Historylink

This Week Then: Four King County Cities Celebrate Birthdays

This Week Then: Four King County Cities Celebrate Birthdays

Plus: The start of the Columbia Basin Reclamation Project

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Cities Start to Grow Four King County cities share a birthday this week on August 31. On that day in 1995 Shoreline incorporated. Homesteaded in the 1890s, the community grew slowly over the years until the completion of Interstate 5. The resulting growth led its…

This Week Then: King County’s Worst Coal-mining Disaster

This Week Then: King County’s Worst Coal-mining Disaster

Plus: How UPS got started

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Fires Below One hundred and twenty-five years ago this week, on August 24, 1894, fire broke out in the Oregon Improvement Company’s coal mine at Franklin, a small coal town southeast of Black Diamond. The men working below rushed to the main shaft, desperate to…

This Week Then: Ross Dam in Whatcom County Turns 70

This Week Then: Ross Dam in Whatcom County Turns 70

Plus: Looking back on the first long-distance endurance flight

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Power and Light Seventy years ago this week, on August 18, 1949, Seattle City Light completed work on Ross Dam, located on the Skagit River in Whatcom County. The dam and Ross Lake, which was created by rising waters behind the structure, were named in…

This Week Then: Long Beach Turns 98

This Week Then: Long Beach Turns 98

Plus: The story behind King County's name

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Oceanside Bounty On January 18, 1922, Long Beach incorporated in Pacific County, more than a century after Captain William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled to the site on a well-trodden Indian trail and carved his name into the side of a tree….

This Week Then: The History of Skiing in the Cascade Mountains

This Week Then: The History of Skiing in the Cascade Mountains

Plus: Seattle's Fisherman's Terminal turns 106

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Out for a Ski This week Historylink takes to the slopes with a look at the history of skiing in the Cascade Mountains. The sport first became popular here in the 1910s, mainly due to the efforts of The Mountaineers, who opened a ski lodge…

This Week Then: How Seattle Children's Hospital Got Its Start

This Week Then: How Seattle Children’s Hospital Got Its Start

Plus: Six Washington cities celebrate birthdays

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Bighearted On January 4, 1907, Anna Clise and 23 of her affluent women friends came together to found the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital Association. Nine years earlier, Clise and her husband, James, had lost their 5-year-old son to inflammatory rheumatism. Seattle had no physicians or hospitals…

This Week Then: Seattle Seahawks Celebrate 45 Years

This Week Then: Seattle Seahawks Celebrate 45 Years

The team got off to a slow start, winning only two of 14 games their first year

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Cheer for the Home Team Forty-five years ago this week, on December 5, 1974, the Seattle Seahawks got their start — a half-century after the Anacortes Sea Hawks first took the name — when a group of Seattle businessmen led by the Nordstrom family was awarded an…

This Week Then: Seattle Turns 150

This Week Then: Seattle Turns 150

Plus: Remembering WTO

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. A City on the Go Happy birthday, Seattle! One hundred and fifty years ago this week, on December 2, 1869, the city was officially incorporated by the Washington Territorial Legislature — but getting there was no easy task. Eighteen years earlier, the Denny Party arrived near Alki Point on…

This Week Then: Famous Washington State Bigfoot Sightings

This Week Then: Famous Washington State Bigfoot Sightings

Plus: The mystery behind D.B. Cooper

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. In the Woods Fifty years ago this week, on November 24, 1969, Sasquatch tracks were discovered in Stevens County, renewing searches for the legendary but elusive cryptid. Sasquatch sightings in Washington date back to the 1800s, when fur trappers and loggers claimed to have seen…

This Week Then: Looking Back on Notable Floods in Western Washington

This Week Then: Looking Back on Notable Floods in Western Washington

Plus: Remembering Douglas Q. Barnett, founder of Black Arts/West

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. The Rains Came November is here, and in Western Washington that usually means wet weather. On November 16, 1897, massive flooding in Snohomish County began destroying access to the town of Monte Cristo, eventually putting an end to the community’s mining boom. And on November…

This Week Then: Saying Farewell to King County Civic Leader Jim Ellis

This Week Then: Saying Farewell to King County Civic Leader Jim Ellis

The 'father of Metro' leaves behind a vast legacy including the creation of the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle and the cleanup of the badly polluted Lake Washington

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Farewell, Jim Ellis King County lost perhaps its greatest visionary this week when civic leader Jim Ellis died at the age of 98. Although Ellis never held public office, he devoted most of his adult life to public service, dreaming of ways to strengthen and…

This Week Then: Seattle Fire Department Turns 130

This Week Then: Seattle Fire Department Turns 130

The department was created just months after Seattle's Great Fire

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. Fire Fights One hundred and thirty years ago this week, on October 17, 1889, the Seattle Fire Department was created, just a few months after the devastating fire that turned most of the city’s downtown into “a horrible black smudge.” Gardner Kellogg, a volunteer firefighter…

This Week Then: Celebrating the New Burke Museum

This Week Then: Celebrating the New Burke Museum

Plus: Dig into Washington Archaeology Month

This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter. The New Burke This week HistoryLink gives a rousing cheer to the Burke Museum — Washington’s premier repository of natural history and cultural heritage — and looks forward to visiting its new home, which opens on October 12. Located on the northwest corner of the…

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