Showing 1 - 16 of 16 results

Asberry, Nettie Craig (1865-1968)

Nettie Craig Asberry was an extraordinary, early African American resident of Tacoma who was known for her work in fighting racism and in helping to open doors for women. A founding member of the Tacoma NAACP, a music teacher, a club woman, and in later years a volunteer social worker in the community, she was a Tacoma icon.
File 8632: Full Text >

Bain, William James Sr. (1896-1985)

William Bain Sr. was a founding principal of NBBJ (named for Naramore, Bain, Brady and Johansen), now one of the world’s largest architecture firms. His career included the design of an elaborate false town to camouflage the Boeing plant during World War II.
File 117: Full Text >

Bloedel, Prentice (1900-1996)

Prentice Bloedel was a leader of the timber industry. He left a brief teaching career to join the management of his family's far-flung timber empire and led the industry's forest-conservation efforts. Bloedel guided the firm into a merger with H. R. MacMillan Export Co., which became the giant MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. Prentice and Virginia Bloedel were important patrons of the arts in Seattle, a tradition carried on by their daughter Virginia Wright. The Bloedels created the Bloedel Reserve, a botanical showcase of gardens, pools, lawns, and arbors on Bainbridge Island.
File 5227: Full Text >

Bowen, Betty (1918-1977)

Betty Bowen was assistant director of the Seattle Art Museum, a civic activist on behalf of the arts and historic preservation, and an indefatigable promoter of Seattle artists. Two days before her death at age 58, Mayor Wes Uhlman (b. 1935) named her First Citizen of Seattle and proclaimed Valentine's Day in her honor.
File 662: Full Text >

Corbin, Daniel Chase, (1832-1918)

Mining and railroad magnate, Daniel Chase Corbin ranks as a major shaper of the growth and prosperity of Spokane, the economic and geographic center of the Inland Northwest. He settled in Spokane in 1889, already an experienced Western entrepreneur and well positioned to survive the Panic of 1893, which depleted the fortunes of Spokane's earliest tycoons. The bulk of Corbin's wealth was based on his railroads that "stitched the [Idaho Panhandle and British Columbia Kootenay] mines to Spokane," enriching and forever changing his adopted city (Fahey, Inland Empire, 3). Over the years, he was substantially involved in other enterprises as diverse as banking, real estate, irrigation, beet sugar production, and coal mining. Corbin often was pointed out as Spokane's richest man as he passed in his buggy, its superb team driven at top speed by a coachman. But unlike many of his wealthy predecessors and contemporaries, Corbin was not a civic leader or benefactor, at least in any obvious way, and, upon his death, his wealth remained with his descendants. His personal and family life was full of enigmas, and his aloof demeanor did not make him popular in the community. Furthermore, his secretiveness about earnings and assets would not be allowed under today's business regulations. Yet Corbin's contribution to his adopted city was massive, his railroads and other ventures enabling such wealth to pour into Spokane that, during his time, it became the hub of the "Inland Empire."
File 7960: Full Text >

Cutter, Kirtland Kelsey (1860-1939)

Kirtland Kelsey Cutter was primarily a Spokane architect with a significant practice in Spokane, Seattle, and Southern California, as well as commissions as far away as England. Of Spokane's many prolific and successful architects, he is the best known to the general public today. Spokane is where he first made his reputation, his buildings giving clues about the "economy, power structure, social life, and changing fortunes" of the growing city (Matthews, Spokane and the Inland Empire, 143). Cutter's career spanned 50 years, from 1889 to his death in 1939. His legacy of large-scale houses and public buildings still standing in Spokane, Seattle, Southern California, and elsewhere is varied and impressive.
File 115: Full Text >

Finlay, Jacques Raphael (Jaco) 1768-1828

Jacques Raphael Finlay, a Canadian fur trader commonly known as Jaco, crossed the Continental Divide in modern-day Alberta and reached the upper Columbia River during the summer of 1806. Working as an advance scout for the North West Company of Canada, he had orders to prepare the way for an 1807 expedition to establish trade with tribes west of the Rockies. During the next 20 years, Finlay explored and traded throughout the Inland Northwest, both as an employee of the North West Company and as an independent trapper. In 1810 he sited and built Spokane House, the first trading post in the present-day state of Washington.
File 8411: Full Text >

Hirabayashi, Gordon K. (b. 1918)

In a remarkable show of personal courage, Seattle native Gordon Hirabayashi (b. 1918) was one of handful of Japanese Americans nationwide to defy U.S. government curfew and "evacuation" orders in the spring of 1942. He was arrested, convicted and imprisoned, and eventually appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although that bid was unsuccessful, the fight to overturn his conviction resumed in the 1980s, culminating in his judicial vindication.
File 2070: Full Text >

Hugo, Richard (1923-1982)

Richard Hugo rose from an insecure childhood in White Center, a poor area just south of Seattle, to become one of the foremost American poets of his generation. His collected poems in Making Certain It Goes On, published posthumously in 1984, paint haunting visions, images, and narratives. These range from his memories of the Duwamish Valley near White Center, to a sojourn in Italy, to towns, bars, and people across the Northwest. One of his most famous poems is entitled, "What Thou Lovest Well Remains American."
File 5082: Full Text >

Luke, Wing (1925-1965)

Wing Luke was elected to the Seattle City Council in 1962, and became the first Chinese American from a large mainland city to hold such an office. Just three years later, in 1965, his promising political career was extinguished when he died in a plane crash.
File 2047: Full Text >

Meany, Edmond Stephen (1862-1935)

Edmond Meany was one of the University of Washington's most notable history professors. His passion for state history helped promote the region at the 1893 Columbian Exposition and at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expostion. A true renaissance man, Meany was also a journalist, a botanist, a State Representative, a playwright and -- in his later years -- a mountain climber. He was well-loved by his students, and a lecture hall, hotel, ski lodge, mountain peak, and mountain crest have been named in his honor.
File 7885: Full Text >

Phelps, Donald (1929-2003)

Donald Phelps, educator, singer, and TV commentator, was the grandson of John T. Gayton (1866-1954), one of Seattle's black pioneers. He rose through the ranks, starting as an elementary teacher in Bellevue, to become Chancellor of Seattle Community College District.
File 392: Full Text >

Ross, James Delmage (J. D.) (1872-1939)

James Delmage (J. D.) Ross is known as the Father of Seattle City Light. A firm believer in the municipal ownership of power utilities, Ross helped design and build the power plant at Cedar Falls on the Cedar River. He is best known for his efforts to secure and construct the hydroelectric project on the Upper Skagit River, which provides 40 percent of Seattle’s electricity. Ross Lake and Ross Dam on the Skagit are named in his honor.
File 2557: Full Text >

Sakamoto, James (1903-1955)

Born in Seattle, James Y. Sakamoto became one of the leaders of the local and national Japanese American community during the critical era just before and after the start of World War II. He was a founder of the important organization, the Japanese American Citizen's League (JACL) and started the first English-language Japanese American newspaper.
File 2050: Full Text >

Thomson, Reginald Heber (1856-1949)

Reginald Heber Thomson probably did more to change the face of Seattle than any one individual. During his exemplary career as city engineer and beyond, he leveled hills, straightened and dredged waterways, reclaimed tideflats, built sewers, sidewalks, tunnels, bridges, and paved roads. He was instrumental in the creation of the Cedar River watershed, City Light, the Port of Seattle, and the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. Almost all of Seattle's infrastructure can be attributed to R. H. Thomson.
File 2074: Full Text >

Wood, William D. (1858-1917)

William D. Wood, an attorney, land speculator, electric trolley line president, and Seattle mayor, was a conspicuous figure in the business and political life of Seattle for more than a quarter century. He was the key original developer of the Green Lake neighborhood. He served as mayor of Seattle from April 1896 to July 1897, at which time the Klondike Gold Rush supplied him with an opportunity more golden: providing steam passage from San Francisco and Seattle to Alaska. He was married to Emma Wallingford Wood (1859-1949).
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