Topic: Government & Politics
Jared Smith was the Head of Transportation, Policy and Planning for the City of Seattle when the Nisqually earthquake hit in 2001. He worked for the city and as an independent consultant througho...
Maggie Walker, chair of Friends of Waterfront Seattle, joined former Seattle Mayor and fellow committee member Charley Royer on July 23, 2022, to talk about how they designed the process around reimag...
Marshall Foster has helped shape Seattle's reimagined waterfront as the city's director of the Office of Waterfront and Civic Projects. In this 2022 interview with HistoryLink's Dominic Black and...
Mike McGinn (b. 1959) served as Mayor of Seattle from 2009 to 2013. In this 2022 interview with HistoryLink's Dominic Black and Jennifer Ott, McGinn discusses his early political influences, his views...
Paula Hammond was Washington State Secretary of Transportation from August 2007 to March 2013. She was appointed by Governor Christine Gregoire. In these audio clips she outlines her early experi...
Sally Bagshaw (b. 1951) served on the Seattle City Council during a period when debate was raging about how to replace the damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct. As Bagshaw relates in these conversations with J...
In 1973, Seattle passed a 1 Percent for Art ordinance, which sets aside 1 percent of capital-improvement-project funds for the commission, purchase, and installation of artworks in a variety of settin...
This essay by Adam C. Eisenberg on Seattle's first female patrol officers hired and trained to be cops on the beat equal to men (nine women hired in 1976), originally appeared in the Seattle Post-Inte...
Creation of Seattle's Little City Halls, now formally known as Neighborhood Service Centers (NSC), was inspired by a 1972 trip to Boston by aides to Mayor Wes Uhlman. The early program, while popular ...
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...
The natural harbor of Elliott Bay offered a wealth of resources to the settlers who came to its shores in the 1850s to build Seattle into a city. Its deep waters provided ample space for ships to anch...
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a profound shift in thinking about Seattle's central waterfront. As the central business district struggled with declining customers and community groups advocated f...
Beginning in the early 1970s, when Buster Simpson camped out in buildings about to be demolished in downtown Seattle and made art out of the readily available materials in his rapidly changing ecologi...
Ron Sims spent more than 20 years in King County government, first as a member of the King County Council elected in 1985 and then as King County Executive since 1996. Sims guided the county governmen...
Smallpox struck New Tacoma, a recently platted town encompassing much of what later became downtown Tacoma, in October 1881. The outbreak sickened an official count of 80 people and killed 14 by the t...
Sam Smith was the first black person to be elected to the Seattle City Council and the second black State Legislator from King County. He has been credited with helping to bridge the political and cul...
The son of a Kelso barber, Sid Snyder eventually rose up to establish himself as a well-loved small-town grocer, a savvy real-estate investor, and a millionaire bank founder. In addition, he gained st...
U.S. Army veteran David Sohappy Sr. (1925-1991) was a Wanapum fishing activist who became the center of a national controversy involving government regulators and tribal fishers in the Pacific Northwe...
Helen Sommers was elected as a Democrat in November 1972 to represent Seattle's 36th District in the state House of Representatives. She won re-election 17 consecutive times over the next 36 years, wa...
Sound Transit is a regional transit agency serving King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties with light rail, commuter rail, and express-bus service. Officially called the Central Puget Sound Regional Tran...
This essay surveys the development of Seattle's South Lake Union and Cascade communities from 1854 to 2003, with emphasis on visions for its future including Virgil Bogue's 1911 Plan of Seattle, the 1...
John D. Spellman was the first King County Executive and later served as governor of Washington. Elected Executive in 1969, shortly after the County's Home Rule Charter created the position, Spellman ...
The long career of John Spellman (1926-2018) in local and state politics began in 1967 when he was elected a King County Commissioner. His term overlapped the controversial Forward Thrust capital impr...
Bernice Stern devoted much of her life to public service, starting at age 15, and was the first woman elected to the King County Council, where she served for 11 years, retiring in 1980. Before and af...