At 10 p.m. on Friday, February 1, 2019, the Battery Street Tunnel, which connected the Alaskan Way Viaduct to Aurora Avenue N underneath Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, is permanently closed to traff...
At 12:17 a.m. on Monday, February 4, 2019, the State Route 99 tunnel replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct opens to traffic. The 1.7-mile route under downtown Seattle is North America's largest bored tunn...
On March 4, 2019, a crowd gathers to witness the first commercial passenger flight from the new Paine Field Airport in Everett. Official ceremonies, speeches by local dignitaries, and a ribbon cutting...
On March 23, 2019, ARTS at King Street Station, an innovative arts space created to showcase artists of color, celebrate cultural differences, and build community connections, opens to the public. Mor...
The Shelf Life Community Story Project, originated in 2016 to record oral histories of current and former residents of Seattle's Central District, moves from temporary quarters in a shopping center in...
On April 27, 2019, a Saturday afternoon, a tower crane being dismantled at a construction site in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood suddenly collapses, the latticed mast sections falling onto th...
On May 7, 2019, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signs into law Senate Bill 5865, proclaiming October to be Filipino American History Month. The designation comes nearly a decade after the U. S. Congres...
On July 6, 2019, Dune Peninsula at Point Defiance Park opens on the northwest Tacoma waterfront. Built on top of land formed by industrial waste called slag, Dune Peninsula adds 11 acres to 760-acre P...
On July 21, 2019, Edgar Martinez of the Seattle Mariners is inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. For Martinez and his legions of fans, it comes as the culmination of years anticipation an...
On August 29, 2019, five recipients of the 2019 Mayor's Arts Awards gather for an awards ceremony at the Charlotte Martin Theatre at Seattle Center. The individual 2019 recipients are historian and st...
On October 24, 2019, the Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture, which uses artifacts, photos, art, and videos to showcase the history and culture of the state's Spanish-speaking communities, op...
On November 10, 2019, the Seattle Sounders win their second MLS Cup -- the Major League Soccer championship -- by defeating Toronto FC 3-1 in front of 69,274, the biggest crowd ever at CenturyLink Fie...
On November 21, 2019, demolition work is completed on the decommissioned Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle. The final concrete and steel columns at the north end of the viaduct, which have remained in pl...
On December 8, 2019, a Blaine resident finds an unusually large dead hornet in his yard and calls the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA). He also reports having seen a live hornet at hi...
On December 31, 2019, First and Pike News, the iconic newsstand located in the entryway of Pike Place Market, closes after 40 years, its demise mirroring the decline of the newspaper industry and the ...
On January 20, 2020, the first confirmed case of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in the United States is diagnosed in Snohomish County, north of Seattle. The patient is a 35-year-old man who has recently ret...
Washington Governor Jay Inslee declares a State of Emergency following the first two reported U.S. deaths from Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), in Kirkland, on February 29, 2020. The deaths actual...
On March 9, 2020, with two weeks left in the winter quarter, the University of Washington moves to hold all classes online to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. More than 52,000 students, along with fac...
Washington Governor Jay Inslee (b. 1951) orders a statewide school closure to slow the spread of COVID-19, on March 13, 2020. Several schools in the Puget Sound region have already been shuttered for ...
On March 18, 2020, near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ornate, custom-designed bronze gates created by internationally renowned sculptor George Tsutakawa are stolen from the Washington Park A...
Washington residents begin a period of COVID-19 isolation when Governor Jay Inslee (b. 1951) issues a statewide "Stay Home-Stay Healthy" order on March 23, 2020. The order changes life fundamentally f...
On March 23, 2020, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) closes the West Seattle Bridge after rapidly expanding cracks are found in its support structure. Further investigation reveals that ...
On April 8, 2020, a severe COVID-19 outbreak at the Spokane Veterans Home results in the first of many deaths. The deceased was a resident who had been on end-of-life care before contracting the coron...
The Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Wallula shuts down on April 23, 2020 because of a deadly COVID-19 outbreak among its workers. The company takes this step when more than 100 cases of the virus and one d...