Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were missionaries who came to the Walla Walla Valley from New York. They wanted to teach Indians about their religion. They also wanted the Indians to change the way they w...
The Marmes Rockshelter was a very important archaeological find in Washington. Tools, human bones, and a cremation hearth more than 8,000 years old were discovered there. But scientists had a big prob...
Mount St. Helens once was the fifth-highest mountain in Washington. Now, because of a huge eruption on May 18, 1980, it is only the 30th highest peak in the state. There were many signs that the mount...
By 1903, Seattle had five major public parks but city officials wanted more. They hired the Olmsted Brothers, a landscape architecture company from Massachusetts, to help create more parks. John C. Ol...
Over the past thousands of years, many varieties of mammals lived in what is now Washington. Several important fossils of prehistoric mammals have been discovered in different parts of the state. (Thi...
Kikisoblu, the daughter of Chief Seattle was a friend to early Seattle pioneers. One of the pioneer women, Catherine Maynard, thought Kikisoblu should have a name that would let everyone know that she...
Early buildings in what is now the state of Washington were mostly constructed of wood. There were no organized fire departments and not much water that could be used in the event of fire. Seattle's d...
For thousands of years, people who lived on Lake Washington have used its waters in their daily lives. In the last 150 years, the methods of crossing the lake to transport goods and people from one si...
Walter Alvadore Bull was one of the first settlers of the Kittitas Valley in Central Washington. In 1869, he arrived in the region and joined about a dozen other families and unmarried men who had alr...
Wine grapes were one of the first cultivated fruits grown in the Pacific Northwest. Now wines made from Washington-grown grapes are among the best in the world. There are more than 750 wineries in Was...
In the 1950s, before seat belts were standard equipment, young Seattle baby boomers bouncing around in the back seat of the family car were entranced when they were driven past a rotating neon sign in...
The Elevated Transportation Company (ETC) was created by Initiative 41 on November 4, 1997. In that initiative, a 53 percent majority of Seattle voters called for construction of a 40-mile elevated sy...
This essay is the complete text of an autobiographical essay by Seattle pioneer Eli Mapel (or Maple) (1831-1911), the son of Jacob Mapel (or Maple) (1798-1884). Eli arrived in Seattle on October 12, 1...
Among the forgotten coal mining towns of King County, perhaps none is more forgotten than Elk Coal near the flank of Sugarloaf Mountain. The town, in an area rich with coal mines, was situated one-hal...
Ellensburg, the county seat of Kittitas County, is located three miles from the confluence of the Yakima River and Wilson Creek near the geographic center of Washington. The site was a gathering place...
The substation designed and built by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) at Ellensburg in Central Washington brought low-cost electricity to the city and surrounding Kittitas County following it...
Known for grand-scale public artworks at outdoor sites around the country, Ellensburg artist Richard C. Elliott (1945-2008) turned the common bicycle reflector into a sophisticated art medium. He desi...
A retired municipal bond lawyer, James R. Ellis never held public office, never headed a major corporation, and was never rich. Yet, as a citizen activist for more than half a century, he left a bigge...
John Ellis, former head of Bellevue-based Puget Sound Power and Light (now Puget Sound Energy), is best known for leading the effort to keep the Mariners in Seattle and build the team a new baseball s...
Elmer S. Yates (b. 1917) was raised in the Rainier Valley and attended Franklin High School. He went to sea and became a ship's captain. In 1996, he wrote to the Rainier Valley Historical Society from...
Elmer Yates (b. 1917) was raised in the Rainier Valley and attended Franklin High School. He went to sea and became a ship's captain. In 1996, he wrote to the Rainier Valley Historical Society from hi...
Elmer Yates (b. 1917) was raised in the Rainier Valley and graduated from Franklin High School in 1934. He went to sea and became a ship's captain. In about 1996, he wrote to the Rainier Valley Histor...
A lawyer by trade, Jim Ellis (1921-2019) was a civic activist who helped transform Seattle into one of America's great cities. One of his contemporaries was Emmett Watson (1918-2001), a Seattle newspa...
Often referred to as the patriarch of Snohomish, Emory C. Ferguson (1833-1911) was a pioneer who followed the same routes as many early adventurers who came West in the late 1850s. He first searched f...