Topic: Maritime
Washington has 75 public port districts, more than any other state. Each is an independent government body, run by commissioners elected by local voters. They operate major marine terminals and small ...
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, located adjacent to the city of Bremerton on Sinclair Inlet, was established in 1891. It was the first dry-dock and repair facility in the Northwest capable of handling the...
For more than 50 years, the Puget Sound Navigation Company (PSN) carried goods and passengers between towns in Washington and British Columbia. PSN was founded by Walter Oakes, Charles Enoch Peabody, ...
Between 1891 and 1950, sailing schooners based in Seattle, Poulsbo, and Anacortes fished cod in the Bering Sea and Alaskan waters. Famous vessels included the Lizzie Colby, Joseph Russ, C S Holmes, Ch...
Captain William Renton was a lumber and shipping merchant, at first based in San Francisco, who established a sawmill on Puget Sound in 1852. In 1863, he relocated to Blakely Harbor, Bainbridge Island...
Robinson Point Light Station (also known as Point Robinson) is situated on the easternmost point of Maury Island, a 36.7 square mile extension of Vashon Island, in southwest King County. It marks the ...
The Salmon Bank is a submerged shelf located off the southern shore of San Juan Island along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Created by the advance and retreat of the continental ice sheet, the shelf's sh...
Pacific salmon have long symbolized the Northwest’s natural abundance and form a cornerstone of the region's culture and economy. Environmental and economic changes since the nineteenth century ...
For centuries, salmon have been intrinsic to the culture and subsistence of the Native peoples of King County. For Lushootseed-speaking groups living along rivers and streams where salmon spawn in the...
The San Juan archipelago between Canada's Vancouver Island and the Washington mainland has long been a favored hideout and transfer point for smugglers attempting to bring goods and people into the Un...
Prohibition, a noble experiment that went wrong, generated a thriving black market for liquor in Washington. Along the waterways of the Pacific Northwest, a new breed of ...
Seafair, the gala annual Seattle-King County water festival, began in August 1950 and continues to this day. The festival erupts all over King County and has included hydroplane speed competitions, li...
In this excerpt from his unpublished autobiography, Jim Douglas (1909-2005) recalls the many steps involved in coordinating Seafair. Jim Douglas was one of a group of local citizens called together by...
Seattle's waterfront is a natural location for an aquarium, and proposals to build one go back many years, though it wasn't until a Forward Thrust bond issue was approved in 1968 that funds were alloc...
Coast Salish Indians fished, hunted, and gathered shellfish along Elliott Bay for millennia before May 1792, when European sailors first gazed at the site of present-day Seattle. Sixty years later, U....
Bob Davidson is the President and CEO of Seattle Aquarium. In this recording he discusses the history of the aquarium and how it dovetails with the wider history of Seattle's waterfront. He also expla...
Gerry Johnson has been a central figure in the planning and redevelopment of Seattle's central waterfront as a board member with Friends of Waterfront Seattle. According to its website, the "Friends,"...
Jason Toft is a Principal Research Scientist in the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. In these audio cuts he speaks to HistoryLink’s Jennifer Ott and Domin...
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...
Valerie Segrest is a nutritionist and food sovereignty advocate. An enrolled member of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, she's also co-founder of Tahoma Peak Solutions, working to organize tribal communit...
The Seattle Yacht Club, at 1807 E Hamlin Street on Portage Bay in the Montlake neighborhood, has been a Seattle institution for well more than a century. First founded, briefly, in 1879, its existence...
The Skansie Shipbuilding Company, formerly located at 3207 Harborview Drive, Gig Harbor, in western Pierce County, was a South Sound shipbuilding powerhouse in the 1910s and 1920s. Established in 1912...
David E. "Ned" Skinner, II and his wife Katherine (LaGasa) "Kayla" Skinner were individually prominent in Seattle's civic affairs beginning in the 1940s, contributing their income, their influence, an...
The Smith Island Lighthouse was located at the far eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, approximately five-and-a-half miles west of Whidbey Island. It became operational in 1858 and served the i...