OFFICE STAFF
Jennifer Ott, Executive Director (Seattle) – Jennifer Ott is an environmental historian with a particular interest in Seattle's history of moving dirt, rerouting waterways, and leveling hills. She has also written for Seattle magazine and the Oregon Historical Quarterly. She is the author of Olmsted in Seattle: Creating A Park System for a Modern City, general editor and contributor to Seattle at 150: Stories of the City Through 150 Objects From the Seattle Municipal Archives, and co-author of Waterway: The Story of Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal.
Nick Rousso, Managing Editor (Seattle) – Nick Rousso is the managing editor of HistoryLink. A Seattle native and former sports editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he has enjoyed a varied career in restaurants, horse racing, and journalism. He has written a handful of stories for HistoryLink, including the colorful history of Vito's Restaurant and a profile of "Golden" Guyle Fielder, Seattle's greatest hockey player.
Alan J. Stein, Editor and Historian (Edmonds) – Alan Stein has been with HistoryLink from the very beginning. He has written more than 450 essays on a wide variety of subjects, and has authored or co-authored five HistoryLink books. He also writes the weekly "This Week Then" rundown on the front page, and directs HistoryLink’s presence on social media.
Jill Freidberg, Digital Media Editor (Seattle) – When she isn't illustrating HistoryLink stories with archival treasures, Jill Freidberg co-directs the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute and runs the Shelf Life Community Story Project. She loves learning the histories of everyday people who never made the news and discovering the images they left behind.
Page Pless (Seattle)
Elisa Law, Project Manager (Seattle) – Elisa Law is a museologist and public historian with deep ties to Seattle. In addition to her work at HistoryLink, she curates museum exhibits (Vashon Heritage Museum, Museum of Museums, JCCCW) and leads preservation efforts at Sand Point Historic District and the Tokeland Hotel.
Mindy Van Wingen, Assistant Editor (Seattle) – Mindy Van Wingen is a historian, editor, and librarian based in Seattle. She previously worked as a historian in the Northwest Room at the Everett Public Library and has strong ties to the Everett and Snohomish County historical community. She enjoys researching and writing about women's history.
Kiku Hughes, Executive Assistant (Kenmore) – Kiku Hughes is a Yonsei cartoonist based in the Seattle area. Her first graphic novel, Displacement, was published by First Second in 2020 and was an APALA Literature Award honor title and an Eisner Award nominee. She began working as executive assistant at HistoryLink in 2021.
FOUNDERS
Walt Crowley (1947-2007) Co-founder and Executive Director (1997-2007) – Walt Crowley worked as a journalist, a social-services director, a policy planner for the City of Seattle and the Municipal League of King County, a television news commentator, and a freelance writer and communications consultant before co-founding HistoryLink in 1999. In 2007 he received posthumously the highest award bestowed by the Washington State Historical Society: the Robert Gray Medal, which recognizes distinguished and long-term contributions to Pacific Northwest history.
Marie McCaffrey, Co-founder and former Executive Director (2007-2023) – HistorLink was launched in 1999 with Marie McCaffrey as art director. When her husband and HistoryLink co-founder Walt Crowley died in 2007, McCaffrey took over as executive director. Under her leadership, HistoryLink expanded its size and scope, and produced many local history books. She also served as a member of the Seattle Arts Commission and as board president of the Seattle Public Library.
Paul Dorpat, Co-founder and Historian (Seattle) – Paul Dorpat is one of three founders of HistoryLink and an indefatigable chronicler of the local scene via both writing and photography. His book Building Washington (co-authored with Genevieve McCoy) received a Washington State Book Award for 1999. In 2001, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild. Dorpat's "Now & Then" features appeared weekly in The Seattle Times for decades.
Read this history of HistoryLink here.
FOUNDING TECHNOLOGISTS & EDITOR
Priscilla Long, Founding Editor and Consulting Editor (Seattle) – Priscilla Long serves as founding and consulting editor of HistoryLink, the free online encyclopedia of Washington state history. She is an independent scholar, author of six books, and writes history, science, creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.
Steven Leith, Site Administrator/Technologist (Seattle) – Steven Leith was the original technical consultant and developer for the Historylink.org project and continues to consult on the website progress. He is a Seattle resident of 42 years and lives in West Seattle. Though semi-retired he finds time between writing and reading history to consult with and build websites for small business, nonprofits, and local writers.
Chris Goodman, Consulting Technologist (Shoreline)
CONTRIBUTING HISTORIANS AND WRITERS (Partial List)
Mildred Andrews (Seattle) – Mildred Andrews wrote about women's history and other subjects for HistoryLink in the site's formative years. She is the author of several books, including Washington Women as Path Breakers and Woman's Place: A Guide to Seattle and King County History.
Laura Arksey (Spokane) – Laura Arksey is a retired librarian and archivist who spent most of her career at Seattle Pacific University. She later worked at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane. She has 72 bylines on HistoryLink with a focus on people and places in Eastern Washington.
Kurt Armbruster (Seattle) – Kurt Einar Armbruster is a Seattle native, historian, and author who has written numerous historical articles and books including Orphan Road, The Railroad Comes to Seattle, 1853-1911 (WSU Press, 1999), and Before Seattle Rocked, A City and its Music (UW Press, 2011). Kurt is currently an archivist at the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive, in Burien.
Happy Avery (Spokane) – Happy Avery taught Environmental Studies as an adjunct professor at Gonzaga University and conducted historical research as a graduate fellow at the University of Montana. In 2024 she was named Executive Director of the Spokane River Forum. Her HistoryLink essays include histories of Easten Washington cities Asotin, Deer Park, and Pullman.
Kathrine Beck (Seattle) – Fourth-generation Seattleite Kathrine Beck writes HistoryLink essays, mostly with an emphasis on true crime and show business. She is the author of numerous mystery and suspense novels, and a biography of Oregon author Opal Whiteley, and has worked in communications in the Northwest broadcasting, grocery, fisheries, and aerospace industries.
Paula Becker (Seattle) – Paula Becker is the author of A House on Stilts: Mothering in the Age of Opioid Addiction and Looking For Betty MacDonald: The Egg, The Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and I, and co-author of The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World's Fair and Its Legacy and Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: Washington's First World's Fair. Her 300-plus essays on HistoryLink document all aspects of Washington history.
Clara Berg (Seattle) – Clara Berg is the Curator of Collections at the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI). She oversees the care of the museum’s collection of 3-D artifacts and does research and presentations about its contents. In 2019 she curated MOHAI’s exhibit Seattle Style: Fashion/Function.
Warner Blake (Snohomish) – Renovating the former Saint Michael Church of Snohomish with artist Karen Guzak, Warner Blake began researching the town’s history, especially its nineteenth-century architectural heritage, which led to writing two books: Early Snohomish (2007) and J. S. White Our First Architect published in 2017. He is quite proud to be a writer for HistoryLink, covering Snohomish City.
Peter Blecha (Seattle) – Seattle native Peter Blecha has served as a historian and contributing editor for HistoryLink, writing more than 200 essays since 2001. He is the director of the Northwest Music Archives, the former senior curator at the Experience Music Project (EMP), and an award-winning author of seven books.
Eleanor Boba (Seattle) – Eleanor Boba likes to explore the little-known stories of people and places. She has written HistoryLink essays on topics ranging from the sad case of a young Japanese immigrant girl to a World War II venereal disease treatment center in South Seattle to the 1978 King Tut exhibit and phenomenon.
John Caldbick (Whidbey Island) – John Caldbick was born in Seattle and worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and United Press International in the 1960s and early 1970s. He graduated from the University of Washington School of Law in 1976 and practiced that profession for 30 years. In 2009 he retired from law and began a more enjoyable career as a historian for HistoryLink.
David Cameron, Ph.D. (Index)
Oscar Rosales Castañeda (Seattle)
Frank Chesley (1929-2010) (Seattle) – Frank Chesley reported for The San Francisco Chronicle and spent five years in Europe while working for Reuters and Stars & Stripes. He was a television critic and reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer during the era (1969-1977) that’s been called the paper’s heyday. Later, he worked at The Everett Herald as a reporter, columnist, and copyeditor. His work includes 47 bylines for HistoryLink.
Rita Cipalla (Seattle) – Rita Cipalla explores Washington’s lesser-known people and places, focusing on art, culture, and the Italian American community. She is the Northwest correspondent for L’Italo Americano, wrote for the Smithsonian News Service in Washington, D.C., and owns a consulting practice that helps education, cultural, and environmental clients tell their stories.
Kathryn Nass Ciskowski (Orcas Island) – Living in the San Juan Islands for over 35 years, Kathryn (Kathi) Nass Ciskowski has submitted a variety of pieces to HistoryLink. Proud to be a descendant of Washington state pioneers, she has been a journalist, an educator, and now is committed to helping people research their family and community histories.
Trista Crossley (Spokane)
Erica Curless (Spokane)
Kim Davenport (Tacoma) – Kim Davenport is an educator, historian, and writer who specializes in the musical history of Tacoma. She has written two books for Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series, articles for the Washington State Historical Society's COLUMBIA magazine, and given numerous presentations for Tacoma Historical Society. She maintains a blog, TacomaMusicHistory.org, where she shares her own and her students' research.
Dotty DeCoster (1944-2015) (Seattle)
Duane Colt Denfeld, Ph.D. (Fort Lewis)
Phil Dougherty (Sammamish) – Historian Phil Dougherty has written more than 300 essays for HistoryLink on topics ranging from the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition to a history of the nineteenth-century Nooksack chief Yelkanum Seclamatan, with a few humorous historical tales sprinkled in between. He has written two books, most recently The Bartell Story: 125 Years of Service.
Miguel Douglas (Tacoma)
Glenn Drosendahl (Seattle) – Glenn Drosendahl worked at the Lewiston (Idaho) Morning Tribune before moving to the Bellevue Journal-American and then the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for its final 22 years as a newspaper. He has been a sports reporter and editor, the P-I’s reader representative or ombudsman, and a freelancer covering the restaurant business. He wrote his first essay for HistoryLink in 2000.
Steve Dunkelberger (Tacoma)
Erich Ebel (Spokane) – Erich Ebel spent 10 years as a TV and radio journalist and another 20 in government communications and public affairs, but his passion is discovering and sharing stories about the history, heritage, and culture of Washington. His books, blog, history tours, videos, and podcasts hold a trove of interesting facts, unknown facets and fascinating tales that help entertain and educate the general public about the greatest state in the lower 48.
Ed Echtle (Tacoma)
Stephen B. Emerson (Cheney)
David Eskenazi (Seattle) – A third-generation Seattleite, David Eskenazi has worked as an investment professional with Allied Asset Management/Advisor Group, and in the financial services industry since 1982. He is involved in promoting and preserving Seattle and Pacific Northwest sports history and culture through various organizations, publications, documentaries, displays, and other activities.
Sheila Farr (Seattle) – A Seattle native, Sheila Farr is an author, poet, and arts writer. Her books include Fay Jones; Leo Kenney: Celebrating the Mysteries; and James Martin: Art Rustler at the Rivoli. As the staff art critic for The Seattle Times from 2000-2009, she won a number of journalism prizes, including a George Polk Award.
Patricia Filer (Seattle)
Louis Fiset (Seattle)
Steve Fox (Everett) – Steve Fox has been researching and writing about Everett and Monte Cristo history for several decades, enjoying much time both in the field and the library. He has been involved with the city's Historical Commission, the Everett Museum of History, and Historic Everett.
Linda Holden Givens (Auburn) – Linda Holden Givens is a Seattle native, granddaughter of Oscar William Holden, Seattle’s patriarch of Jazz, and the author of Holden On To Family Roots – A Granddaughter’s Family and Genealogy Search. A former IT project manager and business analyst, she now is a yoga instructor. She has written for HistoryLink on subjects ranging from video-game designer Roberta Williams to Ivan the Gorilla, and nineteenth-century horse racing near Olympia.
Aaron Goings (Tacoma)
Marga Rose Hancock (Seattle)
Ariana Heath (Seattle)
Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D. (Seattle)
Mary T. Henry (Seattle) – Mary Henry is one of the founding contributors to HistoryLink, a retired Seattle Public Schools librarian, author of Tribute: Public Places Named for Black People, the former editor of the Black Heritage Society newsletter, and archivist at Epiphany Parish.
Brad Holden (Seattle) – Brad Holden is the author of a few books, including Seattle Prohibition: Bootleggers, Rumrunners & Graft in the Queen City, and enjoys finding relics related to local history, which he showcases on his popular Instagram page, Seattle Artifacts. He is a columnist for Seattle magazine, and his work has been featured in Pacific Northwest magazine.
Russell Holter (Tacoma) – Russell Holter is a regulatory compliance and linear cultural resource consultant whose interests include early transportation and extractive industries in Washington. He authored The Fateful Fourth: The Story of America’s Worst Trolley Accident, and co-authored Rails to Paradise: The History of the Tacoma Eastern Railway from 1890-1919.
Doug Honig (Seattle) – Doug Honig is an educator, historian, and freelance writer whose articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. He has produced several documentary series on topics of Washington history for public radio and television. He served as communications director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington for 28 years and is author of On Freedom’s Frontier, a history of the ACLU’s first 50 years in Washington.
Michael Hood (Seattle)
Karen L. Johnson (Chehalis) – Contributing writer Karen L. Johnson is the co-author of two books about pioneer Edward Jay Allen: Our Faces Are Westward and A Yankee on Puget Sound. She has volunteered and worked in the museum field for over 20 years, and has written many articles for various historical publications. She currently serves as editor of the Thurston County Historical Journal.
Jim Kershner (Spokane) – Spokane-based journalist Jim Kershner has written more than 250 essays for HistoryLink. He is the author of four HistoryLink books, including 2019’s Transit: The Story of Public Transportation in the Puget Sound Region. He is also the author of Carl Maxey: A Fighting Life, a finalist for the 2009 Washington State Book Award.
Lisa Labovitch (Everett) – Lisa Labovitch has worked in the Northwest Room of the Everett Public Library since 2012. She is interested in researching the stories of women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC residents of Snohomish County. She began writing for HistoryLink in 2019.
Peter LeSourd (1938-2023) (Pasadena, formerly Seattle)
Charles LeWarne, Ph.D. (Edmonds)
Louise Lindgren (Index)
Paul Lindholdt, Ph.D. (Spokane) – A contributing historian since 2012, Paul Lindholdt is a professor of English at Eastern Washington University. His work has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets and the Society of Professional Journalists. His ecological memoir In Earshot of Water won the Washington State Book Award for 2012.
Anthony Long (Tacoma)
David Lynx (Yakima)
David F. Martin (Seattle)
Bob Mayer (Everett) – Everett native Bob Mayer retired from a 40-year career as an electrical engineer at Western Gear in Everett and then at Boeing as an Associate Tech Fellow on the 787 and 747. In 2019 he began writing for HistoryLink about local ties to polar and ocean exploration, aviation, and industry. In 2022 he was one of four international panelists on a webinar hosted by Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center. He also has written several history articles published by the Everett Herald.
Daryl McClary (Seattle) – Seattle native Daryl C. McClary has authored more than 200 essays for HistoryLink on a variety of unsettling events in Washington history, including aircraft accidents, capital crimes, fires, kidnappings, mining accidents, mountaineering mishaps, and shipwrecks. His expertise is the result of 30 years as a federal criminal investigator.
Casey McNerthney (Seattle) – Casey McNerthney has been a writer for HistoryLink since 2012 and is the co-author of four books, including Seattle at 150, the sesquicentennial look at the city’s history, and Rising Tides and Tailwinds: The Story of the Port of Seattle. He previously worked as a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, as an executive producer at KIRO TV, the CBS affiliate in Seattle, where he earned three Emmy awards, and is currently Director of Communications for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
Patrick McRoberts (1952-2010) (Seattle) – Iowa native Patrick McRoberts was a Pacific Northwest writer (86 HistoryLink bylines), editor, public affairs consultant and political strategist, biographer, historian, and musician. Among the political leaders for whom McRoberts served as speechwriter were Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, King County Executive Ron Sims, and Washington Governor Mike Lowry.
Cynthia Mejia-Giudici (Seattle)
Lee Micklin (Seattle)
Emilie Miller (Tulalip)
Lane Morgan (Bellingham) – Lane Morgan is a writer and editor based in Bellingham. She is the author of Winter Harvest Cookbook and Greetings from Washington and co-author of Seattle: A Pictorial History, The Miracle Planet, and Pacific Northwest the Beautiful Cookbook. Her blog using family correspondence to explore recent history is at morgancorrespondence.blogspot.com.
Rebecca Morris (Tacoma) – Rebecca Morris is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling nonfiction author. She has published eight true crime books and writes about infamous crimes in Washington for HistoryLink.
Zola Mumford (Seattle) – Zola Mumford is a librarian, researcher, writer, and past Washington State Book Awards judge. She is curator of the Seattle Black Film Festival, a program of LANGSTON, a nonprofit arts organization. Occasionally she is a speaker or panelist on subjects ranging from archival research to film history to science fiction/speculative fiction.
Cynthia Nims (Seattle) – Seattle writer Cynthia Nims has been writing about food, with particular interest in seafood and Northwest food traditions, for more than 25 years. She served as editor of Simply Seafood magazine, food editor of Seattle magazine, and has authored more than 10 cookbooks, the most recent of which are Oysters and Crab. She even manages a blog post now and then, at www.monappetit.com.
Tamiko Nimura (Tacoma) – Freelance writer Tamiko Nimura has written about Japanese American history in Tacoma, Vashon Island, Seattle, Auburn, and Bainbridge Island, and covered BICPOC arts and artists in Washington for Discover Nikkei and the International Examiner. Her first book, Rosa Franklin: A Life in Health Care, Public Service, and Social Justice, was published in 2020 by the Washington State Legislature Oral History Program.
Jack Nisbet (Spokane) – Jack Nisbet is the author of several collections of essays that explore the human and natural history of the Northwest, as well as award-winning biographies of cartographer David Thompson (Sources of the River) naturalist David Douglas (The Collector), and John and Carrie Leiberg (The Dreamer and the Doctor). For HistoryLink, Nisbet and his wife Claire have written a range of articles focused on the period of contact between Canadian fur traders and tribal peoples of the Interior. For more information visit jacknisbet.com.
David Norberg (Tacoma) – David Norberg teaches U.S. and Pacific Northwest History at Green River College in Auburn, co-authored Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History, and is especially interested in the environmental history of the Pacific Northwest. He started writing for HistoryLink in 2018.
Janet Oakley (Bellingham)
Denise Ohio (Everett) – Writer and filmmaker Denise Ohio had her first novel published in 1988. She has since had essays, criticism, poetry, two more novels, and one textbook published. Her second feature film, the documentary Verona: The Story of the Everett Massacre (Virgil Entertainment, 2017), is available on your favorite streaming platform. Ohio is working on a multivolume fiction series set within the labor unrest of the early twentieth century.
Kit Oldham (Lacey) – Kit Oldham, a HistoryLink historian since 2002 and an editor since 2007, served as Senior Editor from 2013 through 2019. His more than 250 HistoryLink articles cover agricultural history, land-use regulation, transportation, politics, biographies, county and city histories, and many other topics. He is co-author of Public Ports in Washington and two other HistoryLink books.
Steve Olson (Seattle) – Seattle writer Steve Olson is the author, most recently, of The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age and Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens. His book Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins was nominated for the National Book Award, and he has written for Science, Nature, The Atlantic, Scientific American, the Smithsonian, and other magazines.
Michael Paulus (Walla Walla)
Fred Poyner IV (Issaquah) – Fred Poyner IV is an independent historian and author of four books about public sculpture of the Pacific Northwest, including Native American and First Nation Figures in Sculpture: North American Monuments, Memorials and Statuary of 50 Artists.
Karen Prasse (Stanwood)
Boyd C. Pratt (San Juan Island)
Katie Pratt (Tacoma)
Margaret Riddle (Everett) – Margaret Riddle works to build Snohomish County essays on HistoryLink. She retired in 2008 after a 30-plus-year career as Historian in the Everett Public Library's Northwest Room. That same year she received the Robert Gray Medal from the Washington State Historical Society.
Junius Rochester (Seattle)
Nick Setten (Seattle) – Nick Setten is a board member of the Friends of the Market and avid historian of the "Soul of Seattle." In 2017, he co-produced a photographic exhibition in Pike Place Market to celebrate its 110th anniversary. He started writing for HistoryLink in 2019.
Adam M. Sowards (Mount Vernon) – Adam M. Sowards is a historian, writer, and former professor who specializes in environmental history. He has written and edited five books, including the award-winning An Open Pit Visible from the Moon: The Wilderness Act and the Fight to Protect Miners Ridge and the Public Interest and, most recently, Making America's Public Lands: The Contested History of Conservation on Federal Lands.
Shanna Stevenson (Tacoma) – Shanna Stevenson is a graduate of Gonzaga University and holds a Masters in Public Administration from The Evergreen State College. She worked many years in Historic Preservation and retired from the Washington State Historical Society. She serves on the Board of the Olympia Historical Society & Bigelow House Museum; the Olympia Arts + Heritage Alliance and is a trustee and former president of the Washington Governor's Mansion Foundation.
Cassandra Tate, Ph.D. (1945-2021) (Seattle) – Cassandra Tate wrote more than 200 essays for HistoryLink on subjects ranging from Lewis and Clark, abortion reform, and school busing to more offbeat stories about bootleggers and fireworks makers. She is the author of Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and its Shifting Legacy in the American West.
Kevin Ticen (Seattle)
Traci Timmmons (Seattle) – Traci Timmons is a librarian and art historian who writes about Washington's art and culture for HistoryLink. She was the head of the libraries and archives at the Seattle Art Museum for 20 years, has been writing about art, museums, and libraries for the better part of thirty years, and is the co-author of the book, The New Art Museum Library.
Rosette Royale (Seattle)
Mike Vouri (San Juan Island)
Justin Wadland (Tacoma)
Lynn Weber/Roochvarg, Ph.D. (San Juan Island) – Contributing historian Lynn Weber/Roochvarg focuses her research for HistoryLink on events and people in the San Juan Islands. After retirement from a career in libraries and adult education, she assists local nonprofits with communications and other projects, and is the author of a book on public library services to adult learners.
David B. Williams (Seattle) – Seattle resident David B. Williams is a freelance writer focused on the intersection of people and the natural world. He has authored nine books, including Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City, and written extensively for HistoryLink.org and HistoryLink.tours. He maintains a blog at geologywriter.com.
David Wilma (Seattle) – HistoryLink's deputy director from 2002 to 2007, David Wilma co-authored with founder Walt Crowley Power For The People: A History of Seattle City Light (2009) and Hope on the Hill: The First Century of Seattle Children’s Hospital (2010), other books on Northwest history, and several hundred HistoryLink entries. He researched and scripted the documentary The Power of Snoqualmie Falls (2010) and corporate history research projects, and published five historical novels.
Hans Zeiger (Tacoma) – Hans Zeiger focuses on the history of Pierce County. He is the author of Puyallup in World War II and co-editor of South Hill, Washington: A Community History, both available from History Press. He is a trustee of the Washington State Historical Society.