Topic: People's Histories
The Four Seasons Resort on the southwestern end of Beaver Lake, located on the Sammamish Plateau in east King County, was built about 1936 by Gus and LuLu Bartels. By the late 1930s it had become a po...
For several decades in the middle of the twentieth century, San Juan Island was virtually overrun with rabbits. A population of several thousand domestic rabbits released in 1934 from a failed breedin...
Bill Bonham managed hotels in the Northwest in the 1920s through the 1940s, including the Seattle Hotel at 1st Avenue and Yesler Way in Seattle and the Hotel Monticello in Longview. Bonham's daughter,...
Sandy A. Moss, a diesel engineer, was born in Topeka, Kansas, and was brought by his parents to Seattle in June 1900. As a black child growing up in Seattle during the early years of the twentieth cen...
The eventful life of Jean Kurosaka Sano, a Japanese American from Seattle who became a close friend of Joe and Ruth Caldbick soon after they moved to the city from rural Northern Ontario in 1929, is t...
In this People's History, Eleanor Boba remembers the popular holiday-excursion trains sponsored by Seattle's University Village Shopping Center. Each December for about a decade starting in 1956 when ...
Bob Santos (1934-2016), born and raised in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, spent most of his life as an activist in his old neighborhood -- saving it, nurturing it, defending it against ou...
Bob Santos (1934-2016), born and raised in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, spent most of his life as an activist in his old neighborhood -- saving it, nurturing it, defending it against ou...
Bob Santos (1934-2016), born and raised in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, spent most of his life as an activist in his old neighborhood -- saving it, nurturing it, defending it against ou...
Bob Santos (1934-2016), born and raised in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, spent most of his life as an activist in his old neighborhood -- saving it, nurturing it, defending it against ou...
This remembrance of author Archie Satterfield was written by Jean Godden, "Seattle City Councilmember and former ink-stained wretch."
This excerpted account of schooling at a Cedar Falls railroad camp was originally recorded on June 15, 1993 as a part of the Cedar River Watershed Oral History Project. Dorothy Graybael Scott moved to...
Franz Xavier "F. X." Schreiner was one of Seattle's well-known entrepreneurs during the 1890s and early 1900s. Perhaps most famous for his Merchant's Cafe in the city's Pioneer Square, he also was inv...
In this excerpt from his unpublished autobiography, Jim Douglas (1909-2005) recalls the many steps involved in coordinating Seafair. Jim Douglas was one of a group of local citizens called together by...
This is a People's History of the first 50 years of the Seattle Banjo Club, founded in 1962. It was written by John LaFond, who joined in 1973. He is the club's longest-serving member.
The following letter, written by Glenn Barney to the Seattle Landmark Preservation Board on March 17, 2003, is in the public domain files of the Seattle Landmark Preservation Board. In the letter Barn...
This file contains an undated, unsigned letter describing what it was like working at Seattle City Light in the early years, around 1910. The letter is held in the Seattle Municipal Archives. It descr...
This is a history of Seattle Goodwill, a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1923. The organization provides employment training and basic education to individuals experiencing significant barr...
The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) was founded in 1939 as part of a federal program to clear slums and create jobs by building housing for the poor. After the United States entered World War II, the ...
This is an interview with Al Levine, former deputy executive director of the Seattle Housing Authority, on lessons learned from the redevelopment of the authority's Holly Park project into the NewHoll...
In this interview, former Seattle mayor Charles Royer (b. 1939) discusses the housing crisis that faced older residents of Seattle in the early 1980s, and how the City of Seattle and the Seattle Housi...
In this interview Doris Koo, who oversaw Phase 1 redevelopment of the Holly Park project in South Seattle for the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), describes how changes in federal funding for public h...
In this interview, conducted by Dominic Black, Kristin O'Donnell, a Yesler Terrace resident -- and enthusiastic community activist -- since the early 1970s, recalls some of her Yesler Terrace neighbor...
In this interview, former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice (b. 1943) describes how one person's comments at a hearing on low-income housing helped him find his "true north" in relation to housing the homeless ...