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.
One example: Gertrude Stein’s longtime companion, Alice B. Toklas, was raised in Seattle, where her father owned one of the city’s early department stores.
The Fremont neighborhood – and its nearby bridge – received its moniker from the community’s founders, L.H. Griffith and E. Blewett, who wanted to honor their hometown of Fremont, Nebraska.
Why was Mt. Rainier regarded as a female god? What started the bitterness between Whites and Indians? Why did revivalists work so well in the Pacific Northwest?
Even Thomas Jefferson, in late life and after Meriwether Lewis reported otherwise, believed that rivers and lakes could combine to whisk traders from one coast to the other.
The Second World War brought many migrants to the Pacific Northwest, including large numbers of African Americans and Asians working at Boeing, the shipyards, fishing, and timber. Those desperate newcomers needed shelter.
In 1889, the five-person Press Expedition (named for the Seattle Press, a statewide newspaper), led by James Christie, crossed the Olympic Peninsula from the Elwha River to the Quinault Valley.