Washington Our Home

I am proud to announce the publication of my new book, Exploring Maritime Washington—a History and Guide. Each of the places covered in its pages has a connection to Washington’s maritime history, whether a popular tourist destination or a hidden gem known only to longtime locals. Exploring Maritime Washington provides visitors with a fun and easy way to enjoy each community while learning about Washington’s nautical history. By visiting and experiencing Washington’s special maritime features—museums, ships, lighthouses, waterfronts and all—the heritage traveler can obtain an authentic understanding of maritime Washington’s diverse history and culture.

This historical travel guidebook seeks to provide Washington residents as well as visitors from near and far a more comprehensive, inclusive picture and understanding of the maritime heritage of Washington. It's been nearly two years in the making, but thanks to the efforts of my co-author, maritime historian and author Chuck Fowler, and all the good people at The History Press, the book is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, The History Press's website, and as many gift shops and bookstores as you can find along the Washington state coastline.

In 2019, Congress designated nearly 3,000 miles of Washington's immense coastline as a National Heritage Area…one of only 55 in the country, but the only one to focus exclusively on maritime history and heritage. National Heritage Areas are places where natural, cultural, and historic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally important landscape. They are locally run and completely non-regulatory. NHAs can support historic preservation, economic development, natural resource conservation, recreation, heritage tourism, and educational projects.

And why shouldn't it be a special heritage area? Within Washington's protected waterways, you can find a treasure trove of seafaring stories beginning with this area's original inhabitants, through the period of European-American exploration, settlement, growth, and on up to today's high-tech working waterfronts. The book, Exploring Maritime Washington, is as much authoritative historical narrative as it is indispensable travel guide. It's divided into five sections: Central Puget Sound, North Puget Sound, South Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula and the Columbia River.

While the Maritime Washington National Heritage Area covers nearly 3,000 miles of Washington’s coastline from the Canadian border down to Grays Harbor County, it doesn’t fully extend into the Columbia River—and there's a good reason for that. While stakeholders were planning the Maritime Washington National Heritage Area, Columbia River counties in Washington and Oregon were strategizing on creating a heritage area of their own; the Columbia-Pacific National Heritage Area. These efforts unfolded simultaneously, until plans for the Columbia-Pacific Area met resistance and were unable to move forward, ultimately leaving Washington's Pacific County out of the Maritime Washington National Heritage Area. My book, however, does include Pacific, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz and Clark Counties...basically as far upriver as tidal activity is still measurable.

The five sections in the book each contain Hub Cities from which maritime explorers may choose to venture out to other destinations, like spokes extending from the hub of a wheel. I'm going to tell you some of my favorite stories from each section, beginning with the Central Puget Sound, which includes destinations such as the Museum of History and Industry, the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center, Mukilteo Lighthouse Park, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the Poulsbo Maritime Museum, and many more.

Central Puget Sound

Installed in 1974, just in time for the World's Fair Exposition in Spokane, Washington, this iconic structure has delighted children and adults visiting the Inland Northwest for generations—but it isn't the canted pavilion that once marked the US presence at the fair, or the gondola across Spokane Falls that takes visitors so close they can feel the spray on their faces, or even the German beer garden facility that now houses the 1909 Looff Carrousel (which is on the National Register of Historic Places). No, those destinations in Riverfront Park are amazing remnants of a global event that drew 5,187,826 visitors, including US presidents, foreign dignitaries, and Hollywood stars. Those icons, still in use today, are enthralling…the one we're talking about, some might say, kind of sucks.

Spokane's famous Garbage Goat has kept its corner of the park free of debris for nearly 50 years. I happen to have a long relationship with the burnished Bovidae. Growing up in Spokane, we often visited our voracious friend…taking pictures, goofing around, and searching for anything we could possibly find to satiate its never-ending hunger. And when we ran out of trash, nearby leaves and sticks would fall victim to the goat. And sometimes…once in a great while…Spokane's garbage goat would even suck the mitten right off some poor unsuspecting child's hand.

To really tell the story right, we have to go back to the early 1960s, when Seattle held its Century 21 World's Fair exposition in 1962. I'll cover that story in a future podcast episode for sure, but for now let's just remember that the fair was a huge success, bringing nearly 10 million people, revitalizing Seattle's economic and cultural life, and leaving behind the Space Needle, the monorail, several sports venues and performing arts buildings, and—unlike some other world's fairs of its era—making a profit for the city. By comparison, little old Spokane wasn't sure it could duplicate the success of its westside counterpart. But hey…if you're going to dream, dream big!

The theme of the 1974 World's Fair was Ecology, and every pavilion—from the USSR to the Japanese, the South Koreans to Canada, Australia, Iran, West Germany, and the Philippines—all of them were focused on some sort of environmental theme. And a more fitting location for an environmental fair would be hard to find, what with the natural beauty of the Spokane River cutting right through the middle of the festivities, and the falls creating a constant cacophony of environmental ambiance.

On May 4, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon presided over the opening of Expo '74, the Spokane World's Fair. Spokane's population at that time was about 170,000, making it the smallest city ever to host a world's fair. When Nixon formally declared the Fair open, officials released 50,000 balloons into the sky (which is funny, given the Fair's environmental theme. Lord only knows where those ended up; they don't just vanish, after all).

Portions of the speech made by President Richard Nixon at the Opening Ceremony. Footage courtesy of Dr. Larry Cebula, edited by Anna Harbine. Information from Cory Carpenter, “When Nixon Came to the Fair,” Spokane Historical, accessed March 5, 2023, https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/384.

To make room for the US Pavilion, the iconic structure that still looms large over Riverfront Park today, city officials had to tear down the historic 1902 Great Northern railroad depot on Havermale Island. The only remnant that remained from Spokane's earliest railroad days is the 155-foot-tall clock tower, which quickly became another beloved piece of Spokane's downtown skyline.

In the years leading up to the '74 world's fair, most of the Spokane community was either dead set against it or totally committe...

Before there were roads around the Puget Sound region, there were rivers. Before the stagecoaches, there were Salish canoes. And before the planes, the trains, and the automobiles...there was the water, and the ships that traveled upon it. In the earliest days of human habitation in what is now Washington State, the fastest way to get from place to place around the Salish Sea was by paddling a canoe, whether to find a quiet spot to fish, hunt down a whale, race for bragging rights, visit and trade with neighboring tribes, or mount a seaborne offense to help secure your way of life.

When Spanish, British and later American explorers first entered what is now known as Puget Sound, they brought with them massive, tall ships capable of carrying armies across oceans. Aboard these tall ships were small ships, like gigs and other types of rowboats, which soon became more prevalent upon the water after settlement by the first non-natives in the region. As more and more settlers took root in the area, the need for better boats led to the development of steam vessels – some with propellers, some with paddlewheels, and all designed primarily to move people and goods back and forth across the inland sea. At first, enterprising entrepreneurs obtained a boat and began ferrying folks for a small fee. As their profits grew, they built bigger and faster steamships to carry more people, food and supplies, cattle and machinery. By the 1860s, there were hundreds of steamers crisscrossing the Puget Sound, every day, all day. There were, in fact, so many ships upon the water at any given time, that an article in the Tacoma Daily Ledger on February 21, 1889, implied that when viewed from a lofty point, the fleet looked like a swarm of mosquitos skimming over the green waters of the Sound.

And the nickname stuck. No one knows for certain how many ships were considered part of the Mosquito Fleet during its boom period between the 1880s and the 1920s, but estimates range from around 700 to as high as 2,500. In the time before roads and extensive rail lines, these vessels were the threads that helped knit together our communities. Each one of those ships has a unique and fascinating story to tell, but most are lost to history. In fact, there are only two that still remain in existence today.

Numbering in the hundreds (to possibly thousands), an A-to-Z list of just some of the Mosquito Fleet ships from the HistoryLink website includes names like the Alida, Black Prince, C.C. Calkins, Dix, Elwood, Flyer, George E. Starr, Hyak, Inland Flyer, Josephine, Katahdin, L.T. Haas, Maude, Nisqually, Otter, Potlatch, Quick Step, Rosalie, State of Washington, Telegraph, Urania, Verona, West Seattle, Xanthus, Yellow Jacket, and Zephyr.

But let's begin at the beginning.

In 1836, the reliance on wind and human energy to power boats lessened when steam-powered transportation reached Puget Sound in the form of a legendary 101-foot-long vessel, the Beaver.

It was built in London for the Hudson's Bay Company as a paddle wheeler, then converted to a sailing ship to travel to the United States, then converted back to a paddle wheeler once it reached the North American west coast. Over the next several decades, the Beaver plied the Sound, carrying goods, people, and machinery. The Beaver served trading posts maintained by the Hudson's Bay Company between the Columbia River and Alaska, then belonging to Russia, and played an important role in helping maintain British control over the region.

In 1874, the HBC sold the Beaver to the British Columbia Towing and Transportation Company which used it as a towboat until 1888 – when an inebriated crew ran her aground on rocks near Vancouver, Canada. The wreck remained on the rocks until 1892 when the wake of a passing steamer final...

Boasting a population of just under 500, the small community of Wilkeson, Washington, lies in the heart of Pierce County's Carbon River Valley. Once a lively and vibrant mining community, it has withstood the test of time…despite seeing an end to its primary economic driver. But rather than resign itself to a fate of joining the ranks of dozens of other ghost towns throughout the state, Wilkeson has endured. And its residents have turned what was once an industrial eyesore into a unique and fascinating historical attraction that helps bolster Wilkeson's blue-collar heritage. Join me as we blast, drill, and dig deep into the earth to discover the gritty, sweat-soaked story of Wilkeson. We'll remember the town's last living coal miner, and we'll see how residents today are turning their past into a promising future.

There are hundreds of different museums scattered far and wide across Washington state. Many of them are focused on the history of their particular city, county, or region. Others feature arguably some of the most interesting, thought-provoking, and unique art and sculpture in the world. And a few have captured more of a niche area, showcasing things like robots, quilts, and puppets.

But the thing that binds these varied institutions together is that most of them are members of the Washington Museum Association, a nonprofit organization first conceptualized in 1979. Holding its inaugural meeting the following year in Ellensburg, Washington, the Washington Museum Association was established to represent and serve museums of all types and sizes throughout the state.

The Washington Museum Association (affectionately known as "WaMA") is operated through the efforts of an all-volunteer board of museum professionals and supporters from across Washington. It has held an annual conference nearly every year since 1981 to celebrate collective successes, share the sector’s struggles, and to move toward the future together…and just recently wrapped up its first in-person conference in two years, thanks to the global COVID pandemic.

And yours truly was there to experience it.

Links from the podcast

Washington Museum Association“The Resident Historian” podcast“Cascade of History” podcast“Grit City Stories” podcastWSU Vancouver LibraryKittitas County Historical MuseumClark County Historical Museum

Located in Pierce County, western Washington, in the City of Lakewood are the remnants of a once critical military instillation known as Fort Steilacoom. It occupies the same piece of land where today's Western State Hospital exists - another historic topic for a future podcast episode, to be sure. But Fort Steilacoom, by its own right, has firmly entrenched itself in the history of Washington State.

Built in 1849 to project American power and secure American interest in the Puget Sound Region, Fort Steilacoom played a key role in helping to settle what was then Oregon Territory. It served as the focal point for the Treaty Wars of the 1850s and played witness to the judicial murder of an innocent man - Chief Leschi of the Nisqually Tribe. Fort Steilacoom also rose to the forefront of history during the San Juan Island Pig War of 1859.

On this episode of the Washington Our Home podcast, we're learning about the part Fort Steilacoom played in the ongoing story of Washington…including an interview with the first Native member of the Fort Steilacoom Board.

Feeling a slight bump up in the cockpit, the pilots of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 looked at each other nervously as rain pelted against their windshield at around 200 miles per hour…a relatively slow speed for a Boeing 727. They didn't yet know that that bump meant their ordeal of the past several hours was just about over; that they, along with their flight engineer and flight attendant, would live to see another day—because the man known only as Dan Cooper had just exited the plane by leaping from the rear staircase in mid-flight, with a parachute and $200,000 strapped to his body, never to be seen again.

Who was Dan Cooper really? Did he survive his fateful fall from the sky? And whatever happened to all that money? It was exactly 50 years ago this month that Dan Cooper, the man, became D.B. Cooper, the myth, by leaping from a perfectly good airplane and right into the pages of Washington State, and truly, national history. Thousands of people have searched for evidence in the case, trying to solve the only unsolved American skyjacking...ever.

Just after one o'clock in the morning, on a frigid, starless night in March 1910, more than a hundred souls aboard Great Northern Railway's Spokane Local No. 25, a passenger train, and Fast Mail Train No. 27 slept tightly bundled in their cars. They'd been stuck near Wellington in King County, Washington, for almost a week...waiting as railroad crews attempted to clear the tracks of snow, which had been accumulating at a record pace. Each time they tried, their enormous rotary plows either broke down, ran out of fuel or got stuck, forcing crews to try digging out from the five-to-eight-foot snow drifts by hand while passengers hunkered down and waited for the blizzard to pass.

But it didn't pass. The snow just kept on coming. High above them loomed the peak of Windy Mountain, and below them, the Tye Creek ravine. On the last day of February, the snow turned to rain. Lightning and thunder erupted across the Cascade Mountains, and one fateful lightning strike touched off the deadliest avalanche in United States history.

So where exactly is Wellington, Washington? If you guessed somewhere near Burlington, Arlington, and Darrington, you'd be in the right general vicinity. But if you're looking for it on a map, you might have a tough time finding it. Its name was changed after the tragedy and the town itself was eventually abandoned and burned to the ground in the following years. Heading east from Everett on US Highway 2, travelers will pass through the towns of Monroe, Sultan, Startup, Gold Bar, Index, Skykomish, and Scenic before reaching the summit of Stevens Pass high in the Central Cascade Mountains. Heritage adventurers just might be interested in taking a short detour to hike along the 6-mile Iron Goat Trail, so named because the Great Northern railroad that used to travel along the route featured a stoic mountain goat in the company's logo. It's a fantastic hike with only about 700 feet of elevation gain from beginning to end. If you want to learn more about the trail, its history and some great tips and tricks to make your hike unforgettable, go pick up a copy of the book, Day Hiking Central Cascades, by my friend Craig Romano.

At the summit of Stevens Pass is the fabled ski area to the south. On the north side of Highway 2, however, is a nondescript gravel path called Tye Road that would likely be overlooked by travelers passing at freeway speeds. But turning on to this road and looking up into the trees will reveal handmade signs directing visitors to the Wellington trailhead just a little over three miles or 15 minutes away.

The Iron Goat Trailhead provides explorers with ample parking spaces, interpretive signage, and relatively clean pit toilets. Hikers have two options from here, but turning left will lead to the original Cascade Tunnel—a short, dead-end trail with a number of historical panels that help visitors understand the context of life in a railroad town in the early 1900s. Wellington was once a vital coal, water and rest stop for trains heading through the mountains and was the only town for miles where workers could purchase supplies from the Henrich Brothers' general store and gather overnight at the Hotel Bailets. Visitors today can still find remnants of that long-forgotten lifestyle along the trail…if they look in just the right places. For example, standing atop the ledge looking down into Tye Creek (also known as Tye River), eagle-eyed adventurers can spot an old, rusty railroad tie sticking out of the side of the hill.

Wellington, circa 1900, showing the hotel, general store, individual cabins, and massive clearcutting uphill from the town.

Along the trail, explorers will also find the footing of Great Northern's coal tower, built in 1910. It's an enormous cement foundation that once supported the lifeblood ...

Two weeks after Valentine's Day, 2001, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the south sound region of Washington state near where the Nisqually River empties into Puget Sound. It was nearly 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, and the state legislature was in full swing. The violent tremors lasted nearly a minute, rocking the state capital of Olympia and the nearby cities of Lacey, Tumwater, Nisqually, DuPont, and Shelton. The shocks registered as far away as Oregon, Idaho, and Canada.

Property damage estimates up and down western Washington totaled in the billions. One person died of a heart attack and nearly four hundred were injured. This was a large earthquake that hit in the Puget Sound region…but it wasn't the first. Not by a long shot.

(Podcast now available on Vurbl at https://vurbl.com/station/1V7t4zNEFqw/)

Born Esther Pariseau in 1823, the third of 12 children, in a farmhouse three miles from Saint-Martin, Laval, Quebec, this Canadian Religious Sister grew up to lead members of her congregation to the Pacific Northwestern United States where they established a network of schools and healthcare facilities to serve the American settlers in that new and remote part of the country. She was the first female architect in British Columbia, and she had a profound impact on what would become Washington Territory and later, Washington State.

This is the story of Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart, who became known as "The Builder" after she designed and supervised construction of 29 schools and hospitals in Washington, one of which was Seattle's very first hospital.