James G. Swan lived one of the most varied and colorful lives in the early history of Washington Territory. He was variously an oysterman, customs inspector, secretary to congressional delegate Isaac ...
Gordon H. Sweany was a Seattle lawyer and the chairman of the board of SAFECO Corp. Under his leadership, SAFECO grew into one of the 20 largest diversified financial corporations in the United State...
Prior to the great fire of June 6, 1889, Seattle's Swedish population was small, as it was in the rest of the northwest region. The census of 1880 counted only 190 people of Scandinavian heritage in a...
At the turn of the twentieth century Seattle's medical community was largely dominated by hospitals run by religious orders and small, infirmary-type hospitals. When Dr. Nils A. Johanson arrived from ...
Tacoma epitomizes the cultural, economic, social, and technological development of the Puget Sound region and the entire state of Washington. Situated above Commencement Bay on scenic bluffs that were...
For more than one hundred years the Tacoma Buddhist Temple, located since 1931 at 1717 S Fawcett Avenue in downtown Tacoma, has carried important ties to the city's historic Japantown both as a physic...
After Puget Sound University was dissolved for financial reasons in 1902, a new Tacoma institution, the University of Puget Sound (UPS), was reincorporated in 1903 on a campus at 6th and Sprague....
From the 1880s through the 1940s, Japanese immigrants created a vibrant Japantown (Nihonmachi) in downtown Tacoma. Crammed into a few blocks stretching from 17th Street near Union Station north to 11t...
Tacoma's Salishan Housing Project rose in 1943 as part of the industrial miracle that won World War II for the Allies. After the war, the project served first veterans and military families, then low-...
Clarence Talbot, Seattle playwright and actor, and Guy Williams, state director of the Federal Theatre project, formed the Tacoma Playwrights' Unit of the Project in early 1936. The Federal Theatre Pr...
Tacoma's electrical and water utilities, its industrial railroad, and its telecommunications system all grew out of a need to serve the community coupled with frustration at the ability of private com...
During its years of operation between 1912 and 1922, the Tacoma Speedway, located in Lakewood, hosted some of the big names of racing, rivaling the best in the world. The Who's Who of races -- "Terrib...