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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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This Week Then

3/27/2025

Japanese Americans, adults and children, carry suitcases down a long wooden boardwalk. In the background are wooden houses and an orchard.

News Then, History Now

Here to Stay

April 1 marks two important anniversaries in the early history of Tacoma. The first occurred on April 1, 1852, when Nicolas Delin began constructing a sawmill at the head of Commencement Bay. And on April 1, 1868, developer Morton Matthew McCarver arrived to purchase land for a new townsite, which he called Tacoma City. Within five years he had helped convince the Northern Pacific Railroad to choose Commencement Bay as its western terminus.

On Their Way

On March 31, 1889, Seattle's first electric streetcar took to the streets and was an immediate success. Seattle officially took over operation of the city's streetcar lines on April 1, 1919, but the date of the deed should have given somebody pause. It soon turned out that Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson had paid a grossly inflated price of $15 million and accepted disastrous terms to acquire the private system from the giant utility cartel Stone & Webster, which had gobbled up all local streetcar lines by 1900.

Wedding Day

A century ago, marriages between men and women of different races were banned by many states, including California, where Gunjiro Aoki and Gladys Emery fell in love. The press tracked their elopement to Seattle, where they tied the knot on March 27, 1909, at Trinity Parish Church.

One Hundred Years Hence

On March 29, 1925, a memorial to President Warren G. Harding was dedicated in Seattle's Woodland Park. Sculptural elements of the memorial were created by Alice Robertson Carr, but by the 1970s the monument had fallen into disrepair. The concrete bandstand and its bas-relief sculptures were broken up and used for fill beneath the zoo's new African Savannah exhibit.

Sporting Events

On March 27, 2016, the Washington Huskies became the first team in state history to reach the NCAA women's basketball Final Four. On April 1, 2017, the Gonzaga men's team played in their first Final Four game, before being edged out by North Carolina in the championship game two days later. And just last year, on March 28, 2022, Pickleball was named Washington's official state sport.

Cities Commence

Communities celebrating birthdays this week include: Quincy, which incorporated on March 27, 1907; Coupeville, whose voters approved city incorporation On April 2, 1910; the neighboring cities of Bellevue and Clyde Hill, which both incorporated on March 31, 1953; and Spokane Valley, which incorporated on March 31, 2003, and instantly became the state's ninth largest city.

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Image of the Week

A person walks past a storefront in the rain. The sign says Starbucks.

The first Starbucks opened for business at Seattle's Pike Place Market on March 31, 1971.

Quote of the Week

"And I think—when people ask what my memory was about evacuation—I think I’ll always remember the sound of the gate clanging behind you and knowing that you were finally under, you had barbed wires around you, and you were really being interned."

--Kara Kondo

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