Topic: Business
In 2016, milk was the second highest valued commodity in Washington behind apples, with some 90 percent of the milk produced in the state also processed there. The first substantial herd of cattle arr...
A portion of the area known as Ravensdale in southeast King County was once called Danville. Located on the south side of the Summit-Landsburg Road, Danville lies in the Cedar River valley just below ...
Michael Dederer -- "Mike" to his closest friends -- devoted his life to the Seattle Fur Exchange, building it into one of the foremost fur auctions in the country and an international presence in the ...
David Thomas Denny was the first member of the Denny Party (led by his older brother Arthur) to arrive in the future city of Seattle in 1851. He staked a claim to the future site of Seattle Center and...
No region of Washington was spared the crippling effects of the Great Depression that overshadowed the country in the 1930s, but the residents of San Juan County in Northwest Washington had some advan...
Giuseppe "Joe" Desimone, an immigrant from Naples, settled in Seattle's South Park neighborhood, where he made some money farming and more money investing in real estate. Like many immigrant farmers f...
The Pacific Northwest has produced its fair share of pioneering record companies over the years including early ones like Seattle's Evergreen, Rainier, Linden, and Morrison Records; Portland's Rose Ci...
James "Jimmie" Durkin gained notoriety in the Inland Empire of Eastern Washington as Spokane's legendary liquor tycoon. Wild tales abound regarding his outlandish exploits and stunts, but beyond becom...
Nathan Eckstein was a prominent Seattle citizen who came to the region after being in the grocery business for 10 years in New York. He married Mina Schwabacher in 1902 and served as vice president an...
After World War II, a trend toward consolidating schools into larger districts with more modern, standardized facilities created business opportunities for industrial manufacturers. Among these, Educa...
Ben B. Ehrlichman was an investment banker and developer who played a key role in the commercial and civic life of the Puget Sound region from the 1920s through the 1960s. As the president of a holdin...
In the 1950s, before seat belts were standard equipment, young Seattle baby boomers bouncing around in the back seat of the family car were entranced when they were driven past a rotating neon sign in...
John Ellis, former head of Bellevue-based Puget Sound Power and Light (now Puget Sound Energy), is best known for leading the effort to keep the Mariners in Seattle and build the team a new baseball s...
Etiquette Records -- a trail-blazing firm formed by three young Tacoma musicians in 1961 -- was an enterprise that broke all the old rules. Despite its polite and classy sounding name -- not to mentio...
The most fabled of any historic dancehall in Washington -- the Evergreen State -- the Evergreen Ballroom stood for nearly seven decades along a section of Highway 99 called the "old Tacoma and Olympia...
Randy Finley -- who became known to a generation of Seattle moviegoers for his long black beard, a habit of wearing an army jacket with his name sewn on it, and his innate ability to generate hype -- ...
Bob and Micki Flowers have a history of breaking down racial barriers. She was the first female African American broadcaster at KIRO television; he was the first black executive at Washington Mutual b...
When it opened on April 19, 1929, Seattle's Fox Theatre was described as being "fairy-like in appearance," but that luster would fade pretty quickly in the years following its debut. Known variously a...
Prentis Frazier, a son of former slaves, arrived in Seattle in 1916 and operated a number of businesses which included real estate, insurance, bail bonds, and publishing.
Frederick & Nelson was for many years Seattle's premier department store. The store was founded by Donald E. Frederick (1860-1937) and Nels B. Nelson (1854-1907). In 1890, they began selling used ...
This history of the Frederick & Nelson Department Store is by Gordon Padelford, age 13 at this writing (May 2002). Gordon Padelford is the great grandson of the founder of the store, Donald Edward...
A fourth-generation Washington businessman and leading Eastside real-estate baron, Kemper Freeman Jr. directed redevelopment of his father's Bellevue Square into a first-class urban mall with 200 stor...
The waterfront of Friday Harbor, now the county seat and only incorporated town in San Juan County, has served as a sheltered access to San Juan Island from the early days of human occupation of the a...
The Bartell Drug Company, the oldest drugstore chain in the United States, has thrived throughout most of its 120-year history, with the exception of several decades spanning the 1950s to the 1970s. T...