Junius Rochester, whose family has shaped the city for many generations, is an award-winning Northwest historian and author of numerous books about Seattle and other places.
Salmon canneries opened at Point Roberts in 1890s, and a paddlewheel steamer from Seattle made regular stops. The tiny area also became the end of the trail for Icelandic immigrants.
Alexander Pantages, an uneducated Greek-born impresario, who exhibited streaks of crudeness alongside his brilliance, gave audiences what they wanted – anything they wanted.
In October of 1892, Wister visited Harvard classmate George Waring, who kept a small general store on the Methow River. He stopped in Walla Walla, then Washington Territory’s largest city, which he described as “a town of dust and poplars.”
He was a West Seattle native born in 1905. He came from a family (Swedish father, Norwegian mother) steeped in music, Swedish traditions, and sea-faring lore. The Alki and Seattle waterfronts were Ivar Haglund’s playgrounds.
It was 1929. Seeing that it was impossible to return to Boeing Field, Robert Wark scanned the territory below. The smoothest, nearest flat area was the roof the Bon Marche, Seattle’s premier downtown department store (later Macy’s).
In an earlier day, the trip to the trailhead was itself an adventure. Voyageurs, missionaries, mountain men, and intrepid explorers hacked and bushwacked their way through dense forests to “reach the other side.”
Murrow’s memories of summer lumber-jacking in the woods around Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula became a life-long, idealistic standard by which he judged himself and others.