Topic: People's Histories
In May 1970, Seattle (along with much of the nation) was in the midst of weeks of protests that erupted when U.S. forces entered Cambodia on May 1. Protests escalated after National Guardsmen fired on...
In this reminiscence, Dorothea (Pfister) Nordstrand (1916-2011) relates the story of how she learned to drive in Seattle. The year was 1936, just 36 years after the first auto arrived in Seattle in 19...
Eric Johnston (1895-1961) was a Spokane businessman, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, and an appointed official in the Truman and Eisenhowe...
This is a contemporary report on the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Washington's first world's fair. The exposition took place between June 1 and October 16, 1909, drawing more than three million pe...
This history of Harborview Medical Center and its predecessor hospitals by Josephine Ensign, who teaches health policy and health humanities at the University of Washington, is part of her larger work...
In 1954 three Klineburger brothers -- Gene (b.1920), Bert (b.1926), and Chris (b.1927) -- bought the Jonas Brothers taxidermy studio in Seattle and by the early 1960s turned it into one of the largest...
In the spring of 1859, after five years of study and survey, the U.S. War Department appropriated funds for the construction of a military wagon road between Fort Walla Walla in Washington Territory a...
The mountain wilderness that rims the Puget Sound Basin has beckoned adventurous residents since the late 1800s. Hiking, backpacking, and mountain and rock climbing grew steadily there until Worl...
This is the story of a "working man," Joseph Pfister (1883-1947), born in Wisconsin to immigrants from Switzerland, and his wife, Mary (Gierhofer) Pfister (1888-1962), born in Austria and brought to A...
This story was published in the Tacoma Ledger on November 13, 1892. It was submitted by Liz Russell. Nancy Russell Thomas was born on September 15, 1832, in Ashland, Ohio. She came west with her paren...
This account of life at a Cedar Falls railroad camp (in east King County) was originally recorded on June 15, 1993 as a part of the Cedar River Watershed Oral History Project. Dorothy Graybael Scott m...
Dr. Carl Schlicke, M.D., wrote this article about Spokane surgeon Dr. William Witten Robinson, M.D. (1897-1957), whose career and practice were almost destroyed in 1929 when he testified against anoth...
This reminiscence by Vern Nordstrand (1918-2009) is about a club formed by a few seniors at Ballard High School, located in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, in 1937. Vern Nordstrand worked at Boei...
Alfred Schillestad, son of Seattle pioneer Ole Schillestad, left a unique visual record of early life along the shores of Salmon Bay in the sketchbooks he created as young man. Two of Alfred Schillest...
This recollection of the history of The Seattle Repertory Theatre was written by Douglas Q. Barnett (1931-2019), a theater person who witnessed first hand the trials and tribulations of The Rep in its...
In February 1970, a group of young Vietnam war protestors calling themselves the Seattle Liberation Front found themselves in legal hot water when they were charged with inciting a riot through the st...
This speech on the history of the Seattle Waterfront Streetcar was given in 1992 by the streetcar's advocate and founder, George Benson, who was then president of the Seattle City Council. He presente...
Kenneth Knoll was 12 years old when the influenza epidemic came to Spokane. This catastrophic event so impressed him that he felt compelled to describe it 70 years later. His essay is based mainly on ...
Robert A. Clark authored two books and numerous magazine articles dealing with the Old West. He operates Arthur H. Clark Company, in Spokane, publishers of books on the American frontier experience. H...
This account of the strange journey of Willie Keil (1836-1855) over the Oregon Trail was written by Dorothea Nordstrand (1916-2011) and first appeared in Adventure West in November 1994.
Ralph Munro served as Secretary of State from 1980 to 2001. This story of the chandelier in the Capitol Building in Olympia also involves another person, Jack Metcalf (1927-2007), a Washington state s...
The Ulin family arrived in Seattle in 1869, and Erick Ulin Sr. worked as a ship carpenter. The Spray family arrived in 1875. Carl Wade, third cousin to the Sprays, contributed this account of these tw...
This is an exerpt from an interview with Dotty DeCoster conducted by HistoryLink's Heather MacIntosh in April 2000. DeCoster was an outspoken member of the Women's Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
This remembrance of the poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) was written by one of his former students, James Knisely. Knisely is author of a novel, Chance, An Existential Horse Opera (Mwynhad Press, 200...