On November 5, 1878, Klickitat County residents vote to move the county seat from its temporary location on a farm near Rockland Flats to the recently established town of Goldendale. Despite oppositi...
The opening of a post office is an important marker of the beginning of a community. The Milton Post Office is established on December 3, 1878. Walter D. Cotton is the first postmaster. The post offic...
On December 10, 1878, the first bill for Washington statehood is introduced in the United States Congress.
On November 14, 1879, the first bicycle ever seen in Washington Territory arrives in Seattle aboard a steamer from San Francisco via Portland.
In 1879, African American Al Freeman opens a boot and shoe store on 1st Avenue. His advertisement states, "Boots and shoes of all kind made to measure at reasonable prices. Repairing neatly, cheaply a...
On January 14, 1879, residents of Colfax vote to incorporate. The vote is 77 for, 27 against. The town had grown rapidly since 1870, when James Perkins and Thomas Smith first selected the site as th...
On February 1, 1879, the City of Seattle unveils a new Gould steam fire-engine pump. In a parade through downtown, the Seattle Cornet Band leads a procession of Seattle volunteer firefighters in their...
On February 12, 1879, about two weeks after the City of Seattle acquires a new steam fire engine, it is put to its first test. At 5:45 a.m. a fire is noticed on Washington Street near Second Street (r...
On April 5, 1879, Fort Vancouver, in Clark County, is renamed Vancouver Barracks. This army post will become the oldest on the West Coast and the most historic in the Northwest. Vancouver Barracks wi...
On June 20, 1879, the last tree along the Seattle waterfront is cut down. The tree (the sources do not reveal what kind) is located just north of Pike Street.
On July 14, 1879, voters elect Orange Jacobs (1827-1914), a Republican, as mayor of the City of Seattle.
On July 26, 1879, a fire breaks out in American House, a low-rent hotel located near the shore of Elliott Bay at Mill Street (now Yesler Way). Within minutes the flames spread in all directions, consu...
On August 3, 1879, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nisqually Augustin Magliore Alexander Blanchet (1797-1887) blesses the cornerstone of St. Mary's Hospital in Walla Walla. The hospital emerged out of St...
On October 4, 1879, James Freed purchases 80 acres from the federal government in what would become the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle. The following year, Benjamin Freed purchases 160 acres. T...
On November 14, 1879, the Washington Territorial Legislature incorporates the Klickitat County city of Goldendale in South Central Washington. The newly incorporated town consists of 480 acres of land...
On November 24, 1879, the Squire's Opera House, Seattle's first theater, opens. The evening’s event, sponsored by women from Congregational Church, features popular music, pantomime...
On November 25, 1879, George Stillman Richardson (ca. 1847-1915) receives his official land patent from the United States government for his property on the south end of Lopez Island in the San Juan I...
In 1880, Dr. Marcel M. Pietrzyski (Pit rus kee) (1843-1910) settles in Dayton, the county seat of Columbia County. A Polish immigrant, Pietrzyski will become an important and influential physician and...
On January 5, 1880, the Big Snow of 1880 begins to fall just after the territorial governor's State of the Territory report assures the world that "ice and snow are almost unknown in Washington Territ...
In 1880, Jacob Weinhard arrives in the town of Dayton to start a brewery. Nephew of the Portland brewer Henry Weinhard, he traveled north from Portland where he had worked as his uncle's foreman. Dayt...
On May 4, 1880, several dozen commercial fishermen, between 200 and 350 by some accounts, drown in a gale off the mouth of the Columbia River. The small boats are from the Columbia River and Shoalwate...
The 10th Decennial Census, taken in 1880, illustrated the beginning of the phenomenal growth that first Washington Territory, and after November 1889, Washington state, would experience in the last de...
On July 12, 1880, voters elect Republican Leonard P. Smith as mayor of the City of Seattle.
In July 1880, Victor E. Tull of the Black Diamond Coal Mining Co. of California finds high-quality coal deposits on the Green River in east King County. Lower-quality coal had been noted in the area n...