On November 9, 1984, Seattle Parks Superintendent Walter Hundley (1929-2002) announces the resignation of Seattle Aquarium director Ronald Glazier. Glazier cites frustration with Parks Department mana...
On November 15, 1984, a British Airways Concorde supersonic airliner pays its first visit to Seattle. The slender delta-winged SST lands at Boeing Field bearing a cargo of just-bottled Beaujolais nouv...
On December 8, 1984, Robert Jay Mathews, founder of the violent white-supremist group The Order, is killed in a house fire near Smuggler's Cove on Whidbey Island after a 35-hour standoff with the Fede...
On December 18, 1984, Seattle Police Officer Nicholas N. Davis is murdered by Michael Robert Trott, an unemployed drifter later determined to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Davis had stoppe...
On December 31, 1984, in the early morning hours, Everett’s oldest church building, the Lowell Community Church (5216 S. 2nd Avenue), is destroyed by fire. The structure dates back to 1892, its land...
In 1985, the Seattle Foot, a prosthetic device for lower limb amputees, is introduced by Prosthetics Research Study Lab. The revolutionary device can be used while performing extremely vigorous activi...
On March 2, 1985, the Mansfield Branch Line owned by the Burlington Northern Railroad (previously the Great Northern Railway) terminates service to and from Mansfield, ending 76 years of boxcar and pa...
On March 2, 1985, the first tenants occupy the 76-story Columbia Center, the tallest building in the Pacific Northwest. Constructed at a cost of $200 million amid controversy over its architectural va...
On April 8, 1985, all nine members of the King County Council vote to approve a new Comprehensive Plan to replace the document that has guided land use and development in the county since 1964. The un...
On April 8, 1985, the Lower Green River Valley and four other county Agricultural Production Districts are designated in the new Comprehensive Plan adopted by the King County Council. The Lower Green ...
On April 23, 1985, Seattle Police Officer Dale E. Eggers is murdered during a bank robbery.
On April 27, 1985, Group Health Cooperative holds its first membership meeting outside Seattle, in Tacoma Dome, and soundly defeats an attempt to ban abortions at Group Health facilities. The meeting ...
On May 13, 1985, 60 longshoremen begin unloading 481 containers from the Sea-Land ship Endurance as the giant shipping line begins operating from Port of Tacoma. In just six hours longshoremen empty t...
The ghost town of Lester was founded in 1891 as a railroad stop on the western side of Stampede Pass. It eventually grew into a small but prosperous railroad and logging town in the early twentieth ce...
On July 4, 1985, a giant fireworks shell misfires as it is launched at the conclusion of Everett's Fourth of July fireworks display on Jetty Island, located in Everett Harbor just off the city's water...
On August 30, 1985, The Royal Esquire Club, a private African American men's club, sells its clubhouse to Seattle Public Schools for 150,000. The sale is made to make way for the Bailey Gatzert Elemen...
On September 10, 1985, the Sankai Juku dance company from Japan performs in Seattle's Pioneer Square, with the dancers hanging upside down from a building as a metaphor for life and death. Soon after ...
On October 1, 1985, the Tacoma Municipal Belt Line Railway becomes a tariffed common carrier as its freight switching rates take effect with the Interstate Commerce Commission. Since 1924, the line ne...
On October 5, 1985, the 1983 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from Hogue Cellars in Prosser wins Best in Show at the Atlanta International Wine Festival. The award is a stunning achievement for winery owner...
On November 5, 1985, voters re-elect Charles Royer (b. 1939) as mayor of the City of Seattle.
On November 5, 1985, King County voters approve $31.5 million in bonds for the Woodland Park Zoo and a property tax levy to continue coordinated Medic One service.
On November 6, 1985, astronaut Bonnie J. Dunbar (b. 1949) -- the first woman from Washington state to become an astronaut -- completes her first mission in space, when the shuttle Challenger lands at ...
On November 7, 1985, the Seattle Park Board votes unanimously against giving dogs a place to run free in Magnuson Park on Sand Point, angering dog owners. The Board cites bad behavior by some unleashe...
On November 18, 1985, Group Health Cooperative member Joe Gardiner (1939-1991), of Bothell, receives a new heart in the Northwest's first heart transplant. A team of University of Washington physicia...