Topic: Industry
The history of coal in Puget Sound is tied to the development and expansion of the railroad in the West. Locomotives burned coal, and coal, which is heavy and bulky, could not be transported without t...
Through the middle of the twentieth century, when hundreds of coal miners worked the coal mines of eastern King and Pierce counties, the annual Coal Miners' Picnic was a highlight of the summer for mi...
East Pierce County's Carbon River coal district was once dotted with a dozen small mining communities. Wilkeson, Carbonado, South Prairie, and Burnett survived, but Fairfax, Manley-Moore, Melmont, Mon...
Reef-net fishing technology is unique to the Salish Sea, where it was devised at least 1,800 years ago as a way to intercept vast midsummer runs of sockeye salmon as they passed through the San Juans ...
Coast Salish peoples of the San Juan Islands and southern Gulf Islands used their unique reef-net fishing technology to harvest large quantities of sockeye salmon as the fish passed through the island...
Scottish-born James Murray Colman arrived in Seattle in 1872 at the age of 40 to lease and operate Yesler's sawmill. Colman was a prime mover in organizing the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad after...
The town of Concrete in northern Skagit County is located on the Skagit River at the mouth of the Baker River. Nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Range, Concrete is known as the gateway to the No...
Mining and railroad magnate, Daniel Chase Corbin ranks as a major shaper of the growth and prosperity of Spokane, the economic and geographic center of the Inland Northwest. He settled in Spokane in ...
The craft-beer boom in Washington officially began in the 1980s, though its origins can be traced to early hop farms that were first planted here over a hundred years ago. It's a saga that involves an...
A portion of the area known as Ravensdale in southeast King County was once called Danville. Located on the south side of the Summit-Landsburg Road, Danville lies in the Cedar River valley just below ...
This reminiscence of childhood in the King County coalmining town of Durham was written by Nina Elizabeth "Betty" (Morris) Falk in 1990-1991. Betty Morris (Falk), was born on March 26, 1920, in Tacoma...
After World War II, a trend toward consolidating schools into larger districts with more modern, standardized facilities created business opportunities for industrial manufacturers. Among these, Educa...
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...
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...
This People's History reproduces a June 1, 1914 article from The Ranch, a south King County magazine, describing some of the emerging cooperatively-owned businesses in the Enumclaw area. At the time, ...
George Watkin Evans was a pioneering mining engineer in Washington who spent much of his career studying and documenting the state's coal-mining industry. This People's History of Evans's life and wor...
Planned with a diverse economy in the 1890s and again in the early 1900s, Everett was soon dominated by lumbering, logging and shingle production, with commercial fishing and boatbuilding adding subst...
The Everett Massacre of Sunday, November 5, 1916, has been called the bloodiest labor confrontation in Northwest history. On that day a group of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as Wo...
There have been nearly 160 flour mills in the state of Washington. In 1870 there were 22,573 in the United States. Why were there so many mills, and where did they all go? Why should we be interested?...
Despite the rainy reputation of the Pacific Northwest, fire has figured prominently in the natural and economic history of the region. Fire was once a natural part of the environment, and Native Ameri...
This People's History consists of contemporary newspaper accounts of the Franklin Mine Disaster of August 24,1894, and portions of the investigative report by the official state mines inspector. With ...
The now-abandoned mining town of Franklin on the Green River in Southeast King County just east of Black Diamond grew up in the 1880s around mines extracting coal from the many coal seams in the Green...
The waterfront of Friday Harbor, now the county seat and only incorporated town in San Juan County, has served as a sheltered access to San Juan Island from the early days of human occupation of the a...
Furniture manufacturing was a key industry in Tacoma for nearly a century. By the late nineteenth century much of the Pierce County city's economy was built on the lumber industry. The availability of...