the northernmost of four waterways that have complicated travel between the two towns since the earliest days of white settlement. Because the slough is used by boats and barges, the Ebey Slough Bridge is a swing span that rotates on a mid-slough pivot to clear a channel for vessels. Although the completion in 1969 of Interstate 5 between Everett and Marysville made the old route less essential, it still carried a large number of vehicles. But the Ebey Slough Bridge was designed for a simpler time; it could accommodate only two lanes of traffic and one narrow pedestrian walkway. The bridge stopped opening for floating traffic in 2010, and in 2012 it is to be replaced by a modern, fixed-span, four-lane bridge with expanded sidewalks and a bike lane. When the new bridge is completed, the old bridge will be demolished. As one of the critical links in the original Pacific Highway and one of only four remaining swing bridges in Washington state, its passing is a matter of historical note.
File 10023: Full Text >

Hadley, Homer More (1885-1967), Engineer

Engineer Homer M. Hadley designed several unique concrete bridges throughout the state of Washington during his lifetime, including many early American applications of the European innovation of concrete hollow-box, or cellular construction. This economical method of construction was used extensively throughout Europe, but was not widely used in the United States until the 1940s and 1950s. It was Hadley who originally conceived the design of a floating bridge across Lake Washington, the large lake that separates Seattle from Bellevue and Kirkland (the Eastside). He visualized a floating roadway made up of a series of hollow concrete barges. Homer Hadley's unusual work reveals the effects of a single innovative engineer on bridge design within the state.
File 5419: Full Text >

King County Landmarks: King County Bridges

This file contains a list of King County bridges designated by the King County Landmarks Commission as Landmark Bridges.
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King County Landmarks: Norman Bridge (1950), Middle Fork Snoqualmie River, North Bend

Address: at the crossing of 428th Avenue, in Three Forks Park, North Bend. The 295-foot long Norman Bridge, spanning the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River near North Bend, is the only remaining example in King County of a timber truss vehicular bridge. (The bridge no longer serves vehicular traffic.) The last of its type constructed by the King County Engineering Department, the 1950 bridge replicated the 1924 span that it replaced. By the time the Norman Bridge was built, concrete and steel trusses were commonly used for bridge construction. However, the availability of relatively inexpensive large timbers in Washington kept timber bridges in use in the region.
File 2383: Full Text >

Lake Washington Ship Canal

After decades of often-rancorous debate, construction of a Ship Canal to link Lake Washington and Puget Sound finally began on November 10, 1911. Following the failure of several private canal schemes, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gen. Hiram M. Chittenden (1858-1917), advanced the project, and his name was later given to the Government Locks linking the Sound and Salmon Bay at Ballard. The canal required digging cuts between Salmon Bay and Lake Union at Fremont and between Lake Union and Lake Washington at Montlake, and building four bascule bridges at Fremont, Ballard, the University District, and Montlake. The Locks officially opened on July 4, 1917, but the canal was not declared complete until 1934.
File 1444: Full Text >

Langlie, Arthur B. (1900-1966)

Arthur B. Langlie was the only mayor of Seattle to become governor of the state and the only Washington governor to regain that office after losing it. Langlie was born in Minnesota and moved with his family to Washington's Kitsap Peninsula at the age of nine. He practiced law in Seattle for nearly 10 years before winning a Seattle City Council seat in 1935 as a candidate of the conservative and moralistic reform group New Order of Cincinnatus. Cincinnatus soon faded, but the young, energetic, and politically attractive Langlie won the mayor's office in 1938. He became the Republican candidate for governor in 1940 and won a narrow victory. At 40, Langlie was the youngest governor in the history of the state until Dan Evans (b. 1925) was elected in 1964. Langlie was defeated for re-election in 1944 by Democrat Monrad C. Wallgren (1891-1961), but won the office back by defeating Wallgren in 1948. Langlie was easily re-elected in 1952, becoming the first Washington governor to serve three terms. Langlie left politics after failing badly in his 1956 campaign to defeat Democratic U.S. Senator Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989). He spent the final years of his career as a magazine publisher in New York.
File 5634: Full Text >

Manette Bridge (Kitsap County)

The Manette Bridge, spanning the Port Washington Narrows, connected the Kitsap Peninsula city of Bremerton with Manette, a town annexed by Bremerton in 1918 and located across the narrows. The Manette Bridge was constructed in 1929-1930, and a gala celebration accompanied its opening on June 21, 1930. The bridge was partially re-built in 1949, but was still insufficient to carry the rapidly increasing traffic flows brought by high employment at the shipyards. The Warren Avenue Bridge, constructed in 1958 about a half-mile to the northeast, helped alleviate the situation. But during the 2000s the narrow, two-lane Manette Bridge was deemed inadequate and was scheduled for replacement.
File 9477: Full Text >

Monte Cristo -- Thumbnail History

In the decade of the 1890s, Monte Cristo became the center of a mining boom. It attracted thousands of miners, businessmen, laborers, and settlers into the rugged Cascade Mountains of eastern Snohomish County, yet its fate would be determined not by their efforts but by the difficult climate, unknown geology, and decisions made by financiers a continent away. Today the isolated area still is a popular site for visitors attracted by its history and dramatic setting.
File 8404: Full Text >

Montlake Bridge (Seattle)

The Montlake Bridge spanning the Montlake Cut in Seattle was completed in 1925, the last-built and easternmost of four double-leaf bascule bridges that carry vehicle and pedestrian traffic across the Lake Washington Ship Canal. It is set apart from its sister bridges by both its Gothic architectural details and its mechanical design, and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982. The Montlake span had a rough road to realization -- Seattle voters denied it funding on five occasions between 1914 and 1922, and when a $500,000 bond issue finally was passed in 1923, it was ruled void for technical reasons. The bridge went before the voters one last time in 1924, finally gaining emphatic approval. Work on the span began almost immediately, was completed in less than a year, and the bridge was dedicated on June 27, 1925. It has served ever since as the only direct link between the Montlake neighborhood and the University District. Unlike the three other vehicle bridges crossing the ship canal, the Montlake Bridge is owned and operated by the Washington State Department of Transportation and is part of the short State Route 513 that runs from State Route 520 to Sand Point.
File 10216: Full Text >

Now & Then -- Seattle's Fremont Bridge

This file contains Seattle historian and photographer Paul Dorpat's Now & Then photographs and reflections on the Fremont Bridge. The bridge crosses the Lake Washington Canal, connecting Seattle's Fremont Neighborhood with Queen Anne on the other side.
File 2577: Full Text >

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