History told like it should be. Short reads about real people, real events, and how they shaped Washington.
Five hundred years ago, a mudslide swallowed a Makah whaling village whole. When it was uncovered in 1970, everything was still there. Fifty five thousand artifacts sealed under ten feet of mud.
Read →For fifteen thousand years, it was the center of the world. The largest trading hub on the continent. Then they drowned it in six hours.
Read →Captain George Vancouver spent three years mapping a coastline he would never see again. He named the tallest peak after a friend who never visited.
Coming soonThe Lewis and Clark expedition nearly fell apart multiple times. The person who kept it alive was a teenage Shoshone mother carrying an infant on her back. She was paid nothing.
Read →In 1858, they hanged Chief Leschi for murder. His executioner said afterward, "I felt then I was hanging an innocent man, and I believe it yet." It took 146 years for a court to agree.
Read →In December 1854, Governor Stevens chose Christmas weekend on purpose. Fewer witnesses. What he put on the table at Medicine Creek would reshape the Pacific Northwest forever.
Coming soonMarcus and Narcissa Whitman built a mission to save the Cayuse. When measles swept through the valley and killed half the tribe, the Cayuse looked at the one man treating the sick and reached a conclusion that made perfect sense to them.
Read →President Harrison had two statehood proclamations to sign. He shuffled them so nobody would ever know which came first. Washington became a state on November 11, 1889. Nobody still knows which Dakota was first.
Read →On June 6, 1889, a cabinet maker's glue pot caught fire. By nightfall, twenty-five blocks were gone. Then Seattle did something nobody expected: it decided this was actually good news.
Read →When the Northern Pacific chose Tacoma over Seattle, it started a rivalry that shaped both cities for the next century.
Coming soonIn 1897, a steamship pulled into Seattle carrying a literal ton of gold. The city made more money selling shovels than most miners made digging.
Coming soonIn February 1919, sixty five thousand workers walked off the job in the first general strike in American history. For five days, they ran the city themselves.
Read →In 1916, a lumber baron built his first airplane in a boathouse on Lake Union. The company he started in that barn would become the largest employer in Washington.
Coming soonWhen Seattle burned their homes, they dug into the ground and stayed. The story of Jesse Jackson, the concrete pits, and the city that twelve hundred forgotten men built on the waterfront.
Read →Grand Coulee took eight years to build. When it was done, it was the largest concrete structure in the country. Woody Guthrie was paid $266.66 to write songs about it.
Coming soonIn 1942, every person of Japanese descent on the West Coast was ordered to report for relocation. In Washington, over twelve thousand people lost their homes, their businesses, and their freedom.
Read →In 1943, the government built a city in eastern Washington and told no one what it was for. Fifty one thousand people lived there without knowing they were building an atomic bomb.
Read →On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. A geologist named David Johnston radioed six words. The blast reached him six seconds later.
Read →Billy Frank Jr. was arrested for fishing for the first time at age fourteen. He would be arrested more than fifty times before a federal judge proved him right.
Read →Seattle got its first Major League Baseball team in 1969. By 1970, it was gone. The story of the Seattle Pilots, the worst stadium in baseball, and a truck in Utah waiting for directions.
Read →On October 8, 1995, Edgar Martinez hit a two-run double in the bottom of the eleventh inning that saved baseball in Seattle. Dave Niehaus screamed the most famous call in Mariners history.
Read →In 1994, a man quit his Wall Street job and drove to Seattle to sell books out of his garage. The company he started there would reshape the city that gave it a home.
Coming soonIn the early 1970s, Boeing laid off sixty thousand workers and Seattle's economy collapsed so completely that someone put up a billboard near the airport.
Coming soonSeattle kept losing its teams. It kept fighting to get new ones. In 2021, it finally got a team that felt like it belonged.
Coming soon