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Seafair: the Founding: Jim Douglas's Account

In this excerpt from his unpublished autobiography, Jim Douglas (1909-2005) recalls the many steps involved in coordinating Seafair. Jim Douglas was one of a group of local citizens called together by...

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Seattle Holy Rollers Killings: The Spectacular End to an Oregon Love Cult

Early in the morning of May 7, 1906, Oregon mill worker George Mitchell spotted the man he had been looking for in Seattle since he had arrived from Portland on May 2. Franz Edmund Creffield was walki...

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Seattle Liberation Front

The Seattle Liberation Front (SLF) was one of the more flamboyant, if short-lived, radical organizations to rise out of the student movement of the 1960s. Organized in January 1970 by University of Wa...

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Seattle Police Matrons (1894-1930)

More than a century ago, a debate about the ethics and authority of law enforcement began in Seattle as citizens, mainly women, voiced concerns about the abuses of power committed against women and gi...

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Seattle's First War on Drugs (1880-1925)

Throughout its history, Seattle has often been a hotbed for narcotic and stimulant drugs. In recent times, heroin was a popular drug in the city’s music scene and caused several notable deaths. ...

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Seattle's Neighborhood House (Settlement House)

The Seattle Section of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) founded Settlement House in 1906. (Settlement House was renamed Neighborhood House in 1947). They founded it on the model established...

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Seattle's Sister City Program

President Dwight Eisenhower created the Sister City program in 1956 to encourage the people-to-people exchange between Americans and citizens of other countries. Seattle was quick off the mark with th...

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Smart Sr., Phil M. (1919-2013)

Phil Smart started selling automobiles in 1952 in Seattle and built the area's first and most-successful Mercedes-Benz dealership. He gave much of his time and effort to community service, particularl...

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Snohomish County's Early Newspapers (1874-1930)

While Snohomish County's journalistic history broadly mirrors patterns seen throughout the state, the county can claim one of the earliest territorial newspapers, six labor and socialist publications,...

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Southeast Asian Americans

Never in the history of the United States have so many people come from the same region in so short a time under such dire circumstances as did the Southeast Asian refugees in the decade after 1975. O...

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St. Patrick's Day in Seattle

Though the Irish in Seattle have always celebrated St. Patrick's Day, there was no official St. Patrick's Day Parade in Seattle until 1972. Before (and after) that first official procession, the late ...

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Steves, Richard "Rick" John Jr. (b. 1955)

Rick Steves (b. 1955) is a best-selling travel writer, businessman, philanthropist, and television personality whose work revolves around encouraging people to broaden their perspectives through trave...

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Stickney Indian Boarding School (Whatcom County)

The Stickney Indian School ran in northern Whatcom County from 1892 until 1914. Over that period it had a variety of locations and of names: Stickney Indian Boarding School, the Stickney Industrial Bo...

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Stimson-Green Mansion: On Its Preservation, an Interview of Priscilla (Patsy) Collins

In this HistoryLink interview conducted by architectural historian Heather MacIntosh on September 18, 2000, native Seattleite and businesswoman Priscilla (Patsy) Collins (1920-2003) provides perspecti...

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Tacoma's Hooverville: Hollywood on the Tideflats

Shack towns and homeless encampments – "Hoovervilles" – multiplied in Washington before and during the Great Depression. In Tacoma, an encampment near the city garbage dump cover...

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The Bruise: A Seattle Reminiscence by Dorothea Nordstrand

Dorothea (Pfister) Nordstrand (1916-2011) wrote this affectionate reminiscence about a sisterly altercation that took place in Seattle around 1928. Dorothea's older sister was Florence (Pfister) Burke...

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The History of Coffee in Seattle

Thanks to Seattle's damp and soggy weather, coffee has always been a cherished commodity. The city's first commercial roasting operations began producing fresh-roasted coffee more than 100 years ago, ...

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The New Deal and the Arts in Seattle (1933-1939)

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government took unprecedented steps to support the visual arts, music, writing, and theater. Separate agencies dedicated to each were established ...

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The Saicom Club (of Ballard High School)

This reminiscence by Vern Nordstrand (1918-2009) is about a club formed by a few seniors at Ballard High School, located in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, in 1937. Vern Nordstrand worked at Boei...

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The Women's Movement and Radical Politics in Seattle, 1964-1980

This is an exerpt from an interview with Dotty DeCoster conducted by HistoryLink's Heather MacIntosh in April 2000. DeCoster was an outspoken member of the Women's Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...

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Thomas Wiedemann, aka the Klondike Kid, writes about his life in nineteenth-century Seattle

Thomas Wiedemann (1879-1962) gained brief notoriety as the "Klondike Kid," after heading to the Yukon on the ill-fated and ineptly crewed steamship Eliza Anderson in 1897. He grew up in Seat...

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Transportation and Communication in Seattle in 1900

Imagine life without telephones or email; without automobiles, motorboats or airplanes; without floating bridges or paved roads over the Cascades. So it was in 1900. Seattle boasted some of the nation...

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Turning Point 13: Summer in the City: From Potlatch to Bumbershoot

The 13th article in HistoryLink's Turning Points series for The Seattle Times recaps the history of summer festivals from the first 1911 Potlatch though the creation of Seafair to help celebrate Seatt...

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Turning Point 17: Seattle at 150: Reflecting on the Uses of History

The 17th and final essay in our Turning Points series for The Seattle Times, HistoryLink director Walt Crowley looks back on the city's birth and the uses -- and misuses -- of history. It was publishe...

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