Topic: Government & Politics
For a time in the mid-nineteenth century, the future state of Idaho was part of Washington. When Washington Territory was created in 1853, its boundaries encompassed Idaho's Panhandle, the northern re...
Jay Inslee is the 23rd governor of Washington State. He was born in Seattle and went to Ingraham High School, where he was an honor student and standout athlete, and where he met his future wife. He e...
Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson was one of the most successful and powerful politicians in the history of Washington state. Jackson was born and died in Everett, Snohomish County, the rough-edged industrial ...
As Chair of the Metro Council Finance Committee, Mayor of Seattle, and later as assistant secretary for Urban Systems and Environment in the Nixon administration, James d'Orma "Dorm" Braman (1901-1980...
Along with Seattle Mayor Dorm Braman, Jim Ellis (1921-2019) worked closely with Washington Sen. Warren Magnuson (1905-1989) to secure federal funding for Seattle and King County transportation project...
Legislator and children's rights advocate Ruth LeCocq Kagi was born August 14, 1945, the daughter of a surgeon and granddaughter of a pioneer lumberman. Her childhood years were spent at the family ho...
Claudia Kauffman was the first woman Native American elected to the Washington State Senate. She was raised in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle where her mother, Josephine, championed American ...
Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney, a child of migrant workers, served eight terms in the Washington State House of Representatives. Her parents came to America in 1919 from Mexico, and from the age of 5 Kenney...
Alice U. Kerr was elected mayor of Edmonds in December 1924, one of the first women mayors in Washington. She served a single two-year term (1925-1927) occupied with issues of a small, growing city, ...
John Phillip "J. P." Kiggins was a prolific politician and a prolific builder in Vancouver (Clark County) during the early decades of the twentieth century. He served nine non-consecutive terms as may...
King County's five Agricultural Production Districts (APDs), first designated in the county's 1985 Comprehensive Plan, represent a continuation of efforts to preserve rapidly diminishing agricultural ...
King County Commissioners were in charge of King County's affairs from 1853, when the federal Organic Act gave the Territorial legislature the power to create county governments, until 1969, when the ...
On November 5, 1968, voters approved King County's Home Rule Charter. It replaced the three-member County Commission (then John Spellman, Ed Munro, and John O'Brien) with a nine-member County Council ...
King County's Farmland Preservation Program protects farmland and open space in the rapidly developing county by using tax money to buy development rights on farms. It is one of the oldest such progra...
Address: 3rd Avenue and James Street, Seattle. The King County Courthouse is a dignified example of early twentieth-century civic architecture in the Beaux-Arts style. In 1931, 10 stories were added ...
Addresses: Des Moines -- S 219th Street and 11th Avenue S; Enumclaw -- Enumclaw Chinook Pass Road; North Bend -- 40 SE Orchard Drive; Preston -- 8625 310th Avenue SE; White Center -- 1321 102nd Street...
The King County Library System (KCLS) operates libraries in communities throughout King County (outside Seattle), a variety of mobile outreach services, a library within the King County Youth Services...
As King County's population boomed at the start of the twenty-first century, the King County Library System (KCLS) made plans to expand. In 2004, voters approved a $172 million bond measure, allowing ...
King County's Equity and Social Justice (ESJ) Initiative was made public by then-County Executive Ron Sims (b. 1948) in February 2008. Citing sobering examples of the effects of inequality, Sims direc...
King County's parks and recreation division was created in 1938, and initially oversaw the development of 150 acres of small parks and playgrounds. Since then it has grown to encompass 26,000 acres of...
King County, Washington's largest county, is the first county in the nation to be named in honor of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), the celebrated civil rights leader and advocate...
A. Ludlow "Lud" Kramer became the youngest Secretary of State in Washington history when elected in 1964 at age 32. He was re-elected in 1968 and in 1972. A moderate Republican, he championed the righ...
Bruce C. Laing, a professional planner, was elected as a Republican to the King County Council in 1979 and spent 16 years on the Council. During his tenure, Laing, a moderate, exhibited an ability to ...
The city of Lake Stevens in Snohomish County, about eight miles east of Everett, is named after the glacial lake it surrounds. The lake was named, on an 1855 map, for Washington Territory Governor Isa...