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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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Visit HistoryLink's page here.
Thank you for supporting HistoryLink!
11/24/2021
Into Thin Air
Fifty years ago this week, on November 24, 1971, a man using the alias Dan Cooper (erroneously dubbed "D. B. Cooper" by a reporter) commandeered a Boeing 727 bound for Seattle from Portland and demanded $200,000 and two parachutes upon its arrival. Once the plane landed, his demands were met and the passengers were allowed to disembark, while a skeleton crew remained on board.
Cooper next requested that the jet take off and head south, but at a low altitude (10,000 feet) with the landing gear down. The 727 was designed with a set of aft stairs, and somewhere over Southwest Washington – while the crew was in the cockpit – he lowered the stairway and vanished into the rainy night. Years later, some of the ransom money was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River, but no sign of Cooper was ever found.
Over the last 50 years the legend of "D. B. Cooper" has grown and continues to play a part in popular culture, with numerous references to the incident in film, books, and music. The FBI has kept the case open all these years and continues to run down leads and investigate suspects, but the agency generally maintains that the hijacker's jump from the plane proved fatal. If Cooper were alive today, he'd be in his 80s or 90s.
Live on the Air
More than a century ago, many people spent their Thanksgiving holiday taking in a stage show or a movie. This might explain why some theaters chose this time of year for their grand openings, including Squire's Opera House in Seattle on November 24, 1879, the Seeley Theatre in Pomeroy on November 24, 1913, and Port Angeles's Mack Theatre on November 24, 1922.
But on November 25, 1948, hundreds of people around Puget Sound stayed home to watch the region's first wide-audience television broadcast -- a high school football game between West Seattle and Wenatchee on KRSC-TV. It is not surprising that one of the other programs shown in the 1948 broadcast was a film of a Broadway play. A new medium was supplanting an old. One person to recognize this was Dorothy Stimson Bullitt, who had just purchased a radio station in 1947. Two years later, she purchased KRSC-TV for $300,000 (the first sale of a television station in the United States) and renamed it. We know it today as KING-TV.
Washington cities that celebrate birthdays this week include Spokane, which incorporated as Spokane Falls on November 29, 1881; Union Gap, which incorporated as Yakima City on December 1, 1883; and Mountlake Terrace, which incorporated on November 29, 1954.
This week in 1883, the Territorial legislature was very busy. On November 24, it established Kittitas County and after a weekend break Douglas County, Adams County, and Skagit County were all created on the same day -- November 28.
On November 26, 1945, 15 children lost their lives when their school bus slid off the road and sank in the icy waters of Lake Chelan. And on November 27, 1998, a Metro bus plunged off of the Aurora Bridge after the driver was shot by a crazed passenger.
On November 25, 1978, the first Day of Remembrance was held at the Puyallup Fairgrounds in commemoration of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. And on November 30, 1993, the Tacoma City Council approved the Chinese Reconciliation Resolution to make amends for the 1885 expulsion of the entire Chinese community in Tacoma by the mayor and other leading citizens.
On November 25, 1990, the Lake Washington Floating Bridge sank during a severe storm, though with no loss of life. The bridge was rebuilt, and reopened in September 1993.
Logging and mining were important industries in Washington's early days, but times do change. On November 30, 1995, the Port Gamble sawmill closed, marking the end of the oldest continuously operating sawmill in the country. And on November 27, 2006, the last coal mine in Washington shut down near Centralia.
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On November 28, 1917, the Liberty Library – the first official military library -- opened at Camp Lewis.
Out a little service doorway
In the rear of the plane
Cooper jumped into the darkness
Into the freezing rain
They say that with the windchill
It was 69 below
Not much chance that he’d survive
But if he did where did he go?
- Chuck Brodsky, "The Ballad of D. B. Cooper"
