Washington, A Guide to the Evergreen State/Part 1
PART I
Washington: Past and Present
From Sagebrush to Seacoast
DESPITE the multiplicity of means of communication today, many people still conceive of the State of Washington as virtually a frontier wilderness, accessible only to the rugged and the adventurous. This impression derives in part no doubt from the State's geographic location, in part from its historical association with an Indian war, and in part also from frontier fiction, which usually offers an exaggerated, romantic account of pioneers, cowboys, lumberjacks, and desperadoes.
One hundred years ago, this region was largely unexplored. The eastern section was a semiarid plateau of rolling hills covered with sagebrush and bunchgrass, the habitat of prairie dogs, coyotes, and rattlesnakes. Here Indians roamed, hunted, and fished. Through these sun-drenched barrens, the majestic Columbia River cut its way to the Pacific Ocean. Forests of lodgepole and ponderosa pine, fir, and tamarack ascended the northern highlands and the eastern slope of the Cascades. On the more humid western side of the range, another dense forest of spruce, Douglas fir, cedar, and hemlock swept down to the coast, unbroken except for Indian trails and occasional prairies and lowland valleys, and somber save when brightened by pink rhododendrons, the shimmering white of dogwood trees in flower, the golden catkins of maple and alder, or in some localities the flame of autumn leaves.
Within these forests, bear, deer, elk, and cougar were plentiful, and the many lakes and rivers, abounding in fish, were frequented by beaver, mink, and otter. Grouse and ptarmigan whirred across the uplands, ducks sought the sheltered waters of inland lakes, and geese honked along the rivers and lowland marshes. Coastal waters and the larger streams teemed with salmon; blackfish and porpoise sported in the Sound and Strait, and whale spouted offshore.
Something of this primitive condition remains today. The visitor to the Evergreen State can still find magnificent virgin forests, vocal with the songs of many birds. He can follow miles of woodland trails and enjoy the beauty of mountain summits, deep gorges, turbulent streams with cascading waterfalls, and clear alpine lakes, mirroring snow-capped peaks and tree-lined shores. He can scale rugged mountains or traverse blue-white glaciers, made dangerous by deep crevasses. He can find many a secluded lake or stream or saltwater channel, where he can test his skill with rod and reel; he can try his luck at bagging a deer, a bear, or a cougar in the pathless wilds. He can drive through deep canyons or along surf-pounded beaches; he can pilot his motorboat through the maze of channels of Puget Sound, or sail before a spanking breeze among hundreds of enchanting islands.
Interesting, too, are the historic relies of the conquest of this wilderness: early mission houses, forts, blockhouses, and other pioneer buildings; the crumbling tombstones in lonely prairie cemeteries; markers on old trails; war canoes, tomahawks, arrowheads, feathered head-dresses, and other mementos of the culture of the Indians, whose descendants now live on reservations. All these are a part of the great epic of the march of the pioneer. To see them is to gain a clearer understanding of the history of the Nation.
In the course of the rapid development of the State, the country has been greatly altered. Forests have been cut, leaving vast searred and denuded areas; grasslands have been broken and planted to wheat; and the arid range, now the feeding ground of cattle and sheep, has been enclosed with barbed-wire fences. Desert lands have been converted by means of irrigation into productive gardens, orchards, and alfalfa tracts. Trains and automobiles now speed where native trails once ran, steamships and ferries ply waters formerly crossed only by primitive dugouts, and airplanes hum overhead. Factories and mills stand where Indians set their weirs; and on the sites of communal Indian villages, large modern cities, with clean, well-lighted streets and tree-lined boulevards, have been built.
On every side lies tangible evidence of the toll that this general and haphazard development of the country has taken; but works designed for the conservation and reclamation of depleted resources are also to be met with everywhere. Selective logging methods have supplanted to a considerable extent the wasteful methods of former years, and a carefully planned system of reforestation of logged-off and burned-over lands, in conjunction with the establishing of extensive national forests, bears promise of the intelligent utilization of existing stands of timber and the partial replacement of those that have been removed. The mighty Grand Coulee Dam and other major power developments, such as the Bonneville, the Skagit, and the Cushman projects, are near completion or already in service. At Bonneville Dam, ingenious fish ladders have been constructed to facilitate the migration of salmon upstream to spawn. And many national and State parks spread over lands withdrawn from commercial use and dedicated to the enjoyment and inspirational needs of man. All of these measures are expressive of a people with broad vision and with the capacity for significant, long-range planning.
The people of the State came from many sources. Attracted by timber, free lands, minerals, railroad construction, the fish industry, irrigation, and power developments, successive waves of settlers have come to Washington: dissatisfied and restless folk from the older States; Southerners, ruined and uprooted by the Civil War; immigrants from Europe and from the Orient; and discouraged farmers from eroded, worn-out lands of the Middle West. Each group has brought its distinctive folkways, which have modified and enriched the cultural life of its new homeland.
Natural Setting
WASHINGTON, the Evergreen State, occupies the northwest corner of the United States, with the Pacific Ocean on the west, Canada on the north, Idaho on the east, and Oregon on the south. Although its northwest corner is chewed out by the sea, and its southern border is determined by the meanderings of the Columbia River from the point where it swings westward, the State is roughly rectangular, measuring 300 miles east to west and 240 miles north to south. With a water area of 1,721 square miles and a land area of 66,836 square miles, Washington is larger than all New England, but its population is only 1,736,191 or 25.0 persons to the square mile.
The State, consisting of seven distinct physiographic areas the Olympic Mountains, Willapa Hills, Puget Sound Basin, Cascade Mountains, Okanogan Highlands, Columbia Basin, and Blue Mountains represent: virtually every topographic variation known in the United States.
The Olympic Mountains, a part of the coastal range, lie between Puget Sound, Juan de Fuca Strait, and the Pacific Ocean, and are separated from the Willapa Hills by the valley of the Chehalis River. The region presents a labyrinth of peaks - Mount Olympus (8,150 alt.). Mount Fitzhenry (8,008 alt.), and Mount Constance (7,717 alt.) outstanding and serrated ridges, broken and eroded. Alpine valleys lakes, and torrential rivers are numerous.
South of the Olympic Mountains are the Willapa Hills, a region of sedimentary and igneous rocks of the Tertiary period. Relatively low, rarely approaching 3,000 feet in elevation, this area receives less rainfall than the northern region, yet vegetation is rank, and there are many streams draining into the Columbia River and Willapa Harbor. Only along the bank of the Columbia River do the hills become abrupt.
The Puget Sound Basin lies between the Olympic and Cascade Mountains in the form of a broad trough, extending from Juan de Fuca Strait, which connects Puget Sound with the Pacific, half way to the Columbia River. It averages 100 feet in elevation in its central portion, while its flanks rise to join the mountains. Based upon rugged folds of sedimentary rocks, rock beds, glaciation, and lava flows, the erosion of innumerable streams has made it relatively uniform. At its southern end are extended plains, reaching almost to the Columbia River. Puget Sound, for which the basin is the trough, is 80 miles long, 8 miles wide at the broadest point, and has depths of 900 feet: a body of water flanked by forested bluffs and low dikelands, with extensive bays, inlets, and passages between the 300 islands that lie within its shores. Of these, the 172 inhabitable islands of the San Juan group (see Island Tour 3) and Whidbey Island, second largest in continental United States, are most noteworthy.
Extending across the State from north to south at its approximate middle longitude is the great barrier of the Cascade Mountains-shaped somewhat like an hour-glass-a range, 100 miles wide at the Canadian and Oregon boundaries, and 50 miles at its middle. The numerous peaks average from 6,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation, while the volcanic cones of Mounts Rainier, St. Helens, Baker, Adams, and Glacier Peak rise much higher. Of these peaks, only one, Mount Adams, is on the range axis; the others, St. Helens, Baker, Glacier Peak, and Rainier are on the western flank. Because of their origin, the northern and southern Cascades are quite dissimilar. The rugged southern portion resulted from great igneous activity due to volcanoes, while the northern portion, seemingly a great raised plateau at one time, is more uniform; whatever ruggedness it possesses has resulted from erosion rather than from volcanic action. The streams of the range, as a whole, are strong and deeply bedded. Mountain valleys, once the beds of great glaciers, have been deeply eroded-leaving grand cirques and amphitheaters, such as the water-filled gorge of Lake Chelan, that are among the great attractions of the range. Only the Columbia River crosses the Cascade Mountains. Three tunnels—the Cascade, the Rockdale, and the Stampede—pierce the Cascades for rail transportation; and the Chinook, Stevens, and Snoqualmie passes make them surmountable by highways.
North of the "Big Bend" of the Columbia River and north of the Spokane River, and merging into the Cascades on the west and the Rockies on the east, are the Okanogan Highlands: beautifully rounded, broad, low hills sloping gently from watersheds to the river beds, with divides-often 6,000 feet in elevation-never sharp or abrupt. The Highlands, unlike the heavily wooded Cascades, are largely open and park-like, with a minimum of undergrowth.
South of the Okanogan Highlands almost to the Oregon boundary and extending east of the Cascades almost to the Idaho boundary, is the Columbia Basin, an area approximately 1,500,000 acres of sage and scabland. From an elevation of 500 feet at the Columbia River, lowest point in the region, the basin rises rapidly westward toward the foothills of the Cascades; eastward, the rise is more gradual to an elevation of approximately 2,000 feet at the Idaho Line. Ridges, extending east and west through the basin and marking the eroded course of past ice sheets, once rose across streams, but the latter in time have cut through them. The area of the Big Bend is scarred by great, ancient, long-dry river courses, of which Moses Coulee and Grand Coulee are excellent examples. Some of the coulees, however, still hold chains of lakes, strongly alkaline. From the region of the deep canyons of the Snake River and its tributaries, rolling plateaus—the Palouse Country —extend north and east, a fertile region of wind-borne soil deposits.
In the southeastern corner of the State are the Blue Mountains, a prominent uplift of some 7,000 feet in the lava plain. The rounded domes, rising 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the surrounding basin lands, receive, in contrast to the contiguous country, enough rainfall to support forest growth. The streams, in deep valleys, have affected general contours very little.
CLIMATE
Washington's topography, together with warm sea currents, strongly affects the climate, which varies greatly in different areas. Rainfall ranges from extremes of 6 inches in the eastern part to 16 inches in the western. East of the Cascades summer temperatures are often above 100° F. Not uncommonly, eastern Washington winters drop to —20⁰ F. and —30° F., and crop seasons in the northern and higher portions are sometimes less than 100 days, increasing to 200 days towards the south. The average annual precipitation of 16½ inches in this section ranges from 60 inches in the mountains to 6 inches on the plains. The westerly prevailing wind's average velocity is low—between 5 and 6 miles per hour—but occasional sand or dust storms visit the arid areas.
In western Washington, the heaviest rainfall in the United States occurs on the southwestern slope of the Olympics, at Wynonche, where the average is 141 inches. On the northern side of the Olympics, Sequim has the lightest rainfall, averaging 17 inches, and requires irrigation. The average in the western section, however, 36 inches. The rainiest month is likely to be December, and the driest, July. Winter temperatures average 40° F., with a daily average minimum of 35%. Summers average 61° F. with a daily average maximum of 74°. Yearly snowfall varies widely, averaging less than 13 inches at Seattle, while Snoqualmie Pass has had 400.
Puget Sound area crop seasons average 207 days, diminishing to 185 in the valleys south. First frosts usually occur in November, and the last frosts in March. Wind velocities vary from a yearly average of greater than 12 miles on the coast, with occasional seasonal bursts of hurricane intensity, to 6 miles per hour in the interior.
Washington is a region where nature, on the whole, has been kind, barring it from catastrophic earthquakes, cyclones, drouths, and extensive floods, and endowing it with a climate assumed by scientists to be highly favorable for physical and mental exertion.
GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY
When western Washington experienced the most severe earthquake in its recent history in November 1939, the relevance of geologic history to present-day life was made dramatically clear. During the period of gigantic mountain building millions of years ago, the ancient peak Mount Si was covered by the Cascades, but never has there been real conformity between the hard primeval rock and the younger volcanic formation. The younger rock slips from time to time, as some earth movement takes place, and the resultant tremendous jar is felt through- out the region. (This explanation may be superseded by another differing in detail, but the general theory is substantially correct, according to authorities.)
In the Proterozoic era, the earliest of the four geologic divisions of time, long before the Cascades had risen, an embayment of the primeval sea covered most of the Pacific Northwest region. The Blue Mountains, in the extreme southeastern corner of the present State, have been described by some geologists as a rocky promontory extending into this arm of the sea. Some 300 or more miles to the west of the old coastline, south from what is now Washington, lay an island, or islands, the existence of which has led to the erroneous belief that another continent lay to the west of this one in prehistoric ages.
After hundreds of millions of years, with alternating periods of submersion and dry land, the region was invaded by the sea from the north, in the Paleozoic era. The depositing of silt from adjacent land areas and other natural processes resulted in the filling up of the original embayment to a maximum depth of 30,000 feet. Present deposits of quartz, slate, marble, and schist represent these ancient ones, but greatly altered in structure and recrystallized. Paleozoic rocks found in various places across northern Washington contain valuable fossil specimens of marine life of that period.
During the Mesozoic era, which probably lasted for more than 100,000,000 years, the essential features marking the existing topography were formed. It was during the latter part of this era (Jurassic period), according to John Hodgdon Bradley, that the original uplift of the Sierra Nevada, the Coast Range, the Cascades, and the Klamath Mountains occurred. Also in this period, another great inundation laid down beds of mud and sand that gradually were transformed into the bedrock of the San Juan Islands. Large deposits of magnesite, especially in Stevens County, probably originated at this time. With the making of mountains, great masses of molten rock pressed upward through the earth's crust, and gold, silver and other metals were fused with the rock while in this liquid state. As the Cascades first, and later the Coast Range, were formed, successively they made new coastlines, low-lying barriers to the ocean. The Mesozoic era, the age of reptiles, gave to the world some of its most curious life forms, including the giant dinosaurs; many of these have been unearthed on the San Juan Islands and in other parts of the State. Many marine specimens have been found in the shales and limestones of Stevens County.
The latest era, the Cenozoic, was marked by some of the most dynamic changes of all, including the greatest lava flow in geologic history and the age of ice; it also gave to the region some of its most productive natural resources—rich soil left by extensive lava flows, the great rivers and bays taking shape during this period, and the rich deposits of coal and other minerals being laid down. Of this era, the last 2,000,000 years constitute the recent epoch, within which came great volcanic eruptions and the period of glaciation. The Tertiary period, enduring for more than 50,000,000 years, was marked by long periods of sedimentation, erosion, and vegetation, alternating with periods of immense volcanic activity.
The western part of the State, except for the highest, or central, part of the Olympic Mountains, was covered with water, and great swampy flats extended along the edge of the present Puget Sound Basin. From these were derived the shales and sandstones, the gull-bearing gravel of Sauk River, the commercial coal deposits. Gradually the sea floor was raised, and the Olympics were united with the mainland. Volcanic action, accompanying the building of the Columbian Plateau, brought forth great streams of lava, covering more than 200,000 square
miles (estimates vary) in present Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. The weight of hot plastic rock tended to wear away all but the highest hills and to force streams to seek new outlets, with the changing of the watershed. The Columbia River was forced from its old channel into its present one, cut through granitic slopes at the edge of the lava plain.
With the cessation of volcanic activity, in the long periods of sedimentation and erosion, many forms of animal and reptile life inhabited the region. Immense forests arose; petrified logs remain to indicate something of the size and type of these ancient trees. Gingko Petrified Forest was formed by the flow of lava over fallen gingko trees; ground water creeping through the rock brought quantities of silica which, in the form of quartz, gradually took the place of the wood. Whole stone logs are found, some wonderfully and delicately colored, in the shape of the Asiatic gingko tree.
Toward the close of the Tertiary period, various plateaus and hills were formed—the Badger Mountains and Waterville Plateau, prominent folds of the Frenchman Hills, and the Spokane Divide. Large basins were created, and the Yakima River cut its way through ridge after ridge, as each in turn arose.
The Quaternary (later Cenozoic) period was one of discordant events that completely changed the topography, producing marked climatic differences between eastern and western Washington. From a chain of vents along the line of the Cascade Mountains, volcanoes discharged great quantities of cinders and ash and exuded molten rock. Temporary cessations of the latter allowed incrusting materials, chiefly andesite, to build up great cones to form such peaks as Baker, St. Helens, Adams, and Rainier. The largest of these was the truncated mass of Mount Rainier. Active as late as the early part of this century and still steaming and emitting gases, this mountain once attained a height of more than 16,000 feet, only to lose 2,000 feet of its peak in an explosion. Other unrelated lava flows occurred at this time throughout the Cascade Mountains.
Later, as the climate turned colder, enormous glaciers slid down from the north to cover the upper part of the State. Elevations were greater than now. Puget Sound was dry. On the lofty Cascade Mountains and the major volcartic peaks, constant snows packed into glaciers that plowed down the slopes.
With a reversion to comparative warmth, melting ice sent debrisladen floods roaming over the Columbian plain, seeking or creating
new channels as they rushed down the gradients caused by an earlier tilting. The abandoned rock-walled channels are today known as coulees. The Columbia River, much greater in volume than it is today, was blocked by the Okanogan Ice Lobe at the present site of Coulee Dam. The powerful stream, augmented by the run-off from adjacent and distant glaciers and the sudden draining of large lakes as far east as Montana, excavated a new channel. Abandoned when the retreating glacier allowed it to resume its former course, the old channel is now known as the Grand Coulee. A waterfall, one of the greatest in earth's history, thundered over the cliffs in what is today Dry Falls State Park. A great lake, named by geologists Lewis Lake, and many minor bodies of water covered large areas of central and eastern Washington. The White Bluffs, 600 feet high and 30 miles long, on the Columbia River in Franklin, Grant, and Benton Counties, were created at this time. The force of the streams stripped sediments from the underlying lava, and these, transported southward, fill the fertile farming areas today. The denuded regions are the Channeled Scablands, more than 2,500 square miles of bare lava intricately channeled by ancient streams, now dry.
The shallow edges of the glaciers in the Puget Sound region, reaching as far south as Tenino, melted quickly, forming "mystery mounds"—the hundreds of little hummocks and hills of that "mound prairie" region. Vast clay deposits, characteristic of Puget Sound topography south of Admiralty Inlet and Deception Pass, indicate a damming of the melting waters at these points. With the disappearance of the ice dams, the quick run off carved numerous valleys out of the sea bed. When the sea level rose again these became deep harbors and channels bordered by high cliffs.
Fossils found in central Washington beds tell of lush vegetation and abundant animal life—temperate zone and subtropical flora and fauna—maintained by the rich lava-formed soil. Fossilized leaves of fig, oak, cypress, elm, and gingko (the Sacred Tree of China) have been uncovered. Sequoia trees grew in several parts of the State. Rocks along the margins of Puget Sound have revealed marine forms of the recent, or Cenozoic, era. Bones of mammals of this period, including the mammoth, the horse, and the bison, may be seen in the Whitman College Museum at Walla Walla. A skeleton of the mastodon (Elephas Columbi), built up from remains uncovered in the vicinity of Latah near Spokane in 1878, is a highly valued exhibit in the Field Museum in Chicago.
ANIMAL LIFE
It was the rich animal life of Washington that drew to the territory its first white inhabitants—hunters, trappers, fishermen, and traders. Today, too, the State is renowned for its native fauna, especially for its game fish. The coastal waters contain five famous varieties of salmon: Chinook (king, tyee, or spring), large and game, which predominates in the Columbia River and its tributaries; sockeye (blue-back), found in the Sound and the Strait and fresh water lakes; chum (dog), a lower grade fish; pink (humpback), and silver (coho). The quinnat salmon, noted for its delicacy and size, and of leading importance commercially, is a member of the king family.
Besides the salmon, several other migratory fish ascend Washington's rivers from the sea in breeding season; chief among these is the fighting steelhead, a large-sized rainbow trout. Two cutthroat trout are favorites of sportsmen: the coastal variety and the so-called Montana black-spotted trout. The blueback trout (salmo beardsleei) is found only in Lake Crescent, on the Olympic Peninsula. Also much sought are the silver trout, a fresh-water variety of sockeye, and the western spotted char, called the Dolly Varden trout. The squawfish, a predatory pike, is frequently found in lakes and streams; and the white sturgeon, of the Columbia, Snake, and Pend Oreille Rivers, largest fresh-water fish in North America, was once such a nuisance that an attempt was made to exterminate it. Species planted in Washington waters include the gamy largemouthed and smallmouthed bass, the eastern brook trout (comparatively rare), and the mackinaw trout found in Spokane, Pend Oreille, and Stevens counties. Other importations now distributed on both sides of the Cascades are the spiny-rayed fish: perch, crappie, catfish, and sunfish.
Native salt-water fish are the halibut, now increasing in numbers; the albacore tuna, which have been taken in great numbers since 1936, when fishermen first went far out off the banks to catch them; the herring and the pilchard, used largely for oil, meal, and bait; the flounder; the red snapper; and the ling, the rock, and the black cod. Two varieties of eulachon are common: the Columbia River smelt, the heavy spring run of which draws hundreds of people to the Cowlitz River near Kelso; and the candlefish of Puget Sound, so called because the Indians used to dry it and burn it for light. The devilfish, or octopus, is also found in coastal waters; and the eel frequents some rivers, especially the Columbia.
These are some of Washington's food and game fish, but the list scarcely suggests the extent and variety of the State's marine fauna. Near the shore in shallow waters, tiny sponges and mussels cling to rocks and pilings, jellyfish pulse their way in search of food, starfish sometimes grow to unusual size, and sea anemones open and close at the slightest prod. Other forms inhabiting these grounds are sea urchins, limpets, chitons, whelks, segmented and flat worms, tube worms, periwinkles, and shell-less bronze and rose sea slugs. Among the shellfish are butter clams, the staple food of Puget Sound Indians, and still abundant today; razor clams of the ocean beaches, sought by tourists; the small Olympia oyster, famous for its flavor, and the rock oyster, both native to Washington waters, and the large Japanese oyster introduced here a few years ago, scallops with exquisitely fluted rose-tinted shells; and the geoduck, elusive and comparatively rare. Crabs of different sizes thrive in the sheltered pools and rocky coves along the many miles of coastal waters; and shrimp, small, firm, and flavorful, occur in considerable numbers in Hood Canal. Not to be overlooked are the common barnacles, which cling tenaciously to rocks, logs, and sea-going vessels.
Among oddities of the sea are the opalescent squid and the sea squirt, the latter a cylindrical, bag-like creature, tapering slightly at both ends, which attaches itself to rocks or shells and squirts water like a clam. The porpoise is not infrequently seen sporting in schools; and the hair seal, sometimes accompanied by the sea lion, also visits Puget Sound. The shark family is represented here by the mud shark, the more common dogfish not being a true shark. Even the whale leaves the deep waters now and then and detours into the blind alley of Puget Sound. Land animal life is also unusually abundant here. Insects and bugs are relatively few in kind, although the State has its quota of the usual varieties. Outstanding among the invertebrates of eastern Washington are the warrior grasshopper, the coulee cricket, and the locust, and in the coastal regions the various pine-borers. The red ant, with its dome-like hill, is common in dry pinewood areas. Most noteworthy of the butterflies is the swallowtail, largest of the western species, with double "tails" on each hind wing. Among the imported pests are the codling moth and the earwig. The tent caterpillar (larval stage of the moth) is often a destructive nuisance in western Washington. Except for the black widow spider, which is found now and then, and the wood tick, carrier in some instances of Rocky Mountain fever, there are no poisonous or disease-bearing insects. Among amphibians, the most numerous
are the tree frog and the western wood frog. There are several varieties of the lizard, the salamander, and the toad; the horned toad, however, is rare. Turtles are represented west of the Cascades by the terrapin, and east of the mountains by the western painted turtle. Snakes of various kinds are fairly numerous, notably the garter snake, the bull snake of the pine woods, and, in some parts of eastern Washington, the poisonous rattlesnake.
In the forests and mountains elk, deer, and bear are plentiful, and are frequently seen from the highways traversing timbered areas. Of especial interest is the Roosevelt elk, named in honor of Theodore Roosevelt, which is found within the State only in the Olympic Mountains and the Tatoosh Range. Largest of all wapiti, it is identified by its light color and massive spread of antlers. The mule deer and the Columbian black-tailed deer—distinguished by its broad flat tail — are familiar to sportsmen. Though more rare, the mountain goat is increasing in number under protective laws.
Larger predatory animals have been almost exterminated by hunters seeking State bounties. The Canadian lynx, red western bobcat, timber wolf, and red fox are seldom seen. The coyote, once widely prevalent, has retreated into the foothills in depleted numbers. Strangely enough, it is the mountain lion or cougar, upon whose head there has long been a price, that remains numerous, though he is encountered only in remote places.
Among lesser native mammals are several species of the shrew, mole, bat, western fisher, and weasel; and racoon, skunk, badger, marten, and mink are plentiful. The beaver, almost exterminated, is now returning. The Washington and Cascade varying hares, the white-tailed rabbit, and that little cave dweller, the cony or rock rabbit, belong to a family of rodents. Strangest of the lesser mammals is the shrew mole, who, combining the features of both shrew and mole but related to neither, has an ancestry going back to some remote Asiatic strain. Other common rodents are the squirrels, chipmunks, woodchucks, porcupine, and gophers. Several are of special interest: the mantled ground squirrel, the Cascade flying squirrel, the strange mountain beaver (not a beaver), who burrows in wet hillsides and is found only in the western part of Washington and Oregon; and the largest of the rodents, the marmot, noted for his whistling.
As might be expected in such an extensively wooded region, perching birds are numerically great, constituting two-fifths of the entire bird life. Members of this order are, in general, small in size, with the
exception of the raven. The 18 families represented include the crow, blackbird, and sparrow, as well as many colorful birds and attractive singers: the tanager, warbler, lark, pipit, thrush, kinglet, titmouse, creeper, wren and thrasher, dipper, swallow, waxwing, shrike, vireo, and flycatcher. The crows are the most intelligent of this group; the chattering sparrows, particularly the gambrel sparrow, is the most often seen; and the golden-crowned kinglet is the most numerous. Among curious birds are the chat, the great mimic; and such finely costumed creatures as the lazuli bunting, the western tanager, the rare purple martin, the violet-green swallow and the crested gray-brown waxwing, the dainty water ouzel, and the rough-winged swallow with hooked wingtips. The most tuneful songbirds are the western lark, the black-headed grosbeak, the gold warbler with his silken black cap, and Audubon's warbler. Washington has chosen the willow goldfinch as its State bird.
Most of the perching birds are hardy. The varied thrush particularly loves the rain; the wren, kinglet, bushtit, chickadee, and Sitkan kinglet are evident in flurried throngs throughout the winter.
Weak feet and powerful wings mark the insect eaters, such as the swifts and the humming birds. Gaudy as are all the hummers, the most resplendent is the calliope with its emerald-green back and rose or purple gorget. Though less colorful, the swifts are extraordinarily graceful in flight.
The brilliant red coloration of the climbers and their unmistakable tapping play a vivid part in the chorus of the woods; they vary in size from a species no bigger than a sparrow to one as large as a robin. The Harris's woodpecker, black and white of head, with body of scarlet and gray, is perhaps the most beautiful. The white-headed and the pileated woodpeckers are rare.
The belted kingfisher—blue and gray with white pompadour—is a noisy fellow, usually found beside some stream awaiting the flash of an unsuspecting fingerling. The band-tail pigeon is the most common member of its family.
Strong talons and hooked bills distinguish the birds of prey. The owls, with 16 species, are numerically preponderant, but in spite of their number they are infrequently seen. The western horned owl and that rare winter visitor, the great horned owl, approximate the goose in size. The very common Kennicott screech owl, the hoot owl, and the burrowing owl, found in the arid regions of eastern Washington, are the most prevalent of the family. Both the prairie falcon and the sparrow
hawk are extremely predacious. Once a familiar sight above crested peaks and arid wastes, the California condor is now extinct in the area; only the turkey vulture and an occasional bald or golden eagle may be seen today.
With the introduction of the Chinese pheasant in 1880, another brilliant member was added to the already plentiful drummers. A sly bird, colorful in plumage (and delicious in the pan), it is one of the greatest game birds in the State. Although not comparable to it in size or delicacy, the mountain partridge, with its long straight chest, the gray-blue grouse, the white-tailed ptarmigan, and the sage hen are also popular among sportsmen.
With more than 1,700 miles of shoreline and a moderate climate, Washington is a haven for marsh, shore, and water birds. The sandhill crane, eagle-sized, gray and brown in color, and the American coot are the most common of the marsh birds. In mating season, the ungainly crane performs a comical love dance, dipping, sidling, and shuffling. Of the true waders, the great blue heron, with slender bare legs and unwebbed toes, is the most picturesque.
Four orders are found among the shore birds: the Limicolae (sandpipers, avocets, turnstones, surfbirds and oystercatchers); the Longipennes (gulls, terns, and jaegers, noted as long-winged, strong fliers); the Anseres (ducks, geese, and swans); and the Steganopodes (cormorants and pelicans, fish eaters, with four toes joined by three webs). The latter are strong fliers, but are usually observed sitting on rocks. The avocet is the rarest of the sandpeeps—an awkwardly poised bird on stilt-like legs, with brilliant red, black, and white plumage. He has an upcurved bill, which he sweeps back and forth through the shallows, scooping up his microscopic food. Of the gulls, the white-headed is the most plentiful, although there are great migrations of the California and new gull. Among the shore birds, the jaeger, a rapacious tyrant, plays a role as villainous as that of the sparrow hawk and the prairie falcon farther inland.
Ducks and geese are abundant. Redhead, canvasback, scaup duck, goldeneye, honker, and black brant are found on river, lake, and bay. Favorite of the naturalist and the hunter is the wood duck, with its crested head—iridescent with black, green, violet, and purple—and white throat, chestnut breast, and purple sides. Although 60 species of this order are found in North America, only the cinnamon teal is peculiar to the Northwest. His chestnut coat and bill, and his peculiar habit of playing leapfrog during mating time, distinguish him from his
more resplendent fellows. The rare blue-winged teal is sometimes seen. The tube-nosed birds include the albatross, fulmar, shearwater, and petrel. These, and the grebes, loons, auks, murres and puffins, known as Pygopodes—diving birds capable of remaining under water for long periods (as they commonly do when alarmed) —make their homes along the sandy shores and in the waters of Washington.
PLANT LIFE
The narrow fringe of ocean shore, the humid western slopes between the Cascades and the coast, the towering mountain ranges, the Columbia Basin with its extremes of summer and winter temperatures, and the intermontane plateaus—each region has its distinctive flora. And in each, climatic and topographic factors have influenced the number of species and the abundance or rarity of flowers of the various species. More than 3,000 species are found. Among the native plants are some of the rarest specimens: Flett's violet and the exquisite Piper bluebell of the mountain tops, the phantom orchid of the deep woods, the delicate rock pink of the Columbia Basin, and the sea rose of the coastal waters.
Conspicuous among marine plants are numerous algae, varying from blue-green to brown and red. Of this group the most common is the floating kelp with its brown-bulbed whip. The sea rose, rarest and most complex of the red algae, is found in its branched form, native only to the western coast of North America and the northeastern coast of Asia. Two species of eelgrass also grow here; one in exposed tidal waters, the other in protected marshes. Marine lichens and fungi of various kinds abound along the coast.
In season, even the sand dunes are abloom with sturdy plants. To windswept wastes cling the delicately fragrant yellow and pink abroma or sand verbena and the saltbush with pale, scurvied leaves; sand strawberries, beach pea, and blue, yellow, and purple lupine advance upon the rippling dunes, wherever some slight protection is afforded by driftwood or rock or hummock of solid earth. Fennel, spurrey, ruppia, willow, and the yellow-blossomed sneezeweed grow in rank profusion about the salt marshes.
Above the dunes and beaches along the littoral runs a narrow band of Sitka spruce, also called tideland spruce, a tree of great commercial importance. Douglas fir, a species forming the greater part of the stand in the rain belt between salt-water shores and the Cascade Mountains, is tall and stately, of great strength, comparative lightness, and
straight grain. First reported by Archibald Menzies at Nootka Sound in 1792, it was known as Oregon pine until named in honor of David Douglas, who introduced it into Europe in 1827. Other conifers are the western hemlock, known for its size, drooping branches, and gracefully tapering trunk; western red, Port Orford, and Alaska cedars; and, in the mountains, the six-leaved pine and the silver, white, and noble firs. Winter and summer, these forests keep their green ranks closed against the winds, their moss-hung boughs blotting out the sun. Today, wilderness roads wind between the green walls made by these ancient forest giants, whose branches, interlacing overhead, sough and murmur in vagrant winds. Seen from an elevated vantage point, seemingly miles of dark-green brushy tips cover the valley floors and sweep up the mountain slopes, staggering as they near the rocky summits. Scattered through the coniferous forests at the lower levels is the madrona, with its red-skinned trunk, classed as an evergreen because its new leaves have formed by midsummer, when the old ones fall. In most of the forested areas of lower altitudes are several deciduous species. Common among these is the big-leaf maple, usually found as an inc1dental tree growing in clumps or singly among the conifers. In bright contrast to the evergreens is the vine maple, so called because of the sprawling appearance of its weak and crooked stems. In the spring, its leaves are a gorgeous rose red; in the fall, reddish yellow or bright scarlet. Other hardwoods are the red alder, one of the first species to take possession of burned or cut-over land; the black cottonwood, found only at lower elevations in coastal regions; the Oregon white, or Garry, oak; the western yew, the California myrtle, and the Oregon ash. Most spectacular is the western dogwood, easily recognized in spring by the button-like clusters of small, greenish-yellow flowers, surrounded by four to six snowy white, or slightly pink, saucer-like scales, popularly presumed to be petals of the real flower. Late in summer the foliage turns a brilliant scarlet and orange, and the small seed-like fruit becomes bright red; autumnal flowers are not uncommon. Abundant also are shrub-like hazel trees and Cascara-buckthorn trees, whose bark is used in making cascara sagrada.
Except for open prairie lands, restricted to a few localities, the western forest floors are covered with dense thickets of ferns, mosses, Oregon grape, and salal, discovered by Archibald Menzies and described in the Lewis and Clark journal. Drenched by the rain, one stormy winter day in 1805, Captain Clark had found shelter in a Clatsop Indian hut, and there was presented with a bowl of "syrup pleasant to the taste
made from a species of berry common in the country, about the size of a cherry, called by the Indians shelwell. Of these berries a bread is also prepared, which being boiled with roots, forms a soup, which was served in neat wooden trenchers." Later, Douglas found the Indians in Oregon calling the plant salal, the name by which it is usually known today.
Most spectacular of the many ferns is the sword fern, often exceeding four feet in height. Others are the omnipresent brake, the fragrant licorice fern, and the delicate maidenhair and lady ferns, found under overhanging ledges where the earth is always cool and damp. Creeping over the ground are the lycopodium and the mosslike selaginella, much used for Christmas decorations. Common throughout the lower levels of the western part of the State is the fernlike horsetail, which in early spring covers the open uncultivated spaces. In the dense forests, the vivid coloration of shrubs and flowers breaks the green-shadowed monotone; the deerhead orchid growing out of Hypnum moss or rising from the rotting trunks of a fallen tree; the rare phantom orchid, with yellowthroated flowers on a waxen stem; the spotted and striped coralroot; the tall barber's pole, white and scarlet; the drooping wax-white Indian pipe, the starflower, and the wake-robin; the white, purple, and blue anemone, and the green, pink, and red pyrola. Earliest of all, the snowy trillium bears its single flower in dampness and shadow. Shrubs abounding in the western Washington forest include the early blooming currant, spiraea, ocean spray, and manzanita. Berry pickers search the open woods for the flavorous wild blackberry, which grows in bush formation or trails its thorny vines over burned logs in clearings, as well as for the red mountain huckleberry and the blue varieties, found in coastal and mountainous regions. Other shrubs are the fragrant white syringa, the wild rose, found on both sides of the Cascades, the red-berried elder of coastal regions, and the blue-berried variety of eastern Washington.
But queening it over all others is the delicate rhododendron, fitly chosen as the State flower. A sturdily beautiful shrub, braving ocean blasts and mountain heights, it borders the woods in great massed banks of rose, pink, lavender, and white. Its fluted bell-shaped flowers spring in clusters from shiny evergreen leaves. These are the "bouquets of splendid flowers . . . thousands of them together," which Father De Smet delightedly noted in the 1840's. Every spring the rhododendron inspires festivals and pilgrimages on the Olympic Peninsula. Less celebrated but equally spectacular is the Scotch broom, which has rioted
across the western part of the State since its introduction by homesick fur traders from Scotland.
Common in the vicinity of bogs and lakes and meadowlands are the swamp laurel, buttercup, sphagnum mosses, sundew, cranberry, and Labrador tea, splashing the landscape with shimmering white, rose-purple, and yellow. In the wet bottom lands grow the yellow-fruited salmonberry, the gold-sheathed skunk-cabbage, the false nettle, and the prickly devils-club. Forest and meadow yield many species of edible mushrooms as well as other fungi. Most poisonous mushrooms will be identified by the "death-cup" or ring around the bottom of the stalk, though it is a safe rule to take no chances with unfamiliar species. Strikingly different is the plant life east of the Cascade Mountains. The arid and almost treeless Columbia Basin, cut by coulees and arroyos and spotted with sinks and dunes, has remained since Cretaceous times virtually untouched by geologic upheavals. In this area the omnipresent low-growing sagebrush covers miles of brownish-red hills; it is silvery gray, with small wedge-shaped leaves and yellow bloom in spring, and emits a spicy, pungent odor. Companion plants are the rabbit brush, antelope brush, and hop-sage, and in the more alkaline soils, greasewood. Even in some parts of this arid region, spring brings forth an evanescent loveliness of grassy slopes dotted with yellow bells, grass flowers, sunflowers, and lupine. On rocky ledges, serviceberry bushes for a few days are swaying white towers; tules, cattails, and yellow water lilies appear along edges of sloughs and lakes, and willows of various kinds are brightly green.
In the eastern part of the State, where the rainfall is somewhat heavier, grasses and flowering plants increase. The first warmth of the spring sun ushers in a host of annual plants and herbs, which first carpet the area with green and then quickly burst into bloom. The pearl-white flower of the everlasting; the graceful white, blue, and bicolored lilies; the rose-purple, pink, and white flowers of the wild onion; the buttercup, with its waxy yellow chalice; and the low rosered bitterroot, often called the rockrose, which springs forth on the driest hillsides or nestles among the rocks. In the deep shade of woods and in the cool dampness of meadow and sloughs grows the miner's lettuce (famous salad dish among Indians and early settlers), from the center of whose shield-like leaves spring flower clusters, lining only one side of the central stalk; purple-tufted wild peppermint and Solomon's seal; watercress in clear running water of creeks; and in the lowlands and along sloughs the slender spires of
the wapato, or arrowhead, tipped with small white blossoms, and the camas, which turns springtime meadows into pools of blue. Altogether 500 plant species occur in this area. Many of them, including the tansy mustard, hairy-stickseed, purple mustard, gilia, and three-veined violet, are indigenous. Other colorful flowers are the wild geranium, the brown-eyed Susan, and the goldenrod. In open places they are shortlived, but on shady north slopes or along more humid lowlands, under the protection of red alder, scaly hackberry, pine, and willow, they linger throughout the summer.
Encircling Columbia Basin and including the Palouse and Big Bend regions, Walla Walla, Douglas, Lincoln, Yakima, and Klickitat Counties, and the Rattlesnake and Horse Heaven Hills, some bunchgrass plains survive, though many have been planted to wheat. Lupines and sunflowers, including the unusual black sunflower, enliven the landscape. Along draws grow the adder's tongue, the flaring white hellebore, and the Indian paintbrush (also found in western Washington). Where this comparatively treeless area merges into the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, the Okanogan Highlands, and the Blue Mountains, the dominant growth is the yellow pine. Where yellow pine grows, there also are found varieties of mistletoe and ginseng. Pine-grass and the shrubs of ninebark, buckbrush, and rose are freely scattered in the lower levels, but more rarely on the higher ground, where the Engelmann spruce, western larch, and red fir appear. Last of all the blossoming areas the traveler might find are the alpine meadows of wildflowers. Between towering peaks and below hanging glaciers stretch these great ponds of bloom, breaking in waves of color. In unrestrained profusion grow the painted cup, pink valerian, shooting star, crimson penstemon, monkey flower, mountain phlox, and mertensia. The white-green and pinkish-purple of the hellebore and giant helleborine, both touched with yellow and gold, mingle with the delicate white, blue, and purple of mountain anemones; the creamy cat's-ear or mariposa lily, the pure pink dogtooth violet, and the red columbine, create a riot of color. More fragile and aloof are the avalanche lily, alpine beauty, and spiraea, ghost-like in their whiteness. The air of these floral parks is fragrant with perfume.
Among the very glaciers and rocks grow lupine and lace fern; red, white, and yellow heather; kinnikinnick, which the Indians used to smoke; yellow mustard, mountain polypody, white saxifrage, and broad, heavy mats of partridgefoot. Rockbrake and the yellow stonecrop, with its leafy rosettes, are prolific. Plant life survives even in the snow, for
underneath it the alga Protococcus nivalis thrives, giving the drifts themselves a reddish tinge.
RESOURCES AND THEIR CONSERVATION
Vast timber stands, varied mineral deposits, fertile lands, invaluable fisheries, and many rivers providing power and irrigation have aided the rapid growth and development of Washington, and have made the State an important factor in the economic life of the Nation. Today, revolutionary changes are anticipated in almost every industry through the construction of the two great dams, the Grand Coulee and Bonneville, and numerous smaller reservoirs and hydroelectric plants. Agriculture will feel the effects of vast irrigation programs; mining and metal production, of an almost unlimited quantity of cheap power; lumbering, of conversion processes expedited by electricity; and fishing, of the hatcheries and elevators built in conjunction with water-control structures.
East of the Cascades much of Washington's soil is a surface decomposition of mile-thick lavas, with deposits of volcanic ash rich in phosphates and other plant foods; these elements are characteristic to some extent of virtually all of the State's arable land. Westward, in the Puget Sound Basin and its southerly extension, soils are either volcanic ash and fragmentary lava, or clays, sandy loams, and silts. Many peat bogs and bottom lands have made the wide, shallow river valleys of the coastal plain among the most fertile farming regions in the West. The open ranges in the eastern part of Washington provided rich grazing for extensive herds of cattle and sheep during the seventies and eighties. But the land soon proved too valuable for cattle raising, and farming encroached upon and finally broke up the enclosed ranges. Large areas still remain, however, which, with their native grasses, are better suited for cattle raising than for agriculture; but it is in the national forests that cattlemen now find the best grazing lands in the State. These forests are under control of the United States Forest Service, and uniform charges are made for grazing privileges. Wheat was grown early in the rich Palouse country, in the southeastern corner of the State, where the rainfall is moderate. Towards the south central region, however, in the Columbia River Basin, agriculture could not flourish, despite the richness of the soil, because of the low rate of rainfall; the area became a waste of sagebrush and scablands. Irrigation was introduced by the Protestant and Catholic missionaries. Later, several private companies, most of which went bankrupt,
attempted to supply water to the farms of the Columbia River region. Since 1905, when the United States Reclamation Service took over the Sunnyside project, irrigation has been the life of eastern Washington's arid sections. The Sunnyside, Kittitas, Wapato, Benton, and Tieton units were built with Federal assistance: Sunnyside irrigates 107,000 acres; Kittitas, 72,000; Wapato, 113,000; Tieton, 32,000. One of the more recent projects is the Roza, contemplated since 1918, which will ultimately bring 72,000 acres under irrigation; it is estimated that 10,000 acres under the latter project will be irrigated by 1941. The irrigation of 40,000 acres in the Rathdrum project near Spokane has been considered since 1932; at present 9,300 acres have been successfully watered.
The major irrigation project in the State, however, is the construction of dam, powerhouse, and reclamation works at Grand Coulee, undertaken by the Federal Government in 1934 (see Tour 1B). When completed, the project will carry water by flumes and canals to 1,200,000 acres in the Columbia Basin. An Anti-Speculation act passed by Congress regulates prices of the reclaimed land and lays down the conditions for its distribution to farmers.
Education for soil conservation, sponsored by the Washington State Planning Council, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the Washington Agricultural Experiment Station at Pullman, is leading to crop rotation for the renewal of fertility, the use of forage crops to check erosion, and the construction of earthworks and concrete dams in denuded areas. In eastern Washington, wheat production is being curtailed and the rolling hilltops and blown areas returned to grass. Test farming is conducted on a large scale at the experiment station at Pullman. Other projects at South Palouse, Badger Pocket, Wiley City, Cashmere, and Goldendale, dealing with native grass conditions, hilltop breaks and buffer strips, and gully and grazing control, have been carried on by the Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture.
Timber is Washington's foremost natural resource, and was once so plentiful as to lead to the belief that it would never be exhausted. The great forest areas today hold 277,000,000,000 board feet of timber of an original stand of an estimated 578,000,000,000. Nineteen per cent of all the soft wood timber in the United States is in Washington. West of the Cascades are more than 245,000,000,000 board feet, or 88 per cent of the State's standing timber. Douglas fir comprises about 40 per cent of this, and western hemlock is but little less plentiful.
Other important species of Washington trees include western red cedar, Sitka spruce, Shasta fir, mountain hemlock, ponderosa pine, and Port Orford cedar.
The national forests contain 101,000,000,000 board feet of timber, of which 88,000,000,000 are west, 13,000,000,000 east, of the Cascades. The remainder of the total stand is divided almost equally between private and public ownership.
Forests conserve water for irrigation, prevent soil erosion and floods, and maintain the purity of drinking-water sources. Standing timber also serves as a sanctuary for birds and game and furnishes summer range for cattle, horses, and sheep. In the past, these resources suffered from the "cut-up-and-get-out" logging methods employed. Present conservation programs, however, are aimed at safeguarding, through planned use, what is left of the State's forests and, ultimately, in restoring some of the lost woodlands.
Seven national forests lie wholly in Washington, and two others partly in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. To the west, mainly in the high Cascade region, are the Mount Baker, Snoqualmie, Wenatchee, Chelan, Columbia, and Olympic national forests. In the northeastern section is Colville National Forest and, farther east and extending into Idaho, the Kaniksu National Forest. From the extreme southeastern quarter of the State, Umatilla National Forest extends into Oregon. These forests cover almost 10,000,000 acres, a large area, but of their growth only 37 per cent is marketable timber. The average annual cut between 1926 and 1929 was above 7,000,000,000 board feet. The demand dropped to 2,250,000,000 by 1932 but rose again thereafter until it had reached almost 5,000,000,000 in 1937. Since only a fraction of the depletion was replaced by new growths, the importance of reforestation and conservation is apparent. Although 29,057 acres had been replanted with approximately 18,900,000 trees in 1938, a staggering task remains, according to a survey made by the Charles Lathrop Pack Forestry Foundation. The United States Forest Service, assisted by Civilian Conservation Corps camps, is striving to increase the scale of present reforestation efforts and to publicize the need for planned conservation. The foregoing agencies, the State Forestry department, and lumbering associations also co-operate to provide fire protection.
The mineral resources of Washington were noted by the Hudson's Bay Company, and mining was begun in the area before the middle of the nineteenth century. Gold and silver were found in eastern Wash ington Territory (now northern Idaho) in such quantities that $7,000,000 in gold were, it is said, shipped through Walla Walla in 1862. In all, it is estimated that about $750,000,000 have been derived from mineral production in the State since it was settled.
Potential mineral wealth in the State is almost incalculable, but for many years these resources were neglected because most of the metallic ores are low-grade and not concentrated. Recent developments in chemistry and electric power make it possible to work ores on a large scale in regions heretofore unprofitable. The State's mining income was more than $30,000,000 in 1937. In addition to paying deposits of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc, Washington has manganese, aluminum, magnesium, chromium, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, and tungsten. Most of the mine products of the State are, however, nonmetallic. These include more than 30 elements and compounds, among which are: coal, sand, gravel, lime, granites, marbles, micas, slates, clays, talc, sandstone, magnesite, and diatomite (used as a fertilizer and in building materials). Magnesite beds in Stevens County, estimated to be the largest in the country, produce 67 per cent of the Nation's total output. The Federal and State Governments maintain surveys, which conduct exhaustive studies of Washington's mineral resources. Advancement of mining is aided by the State Division of Mines and Mining, which seeks the introduction of modern methods, compilation of data from field surveys, and technical instruction for prospectors. Valuable contributions to mining technique have also been made by the University of Washington and Washington State College, and by the State Electrometallurgical Laboratory at Pullman with the co-operation of the United States Bureau of Mines. The electric power which will be made available by the Coulee Dam, Bonneville, and other plants, promises to revolutionize mining in the State. Perhaps potentially the most important resource of the State is its waterpower. Washington, possessing one-fifth of the Nation's hydroelectric power, with an aggregate potential of more than 10,000,000 horsepower, leads the country in this respect. According to the United States Corps of Engineers there are 280 possible power sites on Washington's rivers.
The Columbia River, 1,210 miles in length, is the largest stream west of the Rockies and drains an area of 259,000 square miles. At Grand Coulee it has an average volume of about 109,000 cubic feet per second. As a whole, the river is capable of generating more than 8,000,000 horsepower in a possible total of 145 plants along the main stream
and tributaries. In its course through the State the Columbia has a total fall of about 1,300 feet. Its tributaries offer immense possibilities, as yet unsurveyed and undeveloped.
It is estimated that the Puget Sound region has 83 sites for power plants, allowing the development of 1,500,000 horsepower. At present one of the largest hydroelectric installations is the Skagit River development of the Seattle municipal system, which has a seasonal capacity of more than 500,000 horsepower and a peak capacity that is much higher. In the Pacific Coast drainage area, embracing the Olympic Peninsula, there are sites for 52 hydroelectric plants with an aggregate potential of 500,000 horsepower. The Lake Cushman development of the City of Tacoma has a present rating of 157,000 horsepower. In addition to those mentioned above, a large number of major dams supply power, irrigation, and navigation facilities.
The relation between hydroelectric development and land conservation has been studied by the Federal and State Governments, and plans for control of soil erosion and floods are being put into practice. River flood control is already being effected by construction of dikes and revetments (stone retaining walls) by the State and the counties, under the direction of the War Department, with the aid of Federal funds. The Washington State Game Commission operated in 1938 twenty hatcheries and nine bird farms, and maintained divisions of biological research, public education, licensing, and game protection. The United States Forest Service aids in re-stocking impoverished streams and lakes; 36,000,000 fry and fingerlings were planted during 1935, and in the previous year 47,000,000. The closing of various lakes and streams, particularly within national-park boundaries, has been an effective aid in bringing the fish to maturity in re-stocked waters. Laws prohibiting pollution of streams and consequent destruction of fish by industrial plants and mines are strictly enforced.
The reduction of the commercial fish runs has created serious problems, some of which are well on their way towards solution, often as the result of international co-operation. For example, the Washington State Planning Council reported in 1938 that the Fraser River run of sockeye salmon, in which Washington has a joint interest with British Columbia, had declined from a value of $30,000,000 in 1913 to one estimated at $3,000,000 in 1933. On the other hand, the council reports, the halibut fishery of the North Pacific, threatened with extinction, was rescued by regulation based on the scientific study and planning of the International Fisheries Commission set up by a treaty between
the United States and Canada. Through the co-operation of Federal and State Government agencies, the University of Washington's School of Fisheries, labor unions, commercial groups, and organized sportsmen, valuable results are being obtained.
With the Columbia and many smaller rivers dammed by power and irrigation projects, fish were prevented from reaching upriver spawning grounds. Here, too, fruitful remedies have been devised. At Bonneville Dam elaborate fish ladders and locks were constructed, and a daily count was taken of the various species passing over them. Refrigerated, air-conditioned tank trucks remove the salmon trapped below Coulee Dam to spawn elsewhere. It is anticipated that fish propagation may be developed in the 150-mile lake that will result from the completion of Coulee Dam. Most species of salmon are at least holding their own, except the Chinook, which still appears to be decreasing. In the Columbia River district alone, however, many millions of Chinook eggs are taken annually for artificial or natural hatching.
Restriction of hunting to brief seasons protects game birds and native elk, bear, and deer. Deer and elk are on the increase over most of the State. Trapping is licensed and rigorously confined. Mountain goats are protected the year round in sanctuaries. Predatory animals, such as the cougar and coyote, are hunted down and bounties are paid for their extinction.
Game conservation is supervised jointly by the State Commission and the United States Forest Service. Typical of the activity of the nine game farms in Washington was the liberation of 60,000 pheasants in 1936. One hundred and sixty protective areas and game preserves have been set aside in the national forests. The Wild Life Conservation Act, passed by Congress in September 1937, has made Federal aid available for carrying on the State conservation program. The beauty of Washington's mountains, virgin forests, lakes, bays, and waterfalls is unexcelled in the most publicized scenic resorts of the world. Thousands of tourists are drawn annually to its parks and beaches and, in the winter, to its ski courses and skating areas. Municipal, State, and Federal funds have been expended in improving Washington's natural playgrounds and in making them available to a growing public.
Indians
AMERICAN history written in terms of the white man is a story of his triumphant march westward, clearing the land, breaking the sod, draining swamplands, and setting up frontier settlements, which quickly developed into sprawling towns, or sometimes into bustling cities. For the Indian, however, this never-ceasing advance into his lands has meant the end of his way of life. From the moment of the first encroachment upon his preserves and the enforced contacts with white men—at first with trappers and fur traders and later with other occupational groups—the breakdown of Indian culture was inevitable. This included the alteration and disarrangement of his economic and linguistic forms, and adjustment to the life imposed upon him by the unyielding and ruthless intruders. The process of acculturation still goes on, and it is apparent that, when the informed remnant of the old Indian line has departed, the native culture and its unrecorded native lore will be forever lost. In comparatively recent years, however, there has been an awakened interest in the Indian, and scientific ethnological and archeological study has been undertaken to preserve for future generations a true record of the first Americans and their culture. Archeological research in the State of Washington has merely scratched the surface, only a few studies having been made of the early cultural remains found in the Yakima River Basin and the Puget Sound region. In all probability, prehistoric people made the pictographs and petroglyphs found in eastern Washington and along the Columbia River. The origins, functions, and meanings of these picture writings and rock carvings are still a matter of conjecture, and they are not explained either by the Indians or by anthropologists and archeologists. Studies do indicate, however, that the culture of the early peoples did resemble to some extent that of historic Indians. These researches, moreover, have furnished additional evidence to support the theory of the Asiatic origin of the Indian. Remains of later periods are much more numerous, and considerable progress is being made in collecting and preserving them. The best collection of Indian archeological and ethnological material
in Washington is in the State Museum, University of Washington campus, Seattle. Among the items are baskets, drums, carvings, clothing, tools, and various weapons. In several towns in central and eastern Washington are smaller collections made by individual members of the Columbia River Archeological Society, with headquarters in Wenatchee. The State Historical Society Museum, located in Tacoma, has a fairly large collection. Museums in the East, notably the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City, and the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., also display collections of Indian objects from the State.
On the basis of culture traits, the Indians of Washington may be divided into two major groups, one comprising those bands east of the Cascade Range, and the other those west of it. The sharp cultural differences that developed between these groups arose in large measure from the barrier to intercourse formed by these lofty mountains. Contributing also to the formation of distinctive culture patterns was the sharp contrast in the physical character and climatic conditions of the two areas. East of the Cascades, in the semiarid plateaus and grasslands of the Columbia River system, considerable cultural similarity existed. West of the Cascades as well, from British Columbia south to the Umpqua River in Oregon, native cultures were sufficiently homogeneous to permit this region to be regarded as a single culture area. Within this coastal area, sub-areas are discernible, such as the Makah and the Puget Sound groups to the north and the Chinook along the Columbia. Cultural diffusion did take place, however, as evidenced in the development of the Chinook jargon, a kind of trade language. This language, in its basic content the Chinook tongue, was formed by accretion of corrupted words from native groups who traded together, plus words later added by the whites. It arose from intertribal communication and the demand for a medium of communication in exchange and barter. It finally became the trade language used by the natives throughout the Northwest in their dealings with the whites.
Frequently northern Indians, from the region that is now British Columbia and southeastern Alaska, journeyed south in their war canoes, through the protected Inland Passage, to attack the Puget Sound Indians for the purpose of capturing slaves; and these onslaughts resulted in a transfer of culture. Some interchange also took place between inhabitants of the Columbia River region and those of the Rocky Mountain and Plains areas.
The summer abodes of the coastal Indians were temporary lodges
built of rushes or bark, for little shelter was needed; but for the winter, when the weather was cold and rainy for protracted periods, permanent houses were built. Cedar planks, two or three feet wide and from three to six inches thick, were cut with crude wedges made of elk-horn or with chisels of beaver teeth and flint. From these planks and from logs, rectangular houses, 40 to 100 feet or more in length and 14 to 20 feet wide, were built. The only openings were the one left along the ridgepole to permit the escape of smoke, and a single door. These long houses accommodated a number of families, each with its own small fire in the shallow excavation which ran lengthwise down the middle. Bunks lined the walls, and the four or five feet of earthen floor between them and the fire was the living space of each family. The most important food of the Indians of western Washington was salmon, which they caught in their primitive weirs and traps. Halibut, cod, shellfish, sturgeon, and fresh-water fish were also widely used. Game of many kinds, especially deer, elk, and wild fowl, was obtainable throughout the area. Agriculture was unknown, but wild berries, roots, bulbs, nuts, and various herbs supplemented the basic diet of fish and game.
Clothing was in the main fairly well standardized, though there were differences owing to changes in the weather or indicating social status. In mild seasons men wore either nothing or a robe or blanket thrown over the back and fastened across the chest with a string; they also had buckskin shirts, belts, breechcloths, leggings, moccasins, and basketry hats. The basic dress for women was a sort of petticoat, usually made of twisted strings of cedar bark or grass, fastened to a cord or band around the waist and falling to the knees. Occasionally wool was used. Additional garments were worn in cold and rainy weather. Upper-class women of some bands also wore woven or skin shirts or capes. Tattooing was more common among women than men, but it was usually limited to a few lines or dots on the arms and legs. The face was rarely, if ever, marked. Among some bands, especially those of the lower Columbia, heads were flattened in babyhood.
A high level of technique was achieved in the crafts. The hides of animals, both large and small, were tanned with the hair on, and from these, various articles, such as moccasins, skirts, and drums, were made with considerable skill. Woodworking was in an early stage of development; though the forms were broadly similar to those used by the Indians farther north, they lacked the technical and artistic skill achieved there. Perhaps the best example of the woodwork of the region
was the dugout cedar canoe. Weaving was in most instances crude: the hair of dogs, shredded bark, the fur of bears, and the wool of mountain goats were woven on looms made of two uprights connected by rollers at top and bottom. The Indians of Juan de Fuca Strait region were famous for their dog-hair blankets. Some of their articles were skillfully colored with vegetable dyes, reds, yellows, greens, and black, being most prevalent. Mats were woven from shredded cedar bark and dried rushes, and baskets for many uses were twined from fine roots and grasses. Pottery was unknown, although some stone carving existed before white men came.
To a limited extent, the crafts, especially basketry and wood carving, are still practiced, but almost entirely for the tourist trade, the original motive for such work having been largely eliminated by the introduction of machine-made goods. Baskets, rich in color and design, represent the most highly developed phase of Indian art in the coastal regions. Today, as in the past, grasses, cedar and spruce roots, willows, and straw are the materials most commonly used, with thread, string, and animal hair often woven in as decoration. The weaves have great variety—hard and soft coil, turned and open twine, straight and crossed warps, hemstitching, and imbrication. Skill is also displayed in the working out of color patterns and in the many shapes of the baskets. Curios made by the Indians for tourist trade are sometimes authentic in detail, such as the small model canoes; but the miniature totem poles that some carve are mere imitations of the genuine totem art common to the tribes of Alaska and parts of British Columbia.
Well-defined classes existed among the coastal bands, although there was neither a totemic nor a clan system like that developed among the people of the North. Society was divided into a hereditary nobility, a middle class, and a slave class, composed in the main of captives taken in war and their descendants. A certain degree of economic freedom prevailed; individuals, exclusive of the slaves, were allowed to enjoy most of the fruits of their labors. Social lines, however, were more strictly drawn: marriage between commoners and the wealthier and more important classes was frowned upon to such an extent that disgrace was passed on to the offspring. Government was centered in a chief, whose office as a rule was hereditary, and tribal councils, at which men of importance stated their opinions. Women occupied a position of inferiority, much of the drudgery of daily work falling to their lot. This inferiority was also reflected in the practice of determining descent by the paternal line.
A belief in personal guardian spirits was the most marked characteristic of Indian religious life. These spirits were presumed to bring success in war enterprises and in the acquisition of wealth, rank, and recognition in tribal councils. A boy frequently received a spirit that had been in his family before; a person of high rank was likely to have a powerful spirit, and women or persons of lower classes usually acquired only a small and not very effective guardian spirit. Occasionally, an individual, usually a man, became a shaman by acquiring one or more spirits effective in curing illness. These shamans, although they could never become chiefs, often rose to great power; and since they could exact high pay for their services, became at times exceedingly rich, even richer than the chief himself.
The region east of the Cascade Mountains, approximately two-thirds of the area of the State, is occupied by Indians having a "basin" type of culture. The introduction of the horse, shortly before the arrival of the explorers, led to complications and change in the economic life of the natives and to a rapid spread of material cultural elements associated with the horse and with the new mode of life. The Indians of eastern Washington wandered in bands, the range of their wanderings and the size of the bands depending largely on the nature of their food. Because of their nomadic life, the general dwelling was a mat lodge, which could be transported from place to place. Usually, this lodge, a single large room, was rectangular in shape, 20 to 60 feet in length and about 16 feet in width. Occasionally, the lodges were circular. Two to eight families might live in one lodge. The underground dwelling was probably known throughout the region, but it seems to have been utilized by relatively few bands; the semi-subterranean dwelling consisted of a circular pit from 4 to 6 feet in depth and from 10 to 15 feet in diameter. Surmounting it was a flat or conical roof of sod, supported by cedar planks and matting. The influence of the Plains tribes and of the whites is seen in the increased use of skin and canvas tepees and, in some sections, of log cabins.
As with the coastal Indians, salmon was a major food item. Most bands lived near enough to the rivers to keep supplied with fish. Another important food was roots, especially the root of camas, which grew in the grasslands and lowlands throughout the region. Seeds and roots were, in fact, the staple food for some bands. Near the Cascades and in the northern highlands, berries, especially huckleberries, were widely used, and small game and deer were hunted. Usually the
food was boiled in watertight baskets with hot stones, but some of it, especially roots, was baked over heated rocks.
The basin Indians had not developed a high degree of skill in the crafts except in the making of skin clothes and in basketry. Utensils, such as spoons, dishes, and bowls, were made of wood, but because of the scarcity of timber in the greater part of this area, little artistry in woodworking developed. Canoes, used infrequently, were only rude dugouts. Certain tribes, notably the Sanpoil and the Shoshone, manufactured a crude type of clay ware, although they were several hundred miles from the nearest deposits of good pottery clay. In basketry, coiling, twining, and imbricating were skillfully employed. Fine decorative effects were achieved with dyes and with a kind of embroidery. In historic times clothing in this area was of the same general character as that of the more easterly peoples. Tanning processes were well understood, as evidenced in the wide use of dressed buckskin, ornamented with fringe, and of skirts, leggings, and moccasins, decorated with beads and porcupine quills. Skin caps and robes were also common.
Compared to the rigid class divisions of the coastal regions, or to the system of the war-hero of the plains area, early social structures in eastern Washington had little class differentiation and were characterized by a general equality and pacifism. Chieftainship was nominally hereditary, but actually depended upon personal qualifications. Holding advisory rather than dictatorial powers, the chief was easily approachable and rarely possessed great individual wealth. Catches of salmon and meat obtained from hunting were divided equally among all present, foreigners included. Slavery, where it did come into existence, was an incident of war rather than an institution.
Concepts of the supernatural varied throughout eastern Washington. The Sanpoils, who have been carefully studied, divided supernatural beings into five categories: the soul, the soul-spirit, ghosts, spirit-ghosts, and "dangerous beings." During life, they believed, everyone possessed a soul. After death the soul went to the land of the dead at the end of the Milky Way, or stayed on earth and roamed about in the transformed nature of a soul-ghost. Spirits were numerous; plants, animals, and inanimate objects were believed to be endowed with spirits, and it was among them that the youth sought his guardian spirit. Once found, a guardian spirit became an integral part of the self, and could not depart without serious physical consequences. Upon the death of the individual, the guardian spirit became a spirit-ghost and might then become the guardian spirit of a relative or of a shaman. "Dangerous
beings," that is, ogres, monsters, demons, and evil dwarfs, were described in many interesting tales.
Eastern Washington bands had their shamans, too, with healing and other supernatural powers bestowed during their quest for their guardian spirits. The shaman, who could here be either a man or a woman, administered to the sick and officiated at ceremonies. Every winter, for a period of several months, dramatic spirit dances were held in the mat longhouses as part of initiation ceremonies for novices obtaining a guardian spirit, or as a special occasion under the sponsorship of a prominent shaman, or when the guardian spirit of any individual commanded a spirit dance.
Indian bands on both sides of the Cascades had festivals and celebrations, some of which are still held today. A festival common throughout the coastal regions north of the Columbia, but especially important in the Puget Sound regions, was the potlatch, a ceremonial feast at which valuable gifts were distributed to friends and neighboring tribesmen, each of whom was obligated to respond in a similar manner at a potlatch of his own. These feasts are still observed in a modified form. In the coastal areas, too, secret societies reached moderate development. Among modern festivals are Treaty Days celebrated in some reservations with a period of feasting, water sports, dances, songs, games, and exhibits of native handiwork. One of the most interesting of these celebrations is held annually in August on Whidbey Island, at which Puget Sound bands engage in war canoe races and other water sports (see Tour 2C).
Today, about 14,000 Indians, or roughly one twenty-fifth of the total Indian population in the United States, live in the State of Washington, most of them on reservations and public domains. The reservations are administered from four central agencies: the Taholah Indian Agency, with headquarters at Hoquiam, has under its jurisdiction the Quinault, Makah, Squaxin Island, Nisqually, Skokomish, Chehalis, and Ozette reservations, with a total Indian population of about 3,000; the Tulalip Agency at Tulalip has jurisdiction over about 3,500 on 6 reservations—Tulalip, Puyallup, Swinomish, Lummi, Port Madison, and Muckleshoot—and 3 public domains; the Colville Agency at Nespelem has jurisdiction over the Spokane and Colville reservations, with a population of more than 4,000; and the Yakima Agency at Yakima has jurisdiction over the Yakima Reservation, with almost 3,000 Indians.
Especially in western Washington, Indians, as a rule, constitute a
racial minority in most villages, both on and off the reservations. Moreover, throughout the State the location of reservations does not coincide with early band distribution. Thus the Indians living on the J reservations in the Taholah division represent many dialect groups and include many persons with white blood. Group intermarriage and modern conditions have obscured for all but a few very old people the original dialect or group divisions and affiliations. Descendants of former Upper, Middle, and Lower Spokane now consider themselves members of one Spokane "tribe." The present-day Colville "tribe" is made up of remnants of Lakes, Sanpoil, Nespelem, Nez Perce, Moses, Columbia, Okanogan, Methow, Wenatchee, and Colville bands. The contemporary Yakima "tribe" is the product of a confederation formed in the middle of the last century of the original Yakima with 13 other bands.
Co-operative practices have been readily accepted by the Indian, for group activity was an integral part of his native social and economic pattern. Three coastal groups, the Snohomish, the Muckleshoot, and the Tulalip, incorporated themselves in 1936 in order to acquire and "to secure for members of the tribe an assured economic independence." In the same year the Puyallup, Tulalip, Swinomish, and Makah "tribes" were legally organized, with constitutions and bylaws, for the purpose of mutual welfare. The Swinomish Indians of LaConner have a tribal fishtrap, which has been operated successfully despite the general depression in the area. East of the Cascades, the Indians in the Yakima country have formed a co-operative livestock association. The Indian of today differs in important respects from the Indian of a century ago. Blood mixtures are common, and most groups to a greater or lesser degree have altered their native cultural patterns. Moccasins, buckskin jackets, and basket hats are giving way to "store clothes"; pinto cayuses to automobiles; and Indian tobacco to factorymade cigarettes. More significant changes are also taking place: about 5,000 children now attend public schools, their tuition being paid by the Federal Government. Vanishing, too, are the tribal councils, and, in their stead, many of the Indians, since receiving full citizenship rights, are assuming the legal and political status of the people around them.
History and Government
THE exploits of Columbus inspired the Old World maritime powers to feverish activity during the sixteenth century. When it had become apparent that two continents lay between Europe and the Orient, a race began for discovery and control of the shortest water route through or around them. Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and Magellan led the way through the strait that bears his name. Meanwhile, incomplete and inaccurate information obtained by other explorers suggested the existence of a navigable waterway across the upper half of North America. For almost three centuries, European naval powers sought this Northwest Passage, or Strait of Anian. Imperial Spain was foremost in the quest. In 1542, Bartolome Ferrelo, commanding a Spanish expedition sent northward along the coast of what is now California to look for the passage's western opening, sighted the coast of what is now southern Oregon.
In 1578 Francis Drake sailed to the Northwest coast and named the land New Albion. Apostolos Valerianos, allegedly a Greek pilot, under the name of Juan de Fuca, claimed that in 1592 he entered a broad inlet between the 47th and 48th degrees of north latitude. His story was published in an English book (Purchas, his Pilgrimes, 1625), but no facts concerning his Northwest voyage have been verified. Nevertheless, his Spanish name—Juan de Fuca—was later given to the strait between the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island.
During the seventeenth century, no noteworthy additions to geographical knowledge of the Northwest resulted from attempts to find the passage. In 1670, Charles II of England granted a charter to "The Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay," with instructions to work for "the discovery of a new passage into the South Seas, and for the finding of some trade in furs and other considerable commodities." The company was given a monopoly on trade in regions not ruled by "Christian Princes."
Early in the eighteenth century, Peter the Great of Russia announced his intention of taking over all territory in North America not actually
occupied by other powers. Catherine, his successor, sent the Dane, Vitus Bering, on two expeditions in North Pacific waters. Bering discovered the inter-continental strait that now bears his name, explored and charted the Aleutian Archipelago, and coasted along the Alaskan mainland; but, when he died in 1741 on Bering Island, he still believed Alaska to be an island separated from the mainland by the Northwest Passage. Russia's first permanent settlement in Alaska was made in 1784, and important trading interests and other colonies were established between that year and 1863. (In 1867, Russia, having grown tired of its American adventures and probably fearing to lose control to England, sold its interests on this continent to the United States for $7,200,000.)
France, at no time a serious contender for territory in the Northwest, was definitely eliminated by England in the Treaty of Paris, 1763. For 30 years thereafter the struggle was between Spain and England, with Russia holding the region now known as Alaska. Spain strengthened her claims by expeditions first along the coast and later into Juan de Fuca Strait. In 1774, Juan Perez sighted a mountain (Mount Olympus), which he called Santa Rosalia. Bruno Heceta and Juan de la Bodega landed near Point Grenville in 1775, and claimed the land for Spain. It is believed that Heceta saw what is now called the Columbia River, without recognizing it as the "River of the West" so long sought.
Captain James Cook, commanding an English expedition with instructions to search for the Northwest Passage and lay claim for England to any unoccupied lands he might discover, sighted land off the Umpqua on March 7, 1778, and proceeded to Nootka Sound, where he spent a month. He was quite painstaking in charting the coast lines north of Juan de Fuca, but the Strait itself escaped his notice. The North Pacific voyage of the great French navigator, La Perouse, in 1785, was recorded in his journal, but, by the time the record was published in 1787, his discoveries were common knowledge among seamen. Now came the captains of the great fur-trade era, like the later gold rush to California. In 1787 Captain Charles William Barkley, an Englishman, found and named the passage now known as Juan de Fuca Strait. Barkley gave directions for finding the Strait to John Meares, once a lieutenant in the British Navy, who was preparing for a trading voyage along the Northwest coast. Early in the following year, Meares and another English trader, William Douglas, flying
both the Union Jack and the Portuguese flag, joined in the rush for furs that replaced the search for the Northwest Passage.
Meares and Douglas established themselves at Nootka in 1788, claiming to have bought a tract of land from the native chief. Later in 1788, the American flag appeared in Northwest waters with the arrival of the Washington and the Columbia, captained respectively by Robert Gray and John Kendrick, on an expedition financed by a Boston syndicate interested in the fur trade. Early in 1789, a Spanish naval force under Estevan Jose Martinez appeared at Nootka Sound and claimed the country for Spain. The Americans were not molested, but Martinez seized several English ships. Meares escaped and carried his grievance to London. In 1790, a second Spanish force under Francisco Eliza occupied and fortified Nootka and took possession of the mainland at Neah Bay. Manual Quimper, Eliza's lieutenant, sailed among the San Juan Islands, sighting the present Mount Baker, but turned back at Admiralty Inlet, thus missing discovery of Puget Sound. The Nootka controversy lost intensity in 1790, when England and Spain signed a convention providing for the appointment of commissioners, one for each nation, who were to go to Nootka and dispose of the points at issue. The commissioners, Captain George Vancouver for England and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra for Spain, resolved to let the matter be settled through arbitration by their home governments. The outcome was a convention signed February 12, 1793. whereby Spain and Great Britain mutually agreed to abandon Nootka Sound, and Spain agreed to make restitution for the property seized. Before the conference with Bodega y Quadra in 1792, Vancouver discovered and thoroughly explored Puget Sound, giving their present names to many of the region's prominent geographical features. He had met the American Captain Robert Gray in April 1792, but he paid no attention to Gray's suggestion that the opening near Captain Meares' Cape Disappointment might mark the mouth of a river. Gray, on May IX of the same year, passed through the entrance in the Columbia Rediviva; he anchored off the north bank and, after profitable trade with the natives, he named the river Columbia, for his ship.
THE UNITED STATES AND ENGLAND IN THE OREGON COUNTRY, 1793-1849
With the fading of the hope of a Northwest Passage and the elimination of Spain as a contender, England and the United States began a long contest for ownership oi what became known as the Oregon
country—a vast area bounded on the east by the Rock1es, and on the south by California and other Spanish possessions, and on the west by the Pacific, and extending north indefinitely. By 1803, the coast line had been explored, but little or nothing was known of the interior. England's claims rested on the work of Cook and Vancouver, on the ceded Spanish rights, and on the overland trip of the Canadian, Alexander Mackenzie, who in 1793 reached the British Columbia coast after crossing the Rocky Mountains and Coast Range by canoe and portage. American claims were supported only by Gray's discoveries of the Columbia, Gray's Harbor, and Tillamook Bay.
After Thomas Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, whereby the United States acquired title from the Mississippi River to the Rockies, he followed up with the overland expedition to the Pacific he had already planned, headed by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark. Lewis and Clark left St. Louis on May 14, 1804, and spent the winter of 1804-5 'n a camp near the present site of Stanton, North Dakota. With Toussaint Charbonneau, a FrenchCanadian voyageur, as interpreter, and Sacajawea, his young Shoshone wife, they crossed the Rockies in the summer of 1805. Descending the western slope, they discovered the Salmon, Bitter Root, Clearwater, and Snake Rivers and followed the Columbia to its mouth, near which they established Fort Clatsop and spent the winter of 1805-6. On September 23, 1806, they were back in St. Louis.
David Thompson, the great English geographer, in 1796 began surveying the 49th parallel westward from Lake Superior for the North West Company, to determine whether the company posts were in Canada or the United States. By the winter of 1808-9, he was on the headwaters of the Columbia. Between 1807 and 1811, he established for the company some of the first trading posts in the Northwest, notably Spokane House in 1810. In 1808, Simon Fraser, a Canadian, traced the Frazer River to its mouth.
In 1810, John Jacob Astor of New York organized the Pacific Fur Company and sent two parties, one by sea and one by land, to the mouth of the Columbia, where, on April 10, 1811, construction of a trading post, Astoria, was begun. During the time of construction, the post was visited by David Thompson, who, working his way methodically down the Columbia in the interests of the North West Company, was disappointed to find the Americans already established. Thompson turned back and continued his survey, going up the Snake and Palouse Rivers, then across country to Spokane House. Astor's
men also established inland posts, including Fort Okanogan, near the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia Rivers, where the American flag first flew over a settlement within the bounds of the present State. Within a year after word of the War of 1812 reached Astoria, the Astor representatives sold the Pacific Fur Company interests to the British North West Company. The Treaty of Ghent, in 1814, ended the war but failed to relieve tension over the Oregon question. A joint occupation convention was arranged in 1818, providing that the country "westward of the Stony Mountains" should be free and open for a period of 10 years to the "vessels, subjects and citizens" of both powers. Negotiations dragged on, and in 1827 both countries agreed to extend the treaty indefinitely with the added provision that either might end it on 12 months' notice. Meanwhile, the Hudson's Bay Company had absorbed the North West Company in 1821 and, by 1825, had established Fort Vancouver on the north bank of the Columbia, a few miles east of the mouth of the Willamette; and both England and the United States had signed treaties with Russia, in which the southern boundary of Russia's American realm was fixed at latitude 540 4c/ North.
American exploring expeditions into the Oregon country during the period of joint occupation included a party under Captain B. L. E. Bonneville, with headquarters in the western Wyoming region, who appeared at Fort Walla Walla in 1834; the Wilkes naval expedition, which explored Puget Sound and contiguous territory in 1841; and, in 1843, an expedition under Lieutenant John C. Fremont, who descended the Columbia to Vancouver, returned to the Dalles, and went southward to California. Bonneville, who supposedly had been trading for furs, was regarded as a poacher by Hudson's Bay men, and they refused to sell supplies to him. The company gave the naval and military parties a polite welcome, however, and land parties from the Wilkes expedition made trips to the company's inland posts. Richard Gill Montgomery, in his The Whiteheaded Eagle (1934), describes "the King of the Columbia," Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company west of the Rockies, as a man of limitless patience, cool and just and kind. The Hudson's Bay Company became so well established in the Oregon country that rival traders, including Americans, were in effect barred from doing business in the area. Nathaniel Wyeth, an American, launched a furtrading venture in the Columbia Valley in 1834 but, a few years later, was forced to leave. McLoughlin had undersold him, outbid him, built
Fort Boise to compete with Wyeth's Fort Hall in the Shoshone country, and used his greater influence with the Indians to discourage fur sales to Wyeth—yet McLoughlin and Wyeth were friends. McLoughlin had simply carried out his company's established policy toward "poachers." The Hudson's Bay Company ruled in Old Oregon, and John McLoughlin was czar. Had the question of ownership been decided on the respective merits of the rival Nations' claims, no reasonable doubt exists that England would hold the Oregon country today. Fortunately for the United States, other forces were at work. About 1834, American missionaries began to appear in the Oregon country, and Dr. McLoughlin advised them to make the Willamette Valley the field of their activities. This seemed to indicate a feeling on the part of England that the Oregon country might have to be divided, with the river as the boundary; but Americans had visions of the Stars and Stripes flying along the coast from California to Alaska; and so the bloodless fight for the Oregon country went on. When Jason Lee, the missionary, and his party arrived at Fort Vancouver in 1834, the factor helped them establish a mission in the Willamette Valley. Two years later, Marcus Whitman and Henry Spalding and their wives crossed the Rockies and, with McLoughlin's help but against his advice, set up a mission at Waiilatpu, near Fort Walla Walla. In 1839, Father Francois Blanchet and Father Modeste Demers established a Roman Catholic mission at Cowlitz. Lee is quoted as saying there were but 151 Americans in the Oregon country in 1839; but, by 1844, American settlers were as numerous as the British French-Canadians in the Willamette Valley, and other settlers were on the way.
Hudson's Bay Company authority, however fairly it may have been wielded, would not do for the American pioneers. Out of their dissatisfaction grew the establishment, at Champoeg (Champooick) on May 2, 1843, of the Provisional Government of Oregon. Nominally international in character, it was actually the first government established by citizens of the United States west of the Rockies, and lasted until the Oregon Territory was created in 1848, although it was never formally recognized. Its first governor was George Abernethy, elected in 1845; it used the laws of Iowa (the only ones available in book form in the Oregon country at the time); it made wheat legal tender, fixing a bushel at 60 pounds. Theoretically, it ruled the entire Oregon country; in practice, it was supported only by part of the settlers in the Willamette Valley and along the lower Columbia. The Hud son's Bay Company apparently was not opposed to the establishment of the government; and the oath of office read, "I do solemnly swear that I will support the organic laws of the Provisional Government of Oregon insofar as said organic laws are consistent with my duties as a citizen of the United States or subject of Great Britain, and faithfully demean myself in office." Following the massacre at Waiilatpu in 1847, in which Whitman, his wife, and 12 others were killed by Indians, the Provisional Government conducted a successful expedition to arrest members of the guilty Cayuse band.
By 1844, the Oregon question loomed so large in national politics that the slogan "Fifty-four-forty or fight!" helped sweep James K. Polk into the Presidency. Britain, engrossed in European troubles, decided to compromise. The Oregon question was settled on June 15, 1846, by a treaty fixing the line at the 49th parallel, with England retaining Vancouver Island.
Final approval of the bill creating Oregon Territory came on August 13, 1848. Abraham Lincoln was offered the governorship but declined; the choice then fell on General Joseph Lane, who took office at Oregon City on March 2, 1849.
THE TERRITORIAL PERIOD, 1849-1889
Most of the early settlers in Old Oregon made their homes south of the Columbia in the Willamette Valley. After the Treaty of 1846, however, the country north of the river developed rapidly, and by 1851 a thriving frontier village, Olympia, stood at the southern end of Puget Sound. Fort Steilacoom, farther north, housed two companies of Regulars, a mile inland from the busy seaport of Steilacoom. There was also a settlement at Alki Point, within the limits of present Seattle. Port Townsend, on the Olympic Peninsula, was the Sound's most promising seaport. These and other settlements were separated from the Territorial capital at Salem by miles of wilderness road and the broad unbridged Columbia. It was always inconvenient, sometimes impossible, for delegates to the legislature to make the trip. There had been an aggravating tendency on the part of the Provisional Government to slight the needs and wishes of the northern settlers, in its preoccupation with problems nearer home, and to a certain extent its Territorial successor had the same failing. These conditions inspired a movement for division of the Territory, which found expression in public meeting and in the columns of the Columbian, the Olympia weekly.
On August 29, 1851, a group of pioneers met at Cowlitz Prairie and framed a memorial to Congress favoring the creation of a separate territory north of the Columbia River. The next year, on October 26, a convention assembled at Monticello and voted another memorial to Congress. Before this reached Washington, D.C., Territorial Delegate Lane, on December 6, introduced a resolution asking Congress to investigate the expedience of dividing Oregon. There was some opposition from Whigs and Republicans, but the Democrats, who were in the majority, favored the idea. At the suggestions of Stanton of Kentucky, the name was changed from Columbia to Washington; Stephen A. Douglas proposed, but did not insist upon, adoption of the name "Washingtonia" in order to avoid possible confusion with the name of the National Capital. On March 2, 1853, President Fillmore signed the bill creating Washington Territory, with an area of 193,071 square miles, including the present State, northern Idaho, and western Montana. Isaac Ingalls Stevens was appointed governor, and on November 28, 1853, Olympia was proclaimed the capital. The white population of the Territory was 3,965.
Lumbering then, as now, was Washington's principal industry. Shipments were made by water, and the sawmills stood at the more accessible ports. Demands created by the California gold rush sent the price of lumber at San Francisco to $200, $300, and even $500 per 1,000 board feet, and the Territory's mills prospered accordingly. During the winter of 1854-5, many Indian tribes of the Northwest organized and prepared to drive the whites out of the country. Governor Stevens, who was also Superintendent of Indian Affairs, signed treaties with the Indians west of the Cascades and called a council at Walla Walla, which convened May 29, 1855. There were present between five and six thousand Indians, headed by Chiefs Lawyer of the Nez Perce, Weyatenatemany of the Cayuse, Wenapsnoot of the Umatilla, Pio-piomox-mox (or Peupeumoxmox) of the Walla Walla, and Kamiakin of the Yakima, and about 60 white men headed by Governor Stevens and Joel Palmer, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon. At first all the tribes except the Nez Perce were opposed to signing the treaty, because they thought the reservations offered them were small and poor, in comparison with the lands they were asked to give up. Chief Looking Glass, war chief of the Nez Perce, arrived at the conference, after a three-years' absence in the Blackfeet country, too late to prevent signing of the treaty; all but the Yakima had already accepted by that time. Only the intervention of Lawyer prevented a massacre of the whites in
the course of the conference, which ended on June 11 with the signing of a treaty. However, the Indians, dissatisfied with the reservations and, according to some historians, angered by the methods used in obtaining signatures to the treaty, began a series of bloody massacres of white settlers in western Washington, when Stevens went into western Montana, then part of Washington Territory, to negotiate other treaties. War followed, in which many of the "Canoe" tribes of the coastal region remained neutral. The Snoqualmie under Patkanim co-operated with the whites. The "Horse" tribes, east of the mountains, were leaders in the war. Events of the 1855 campaign included the defeat of Major Granville O. Haller and 84 soldiers by a band of Indians in the Simcoe Mountains, and the march of General Gabriel J. Rains and 700 men into the Yakima Valley, where they forced Kamiakin to take to the hills. The 1856 campaign began with an attack by Indians on the village of Seattle, in which they were repulsed, the guns of the sloop-of-war Decatur in Elliott Bay playing a decisive part in the engagement. Later in the year, a second expedition into the Yakima Valley inflicted a telling defeat on Kamiakin. By military order, eastern Washington was closed to settlement.
Leschi and Quiemuth, two Nisqually chiefs, met tragic deaths. Quiemuth surrendered in 1856 and, while confined in the Governor's office on the night following his arrest, was murdered by a vengeful settler. Leschi, charged with the murder of noncombatants, was betrayed, twice tried, convicted, and, after a series of delays due to the intervention of lawyers, Army officers, influential Hudson's Bay Company friends, was hanged on February 19, 1858. According to reports of Lieutenant A. V. Kautz and Colonel Granville O. Haller, who participated in the Indian Wars, and in the opinion of Ezra Meeker, Leschi, chief of the Nisqually, was a man of intelligence and character, whose course during the wars was marked by greater humanity than that of any of the other chiefs. Haller says Leschi was found guilty "on the testimony of a perjured man," and Meeker refers to him as "a sacrifice to a principle, a martyr to a cause, and a savior of his people." The treaty with the Nisqually was revised later, and the Indians given a larger and better reservation. The character and policy of Governor Stevens have been—and were, even in his lifetime—a matter of dispute. It seems generally agreed that he was an honest and intelligent man, of humane intentions, but obstinate and somewhat conceited. The proclamation of martial law in the Territory during the course of the Indian Wars was censured by President
Pierce. Later, Governor Stevens was exonerated. He lost his life while serving in the Union Army during the Civil War.
On May 17, 1858, a band of 1,000 Indians attacked and defeated 150 soldiers under Colonel Steptoe near the site of present Rosalia. The troops retreated to the new military post, Fort Walla Walla. In September a punitive expedition under Colonel George Wright encountered and defeated a force representing a confederation of the Yakima, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Nez Perce, and Palouse tribes. The horses of the Indians were rounded up and shot.
By 1859, the Indian treaties had been ratified by Congress. The "Canoe" Indians were for the most part domiciled on reservations by 1864; the "Horse" tribes were similarly settled on the Yakima (1865), Colville (1872), Columbia (1879), Spokane (1881), and Kalispel (1914) reservations.
Coincident with, and a contributing cause of, the Indian wars were discoveries of gold in eastern Washington and British Columbia. In 1857 and 1858, a rush of miners came over the old fur-trader trails into the Okanogan and Fraser River districts. For several decades, strikes and rumors of strikes inspired stampedes into various parts of the Territory. Chiefly because of its strategic position in relation to the area of discovery, Walla Walla, near Fort Walla Walla, became the s largest city in the Territory and remained so until overtaken by Seattle about 1880.
Next came the troublesome echo of joint occupation known later as "the Pig War" (see Tour 8). England and the United States both claimed the San Juan Islands, and both attempted to collect taxes and customs. English and Americans lived there in a state of constant tension. The situation came to a head in 1859, when a pig belonging to Charles J. Griffin, an Englishman, raided a vegetable garden belonging to Lyman A. Cutler, an American. Cutler shot the pig and threatened similar action against British authorities who might venture to disapprove. Troops of both Nations were sent to the island to protect the rights of their people. Captain George Pickett, who later led the famous charge at Gettysburg, commanded the Americans and distinguished himself by his firmness. In time, the quarrel simmered down to an interchange of parties and banquets between the English and the American garrisons. Emperor William I of Germany, selected to arbitrate the dispute, awarded the San Juan Archipelago to the United States in 1872. Sentiment in Washington Territory during the Civil War was overwhelmingly pro-Union, and peace prevailed except for a few isolated
incidents involving sympathizers with the Confederacy. Ten companies of Washington volunteers manned Pacific Coast Army posts, releasing Regulars for active duty. Residents followed with interest the careers of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, McClellan, and Pickett, who had served in the Territory, as well as that of former Governor Stevens, who lost his life in the Battle of Chantilly.
The outstanding local event of 1861 was the opening at Seattle of the Territorial University, now the University of Washington. Oregon became a State in 1859, with its present boundaries, and Washington Territory was enlarged to include all of the original Oregon Territory not incorporated in the new State. By 1861, the eastern part of Washington Territory had begun to rival the western in population, and a movement to divide Washington, with the Cascades as the line of separation, found expression in a bill, which was defeated in the Territorial legislature on January 29, 1861, by a vote of 18 to 12. On March3, 1863, Congress created the Territory of Idaho, leaving Washington with its present boundaries except for the San Juan decision of 1872. Partly as a result of the attempt to divide the Territory, the movement for statehood began in 1861. The legislature of 1867 submitted a memorial to Congress in favor of statehood. In 1876, a vote of the Territory favored a constitutional convention. This was held in 1878, but Congress refused to heed the plea for statehood.
Communications with the East were immeasurably improved by the completion in 1864 of a transcontinental telegraph line. On September 4, Governor William Pickering sent a message of about 100 words to the President. The reply came two days later: "Gov. Pickering, Olympia, W. T. Your patriotic dispatch of yesterday received and published. A. Lincoln."
Early attempts t6 facilitate transportation in the Territory included the building of military roads, development of river navigation, and the building of two short, narrow-gauge railroads, one around the Cascades of the Columbia and the other from Wallula to Walla Walla.
On September 8, 1883, a gold-plated spike driven at Deer Lodge, Montana, completed the Northern Pacific to its main western terminal —Portland, Oregon. Previously, 1870-3, the Northern Pacific had built a line from Kalama, on the Columbia, to Tacoma, a new city on Puget Sound. The transcontinental, or main line, was now built across the Cascades. On June 6, 1887, direct main-line communication by this route was established by means of switchbacks and the first train from
the East pulled into Tacoma. Stampede Tunnel was completed the next year, 1888.
The movement for statehood was augmented by the disgust with which Washington citizens received news of the apportionment of Federal river and harbor funds on the Pacific Coast between 1860 and 1888. Of $2,156,733, California, a State, received $1,492,428; Oregon, a State, $649,305; Idaho Territory, $10,000; Washington Territory, $5,500. On February 22, 1889, the enabling act by which Washington was permitted to organize as a State was approved by Congress and signed by President Cleveland the same day. This last year of the Territory brought a series of disastrous fires in which Seattle, Ellensburg, Spokane, Vancouver, and other cities suffered severe losses.
STATEHOOD, 1889
In May, 1889, an election was held in Washington Territory to choose 75 delegates to a constitutional convention, which assembled at Olympia on July 4 and began the work of drafting a State constitution. On August 22, seventy-one delegates signed the completed document, and it was approved by the voters on October 1 by a count of 40,152 to 11,789. At the same election, the people rejected amendments establishing woman suffrage and prohibition and elected the State's first public officials.
Elisha P. Ferry, former Territorial Governor, became the State's first chief executive; Charles E. Laughton was elected lieutenantgovernor; Allen Weir, secretary of State; William C. Jones, attorney general; and John L. Wilson was sent to Congress as Representative. All were Republicans. The same party won control of the State legislature, which met and elected John B. Allen of Walla Walla, former Territorial Delegate, and Watson B. Squire of Seattle, former Territorial Governor, as the State's first United States Senators. President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed Washington a State on November 11, 1889, and a week later Governor Ferry took the oath of office at Olympia.
The population of the new State was 357,232, an increase of 375 per cent since 1880. The rapid growth was traceable to the coming of the railroad. In 1893, the Great Northern was completed, giving the State its second transcontinental railway system. Among the industries, fishing, mining, and shipbuilding had developed swiftly during the Territorial period, while lumbering and agriculture had made steady progress. Washington State College was opened at Pullman in 1892, and
State normal schools were established, at Cheney and Ellensburg in 1890 and at Bellingham in 1893.
The Republican party retained control of the State in the elections of 1892; John H. McGraw succeeded Ferry as governor. Ferry's administration had been marked by extravagance; McGraw's was distinguished by attempts at retrenchment. The panic of 1893 contributed heavily to unrest among the voters, who laid their grievances at the door of the party in power. In 1896, the Fusionists—Populists, Democrats, "Silver Republicans"—won a sweeping victory. John R. Rogers became Governor; W. C. Jones and James Hamilton Lewis were elected Representatives to Congress; and a Fusionist legislature sent George Turner to the United States Senate.
In 1898, the Republicans regained many seats in the legislature and sent Wesley L. Jones and Francis W. Cushman to Congress. By 1900, the Republicans were able to make a clean sweep of all contested offices save one. Governor Rogers, re-elected, died shortly after taking office and was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Henry McBride, a Republican.
Economic conditions in Washington were greatly improved by thediscovery of gold in Alaska in 1897. Seattle became the port of embarkation for the thousands who rushed to the Yukon and the Klondike; it was their outfitting station, their source of supplies, and, on their return, their port of entry. The result was a boom for the whole State. The Spanish-American War drew from Washington 1,332 men and 46 officers; 25 men were killed and 703 were wounded. The "First Washington," a volunter regiment, distinguished itself in action and was warmly commended by ranking Army officers.
The decade 1890-1900 witnessed progress in the reclamation of semiarid lands in eastern Washington. The "apple fever" dominated the Wenatchee Valley and near-by districts; thousands of acres of orchards were set out, marking the beginning of what is today one of the State's best-known industries. In 1902, the Federal Government authorized irrigation projects in the Yakima and Okanogan Valleys.
The population in 1900 was 518,103, of whom 76,365 were foreignborn whites; about 97 per cent of the foreign-born were English-speaking peoples, Germans, and Scandinavians. Chinese, barred by Federal Exclusion Acts of 1881 and 1888, were further discouraged by antiChinese riots and demonstrations in the middle eighties. A subsequent wave of Japanese immigration was halted by Federal legislation. The rise of the labor movement led to the creation in 1905 of a State
Bureau of Labor. As the problems incident to expansion of railroad systems became more numerous and complex, the need of a State executive department to cope with them was recognized, and the 1905 legislature created the State Railroad Commission. The same body set up the State Tax Commission, with a board of equalization to hear the controversies in tax disputes.
The Union Pacific and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway systems reached Puget Sound in 1909. The State then had four transcontinental systems; and the ports of Puget Sound were gateways through which passed a tremendous volume of world trade. The Alaska-YukonPacific Exposition, held in Seattle in 1909, brought to national attention the growth of the State.
Progressive legislation marked the opening years of the twentieth century. The State legislature enacted the direct primary law (1907), woman suffrage (1909), and the initiative, referendum, and recall laws (1911). The 1911 legislature also enacted an eight-hour-day law for women workers, a pure food and drug act, which entailed the creation of a State Food Commission, and industrial insurance laws.
The population in 1910 was 1,141,990, an increase of 120 per cent since 1900. Development of the rich farming districts of eastern Washington was reflected in the swift growth of its cities—Spokane, Pasco, Ellensburg, Yakima, Walla Walla, and Wenatchee.
Three Republican governors, all supported by Republican legislatures, followed McBride. Albert E. Mead was elected in 1904. Samuel G. Cosgrove served as Governor for one day, then was granted leave to go to California for his health; there he died. Lieutenant Governor Marion E. Hay, who had performed the duties during the time of Cosgrove's incapacity, became Governor.
Ernest Lister, a Democrat, nominated by the direct primary early in 1912, fought a long legal battle to establish his candidacy and went on to win against divided Republican opposition in the fall elections. Republicans and "Bull Moosers" held control of the legislature and of many State offices. During Lister's first term, a widow's-pension law and minimum-wage laws for women were enacted, and the initiative and referendum laws improved. In 1914, State-wide prohibition was approved by referendum. Lister, re-elected in 1916, died in office in 1919, and Louis F. Hart, Republican Lieutenant Governor, finished Lister's term and, in 1920, was elected Governor.
With the entry of the United States into the World War, the shipyards of Puget Sound, the lumber industry, the wheat belt of eastern
Washington, and the State in general were launched on a period of prosperity unequalled before or since. Camp Lewis (now Fort Lewis), Puget Sound Navy Yard, and other military centers hummed with wartime activity. Washington is closely associated with the famous 91st (Wild West) Division, which, although composed of men from many of the Western States, was trained at Camp Lewis. In all, Washington furnished to the various service branches 67,694 men and 632 women, of whom 1,622 men and 3 women lost their lives.
On March 5, 1923, a State flag was officially adopted. The law requires that the emblem be of "dark green silk or bunting, and shall bear in its center a reproduction of the Seal of the State of Washington, embroidered, printed, painted, or stamped therein." The State flower is the Western variety of rhododendron, which grows abundantly on the Olympic Peninsula. The State song, "Washington Beloved," was adopted by the legislature of 1909.
Problems arising from changing economic and social conditions have been placed under newly created executive departments. Eighteen departments, divisions, and bureaus were set up between 1907 and 1922, chief among them being the Public Service Commission, Department of Public Works, Department of Business Control, State Highway Commission, Department of Conservation and Development, and State Parole Board.
Roland H. Hartley, Republican, elected Governor in 1924, was the first governor of the State to complete two full terms in office. His administrations were marked by improvements in the State highway system, the work being financed by a tax on gasoline.
A law permitting the people of any city or county in the State to establish by ballot a water-power utility district within their community was enacted by initiative on November 4, 1930, and proclaimed on December 3. The districts thus established may buy or sell power within or without their limits. They have the right of eminent domain and may purchase, condemn, or lease property necessary to their purposes. The affairs of each district are conducted by a board of three commissioners elected by the district's voters.
In the 1932 election, there was a Democratic landslide. The only Republican remaining in the State administration was Noah D. Showalter, Superintendent of Public Instruction. Clarence D. Martin became Governor, and Victor A. Meyers, Lieutenant Governor. Democrats were in the majority in both houses of the legislature, and all seats in the Congressional delegation were given to Democrats. Similar results
attended the elections of 1936; Martin and Meyers were re-elected, the latter receiving the largest number of votes ever given any candidate for office in the history of the State. Democrats won all offices in 1940, with the exception of the governorship, which went by a small majority to Arthur B. Langlie, Republican.
After repeal of the State prohibition law by initiative in 1932 and the repeal of Federal prohibition laws the year following, a State Liquor Control Board was created to supervise all phases of the traffic in alcoholic beverages in Washington. It operates State-owned stores for the distribution of liquor and controls the licensing and operation of privately owned retail establishments selling beer and wine.
The 1933 legislature passed a law granting pensions, fixed at a minimum of $30 per month, to persons of 65 or more years of age who qualify for assistance. At the same session a tax of 2 per cent was imposed on retail transactions, with dairy products, bread, fresh vegetables, and fruit, and certain other commodities exempted; later, in 1939, the exemptions were removed from all foodstuffs. The consumer pays the tax and the retailer collects it.
Following the lead of the Federal Government in its enactment of the Securities and Exchange Law, the legislature added to the State's "blue sky" laws another statute, concerned with the promotion and development of mineral resources. In the same year, laws were passed providing for the licensing of real estate agencies.
Since 1932, State and Federal Governments have co-operated in the fight against depression and its consequences. Closely following the pattern of national security legislation, the legislature of 1937 created a State Department of Social Security to assume the functions of the old Department of Public Welfare and to co-ordinate the work of all State agencies in relief, rehabilitation, and re-employment. Through this department, the State co-operates with United States agencies and distributes Federal funds along with its own.
In recent years, protection of the public health has been stressed in the enactment of laws requiring health certification of persons handling foodstuffs and those engaged in personal service, such as beauticians and barbers. The workmen's compensation and insurance act, which originated at the beginning of the century, also received legislative attention resulting in many improvements of the original measure.
As might be expected in a period of economic stress, organized labor brought pressure to bear on both employer and legislative groups. In 1933, a mass procession of unemployed converged on the Capitol and
urged an immediate appropriation for the relief of unemployment. In 1934, a maritime strike tied up Seattle's water front for more than two months; and, in 1936, a second and more widespread strike involved Washington maritime workers. In 1936, also, the Seattle chapter of the American Newspaper Guild conducted an eventful strike on the Post Intelligencer (see Labor).
Early in the thirties, the theory of technocracy attracted many followers and locally attained the proportions of an organized movement. After the disintegration of this loosely formed organization, in 1934, there arose a number of groups advocating old-age pensions, productionfor-use, social credit, and other social theories; the youth movement also developed. In 1935, several of these groups, joined by labor unions and Democratic clubs, united as the Washington Commonwealth Federation. Outgrowing the several persuasions that gave it birth, the federation became a delegate body pressing for social reform.
The construction of large municipal plants at Seattle and Tacoma, together with the huge blocks of power to be released by Grand Coulee Dam (completed 1941) and Bonneville Dam (completed 1937), on the Columbia River, were, and still are, the subject of State-wide controversy concerning the relative merits of public versus private power control; and the setting up of public utility districts has been quite as vigorously opposed and supported.
The completion of these dams, however, with their reservoirs of cheap /electrical power for industry and water for irrigation, is significant of the shift that is taking place in the State's economy. The traditionally dominant lumber industry, faced by receding forests, uncertain markets, and the necessity for conservation, is tending toward a policy of "sustained yield." This new program is based on the possibility of maintaining, through reforestation and conservation measures, a continuous supply of selected woods for special purposes in different fields—wood pulps, plywoods, and other products into which the wood cell may be resolved by chemical and technological processes. The lumber industry looks forward to planned production on a more stable basis than during the booms and slumps of the past.
Wholesale power production and the vast extension of irrigated lands also change the prospects for agriculture. An area of many thousand acres in eastern Washington, potentially one of the most fertile in the West, awaits the life-giving touch of water, which is to be dammed behind the great concrete barrier at Grand Coulee, then pumped and stored in a balancing reservoir in Grand Coulee itself. A plan is being promoted
for releasing tremendous flows of electrical energy, from a series of linked generating plants, into a common pool of power. Opinion as to the possible results of such an operation ranges from claims that it would have but little effect on an already saturated market to prophecies that the State will become an electrified wonderland of industrial and domestic felicity. Beyond the certainty that industry generally will be stimulated by ready floods of power at cheaper rates, the most interesting possibilities seem to lie in the proposed development of Washington's mineral resources. Concerning this also there are several schools of thought. It is, however, certain that in these two fields of production— power and agriculture—eastern Washington will experience tremendous development in the future.
Washington celebrated the year 1939 as its Golden Jubilee, the fiftieth anniversary of its statehood, and 30 years after its World's Fair of 1909, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. To the north, a new empire is building in Alaska, and Washington, its nearest home port, will inevitably share in its upbuilding. To the west, although strife in the Orient at present has dislocated transoceanic trade, Washington, as the closest American port, possesses great natural advantages for commerce with the Orient. The effect of this interchange of commerce and of culture has been marked in the past, and probably will be increasingly apparent in the future of the State.
GOVERNMENT
The constitution now in effect in the State of Washington is substantially the same as that adopted by the voters of Washington Territory in 1889.
Elective officers of the executive branch include a governor, lieutenant governor, and seven departmental heads. Executives appointed by the governor number II. All these officers are elected or appointed for four-year terms. The governor has the powers of veto and pardon and may call extraordinary sessions of the legislature. The lieutenant governor presides over the senate and fills the office of governor in event of the latter's death, disability, or absence from the State.
The State is divided into 46 legislative districts, each of which elects from one to three representatives, depending on population, and one senator. The number of senators must be no more than one-half, nor less than one-third, of the number of representatives. Senatorial terms are staggered in order that there may never be an entirely new body. The
legislature may override a gubernatorial veto by a two-thirds vote of both houses.
The judiciary consists of a supreme court of nine members elected for six years from the State at large, the terms being staggered; a superior court of one or more judges elected for four years in each county, having as many departments as the pressure of litigation may warrant; justices of the peace in rural precincts; such other courts as the legislature may provide. Candidates for judicial positions do not declare party affiliations. Each of the State's 39 counties is governed in local matters by a commission of three members elected for terms of four years and wielding limited executive and legislative powers. The commission is supplemented by the sheriff, an elective officer with police powers, and by minor officers.
The State's 221 municipal corporations are divided according to population into four classes: first class, 20,000 or more; second class, 10,000 to 20,000; third class, 1,500 to 10,000; fourth class, 300 to 1,500.
Cities of the first class are established through a charter drawn up by 15 landholders selected by a vote of the community. If the charter is acceptable to the people and complies with State law, the city government is set up in accordance with its provisions. First-class cities may choose whatever form of government they wish; but municipalities choosing the commission form are subject to the laws governing second-class cities. Second-class cities may choose between two forms: mayor-council type (mayor and councilmen elected for terms of two years) or commission type (three commissioners, one of whom serves as mayor, elected for terms of three years). Third-class cities of less than 2,500 population are limited to the mayor-council type; those with more than 2,500 are permitted the same choice allowed second-class cities. Towns (fourth-class) are limited to a variation of the mayor-council type, in which mayor and council of five are elected for five-year terms. The city-manager type is permitted first-class cities by State law, but it has never been tried in Washington.
The State has 7 first-class cities, of which 3 use the mayor-council and 4 the commission type; 8 cities of the second class, of which 2 employ the commission type; 50 cities of the third class, 41 of them governed by mayor and council; and 156 cities of the fourth class, usually denominated towns or villages. The division known as the township is not common as a political entity; it is confined to the surveyor's usage.
Transportation
OVER routes, of which some were considered impassable a century ago, four railroads, two transcontinental bus lines, and five national highways connect Washington with the rest of the country and Canada. Planes of three air lines fly to points north, south, and east, while on rivers, lakes, and bays half a hundred ferries serve shoreside towns. From the many ports along the coast and on Puget Sound, 81 steamship lines, with an average of 62 sailings weekly, keep the State in touch with approximately 250 world ports.
Change in transportational methods within the State has been swift. Prior to 1850, water travel was dependent on the canoe and bateau, flatboat, or sailing ships; travel on land was on horseback or by cumbersome oxcart or covered wagon. Between 1850 and 1870, the river steamboat and the stagecoach had their brief colorful day. Following the gold rush in California, steam-driven vessels came to Washington ports to load lumber and piling—which were at a premium in San Francisco—booming settlement and the construction of sawmills along the watercourse. On the Columbia River, the number of steamboats increased to carry the many gold seekers who took that route to the interior.
Along the Columbia were such steamboats as the Jason P. Flint, Mountain Bird, Wasco, and Carrie Ladd, part of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company's imposing line, now a memory. The mention of the name Johnson's Landing, The Dalles, and Wallula evokes the stirring story of the days when a vast new country was being pioneered and settled.
Co-existent with the river steamboats and the stagecoaches were numerous river ferries, which in the late fifties and early sixties reaped handsome profits at the main crossings of unfordable rivers. Tolls were fixed by the legislature. Typical were those granted to J. T. Hicklin for the operation of a ferry below the mouth of the Wenas River on the Yakima—$2 for a wagon drawn by two animals; $1.50 for a sulky or hack, one horse; 75c for man and horse; 50c for a packed animal;
25c for a man afoot; 25c each for loose horses or cattle; 8c each for goats, sheep, or pigs.
On Puget Sound, sailing vessels were the first means of water transportation. The first American steamer on the Sound was the Fairy, a small side-wheeler put in service in 1853. In 1854 the steamboat Major Tompkins came north to serve the growing villages and towns along the Sound with weekly mail service. The famous Elisa Anderson, built in Portland in 1859, with its steam calliope, was brought north and served the Sound ports for 40 years; in 1871, the old North Pacific arrived from San Francisco to ply Puget Sound waters for 30 years. On the rivers, such as the Duwamish and Snohomish, the tiny sternwheelers Black Diamond, Comet, and Wenat operated as far as 40 miles upstream, transporting settlers, freight and mail.
Around the Cascades and Celilo Falls, virtually unnavigable waters, portages were necessary. Along the north side of the river, the first tiny railroad in the State was laid in 1851—a wooden-railed affair owned by Bradford & Company, over whose mile and a half of track a flatcar hauled by two mules transported the pioneers and their chattels. At either end of this portage, veterans of Mississippi steamboating and younger men from the Willamette fought for fares and freight. On the banks of the river, fuel cutters brawled and stole each other's wood. Steamboat fares varied with the tide and the weather. Another tram line was built on the north side of the river around the entire portage and several steamboat landings. Boat captains, failing to beat this new competition, sought a merger in 1860. Overnight the tide of gold seekers swung northward from the California fields; 100,000 persons pushed through the area on their way to the strikes at Boise City, Oro Fino, Clearwater, Powder River, and Coeur d'Alene. In 1863 the Cascades Railroad Company replaced the Bradford tram with a six-mile line of five-foot gauge and put on the first steam locomotive in the State. By 1870 boats above Celilo Falls plied the Columbia and its tributaries as far north as Revelstoke, British Columbia, and as far east as Lewiston, Idaho Territory. Monopolizing transport during 1860-70, when this region produced $140,000,000 in gold, the company reaped a fortune. The little boat Tenino is said to have cleared $18,000 on a single trip. Between the mines and Walla Walla, the principal outfitting center, and Wallula on the Columbia, stage lines began operations—the Ben Holladay lines, Wells-Fargo, and the Northwestern Stage Company, connecting with the Central Pacific Railroad at Kelton, Utah. It was a
day of quick fortunes and quick bankruptcy—of road agents, gamblers, and "Lady Lils"; of shoot first and question afterward. Conditions west of the Cascades were more stable. Although the Oregon Provisional Government had established haphazard mail service in 1845, and had authorized the "viewing" of roads—which meant merely marking routes—travel remained difficult; one almost impassable road led from Warbassport on the Cowlitz to Olympia on Puget Sound. In 1853 a former Indian trail over the Cascades was opened between Walla Walla and Fort Steilacoom; but stage service between Olympia and the Columbia River extended only as far south as Arkansas Creek in 1857. The next year the road was improved to Monticello; the steamer Cowlitz, owned by H. D. Huntington, Charles Holman, and Cliff Olsen, operated to Portland, and through stage service began. As many as six horses were required to haul stages through the ooze and mire, over stones, stumps, and logs encountered on this early road. Passengers often found it necessary to put their shoulders to the wheels. Prior to the coming of the railroad this route was the only link, except by sea, between Puget Sound and the Columbia.
Completing the Union-Central Pacific to California in 1863, railroad builders cast a speculative eye toward the Northwest. The small Oregon Steam Navigation Company on the Columbia River and the gold rushes to the Northwest demonstrated to "empire builders" that this new, raw land was well worth railroading into. They knew the first to reach the Pacific Northwest would control a vast wealth.
By 1870 steamboating had expanded to its limit, and though supplemented by the stage lines, it could not handle the traffic of the new frontier. Untouched timber, wheatlands, and minerals lay waiting. The next two decades were a period of waiting for the railroad, which, chartered in 1864, was said to be slowly creeping across the Plains by the northern route. Many towns started lines of their own, hoping to connect with something—anything to get a chance at the markets of the East.
In 1873 the Kalama-to-Tacoma line was completed; between 1872-75 Dr. D. S. Baker constructed his narrow-gauge "rawhide line" between Walla Walla and Wallula on the Columbia; Seattle began the SeattleWalla Walla line, ran it 20 miles, then gave up, lacking funds. Through the late seventies and early eighties, towns and cities fought for railroad connections, offering bonuses of land and gold, using political influence; and when these failed, they moved all but their streets to the nearest junction of the completed end of the railroad.
The Northern Pacific spent two anxious decades in reaching the
Pacific. Started at the Great Lakes in the East, construction by various firms lagged dismally during the uncertain days of the Civil War; the project also suffered from inability to sell stock to foreign nations during the Franco-Prussian War. Finally its financial backer, Jay Cooke's company, failed during the depression of 1873. Despite the financial difficulties and the political machinations of groups trying to gain control of the road, construction slowly proceeded, culminating in the driving of a silver spike at Gold Creek, Montana, on September 8, 1883, completing the line. When the ends of the Northern Pacific were connected, tapping the vast wealth of the Territory, other railroads jerked political strings to gain rights-of-way. By 1900 the tentacles of railroads were creeping up every fertile valley, seeking the farm, mine, and forest lands, bringing immigrants. The Great Northern came in 1893 under the guiding hand of Jim Hill, king of the "empire builders," who visioned a world traffic with the Orient. In 1909 the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul arrived, via Spokane, at Tacoma and Seattle; in 1908 the Spokane, Portland and Seattle built from Spokane to Portland. From these main lines many branch lines extended into every valley, facilitating development of vast wheat areas, timberlands, mineral deposits, and the scenic areas of the Cascades and the Columbia River. The four railroad systems that service the State have 5,438 miles of track.
An outstanding event in recent railroad history was the completion of the Cascade Mountain tunnel of the Great Northern between Scenic and Berne, the longest railway tunnel in the Americas and one of the longest in the world. This project includes the new tunnel, approximately 8 miles long, and 34 miles of high-speed trackage replacing 43 miles of winding and precipitous mountain line. Tracklaying began on Christmas Day in 1925, and the whole project, costing $25,000,000, was completed in January 1929.
With the arrival of the railroads in the eighties, competition between the many independent ship operators and the lines operated by the railroads was keen. Rate wars, constant schedule enlargements, and superior capital finally resulted in the absorption of the independent group. These amalgamations laid the foundation for some of the modern lines. The first regular steamship service with San Francisco was started in 1867 on a monthly schedule. In 1886 regular service with Alaska was established, and the Ancon, first steamer, brought some $35,000 in gold; the Alaska Steamship Company was formed in 1895. The Northern Pacific Railroad placed the Phra Nang in service with the Orient from Tacoma in 1891. The Miike Maru, first transpacific steamship from
the Orient, arrived on Puget Sound from Japan in 1896. From then the ports of the world lay open to steamship service out of Puget Sound. The Klondike gold rush of 1897-8 made Seattle the outfitting point for Alaska and transformed it from a lumber camp to a sizable commercial center. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 further stimulated coastwise trade.
Following the covered wagon, the democrat wagon, the buggy, and the hack, the automobile arrived in 1900, confounding the conservative with its 8- and 12-mile an hour speed. As the automobile proved no ephemeral freak, highways became the paramount problem, for improved Indian trails were difficult for the new vehicles to negotiate. Dirt roads were built, then macadam, later, concrete. With Federal aid, beginning in 1916, highways branched out to every county seat, and over these highways the farmers chugged to market. Later they found it more profitable to stay on the farm and ship by motor freight. Motor busses came, connecting the smaller towns with the railroads and the larger cities; then airplanes, connecting the larger cities with the rest of the Nation.
From the year 1889, when Washington became a State, until 1905, when the State Highway Department was formed, only $131,80x3 was expended for the development of so-called "county roads." Constructed under the direction of appointed commissions, the roads were little better than the old military trails of earlier times. Until 1913 only a few roads —known as "aid roads," because the counties were required to match the State appropriation for this purpose—were constructed. The common idea of a State road in those days was one that led off into the mountains and ended there. Then a plan for interconnecting roads was adopted, and Washington was able to take advantage of the benefits offered by the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916. In the main the system then devised forms the nucleus of the present State highway system. The roads and highways of the State, 43,881 miles in extent, cover many of the old trails, routes, and mountain passes. The State Highway Patrol numbers 250, and a personnel of approximately 1,420 persons are employed in the maintenance of 6,012 miles of primary and secondary highways. With the coming of the automobile and better roads, the motor bus superseded the stagecoach. A number of lines started operating almost simultaneously, and a dozen men claim to have been the first bus driver in the State. Twenty years ago anyone could purchase a hack and set up in business. Service was commonly erratic and unreliable until the legislature, in 1921, passed laws requiring stages to obtain operating
licenses and laid down certain requirements to assure regularity, safety, and a common rate. Companies were formed in nearly every locality to connect feeder-lines with systems of transcontinental service. Independent lines have brought about closely knit intercommunication within the State, ending the isolation of districts inaccessible by railroads. Today (1941) more than 500 common carriers cover routes over 5,000 miles of highway.
A little slower in development was motor-truck freight service; but of approximately 65,000 trucks in Washington in 1939, two-thirds were used in freight hauling. With truck farming, fruit raising, and dairying carried on extensively, truck transport, which offers refrigeration facilities in transit, is of vital importance in maintaining city markets. The history of air operations is as spectacular as it is brief. A pioneer of the air lanes, Edward Hubbard, opened the first international mail service between the United States and Canada. Starting the service on October 15, 1920, he carried mail from Seattle to Victoria, connecting there with the transpacific mail ships. The first regularly scheduled air-mail service, operated by the Varney Air Lines between Pasco, Washington, and Elko, Nevada, started on April 6, 1926. Another factor that helped to establish air service on a firm basis was the Boeing Aircraft Company, in Seattle, which, since 1916, has been expanding its properties and building an impressive line of commercial and combat ships. The State now has about 50 air fields, including 22 municipal and commercial, 4 Army and 1 Navy, 12 emergency landing fields, 7 intermediate fields, 6 seaplane bases. The main routes of the air lines, which make regular stops at Seattle, Spokane, Wenatchee, Tacoma, Walla Walla, and Pasco, are well equipped with beacon lights, radio directional beams, and weather reporting service.
Agriculture
PUSHED into the background by the more glamorous fur trade, and then by lumbering and mining booms, agriculture in Washington was negligible until the early sixties. Attempts at farming by the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver in 1825 and near Fort Nesqually after 1833 were directed only toward immediate needs. Also significant was Marcus Whitman's first garden planted at Waiilatpu in 1837.
The territory was seemingly unsuitable for large-scale agriculture. Forests lay on the west side of the Cascade Mountains and arroyos and scablands on the east—dissimilar regions that produced two distinct types of farming when agriculture was finally recognized as a stable, profitable activity in itself.
The end of the Indian wars in 1858 and the discovery of gold in the northeastern districts of Washington Territory were followed by the lifting of the military ban on the regions north of the Snake andWallaWalla Rivers. Fort Walla Walla had been established near the site of the present city, guaranteeing a measure of protection. Thousands trekked into the area. Prairie schooners, 3 in tandem and drawn by 20-mule teams, could not bring supplies into the region fast enough: flour sold at times for $1 a pound, and table board ranged from $5 to $10 a day. The premium on food, as well as the bunchgrass lands along the Snake River and in the Columbia Basin, attracted cattlemen, sheep ranchers, and farmers.
Between 1860 and 1880, cattle and sheep raising dominated agriculture east of the Cascades, although 4,782 bushels of wheat, 4,515 bushels of oats, and some corn and barley were produced in 1863. There were 327,811 head of cattle in this Territory in 1860 and sheep were almost as numerous. Despite the freezing weather from December 1866 to March 1867, which littered the plains with starved and frozen cattle, S. M. Wait drove 5,000 head of sheep up from Umatilla in 1869. Others included the so-called "native," California stock bred to Merinos,
Merinos from Vermont, the Southdown, Leicester, and Cotswold breeds. Cattle were largely of longhorn stock.
The great freeze emphasized the need for crops and forage, bringing hundreds of farmers to the "forty-bushel" land. Soon broad wheat farms, supplemented by staple crops of potatoes, corn, and apples, appeared. Yet the increase from 1,330 farms in 1860 to almost three times this number in 1870 was made in the face of many obstacles. The heavy rootage of bunchgrass necessitated ploughing the land a year in advance, in order that the roots might decay and the arid land, lying fallow, might store up moisture for the growing period. Flax aided in breaking up the roots and early became an important crop. For ploughing, the farmer had only his back, his "foot-burner" (as the old-fashioned shallow plough was called), and his mules and oxen. Fence wood was scarce; barbed wire was unknown; most of the land was held by pre-emption, homesteaded, or first occupation rights only. Sheep and cattle ranged the public domain. The enmity between the cattlemen and sheep ranchers was often redirected against the farmer; both resisted the steady influx of ranchers who purchased the land for agriculture. Yet the farmer built dirt or sod fences and doggedly persisted.
In 1867 fifteen barrels of flour went from Walla Walla to Portland. Within a fortnight after this trial venture, 5,000 barrels were shipped, indicating a good market and foreshadowing the growing importance of wheat. The Farmers' Co-operative Company, dedicated to collective irrigation efforts in the Yakima Valley, was organized in 1868. By 1870 wheat production increased to 190,256 bushels; truck crops were valued at $74,462, and orchard crops at $71,863.
The farms gave rise to numerous mills along the streams, industries that became the nuclei of such towns as Waitsburg, Dayton, Pomeroy, Ritzville, and even Spokane Falls. There were 23 gristmills in the Territory in 1872, of which 7, with a capacity of 270 bushels daily, were in Walla Walla.
Vital factors in eastern Washington's agriculture during the seventies were the building of the Walla Walla-Wallula Railroad by Dr. D. S. Baker between 1872-5—a line that opened the wheat lands to export— and the organization of the first local Grange in 1873. In 1878 Dr. Baker chartered the vessel Alice D. Cooper and shipped 68,000 bushels of wheat to England at a profit of $68,867.75.
The potential production of the fertile plateaus of the Walla Walla, Snake, and Palouse River valleys attracted the railroads, and during the eighties railroad building and land promotion led to the rise of many
towns. These near-by markets brought about expansion and diversification; wheat continued to lead, but other crops, including fruits and vegetables, dairying, and beef cattle and poultry raising, were developed. The success of these, however, was contingent upon irrigation. By 1890, though irrigation was still in the experimental stage (only one farmer out of ten irrigated his lands), 48,799 acres had received water, indicating a new trend.
Changes came rapidly. Towns and sections were boomed by irrigation companies. Some failed. Then, in 1905, the Federal Government took over the Sunnyside Project, the first of several that vitally affected the region in the decades following. With irrigation, horticulture became a specialized field in itself—one that began to compete with wheat. West of the Cascades, agriculture developed more slowly. Lumber found such a premium at San Francisco and in foreign markets that agriculture was relegated to the background, until the rise of populated commercial towns lent impetus to small farming after 1890. Fruit, berry, and poultry farms gradually occupied the cutover benchlands; dairying established itself in the low moist valleys. The urban centers and the relatively small areas available for cultivation resulted in numerous small, intensively worked truck farms.
The railroads, heavy immigration, and increasing urban development throughout the State had a salutary effect upon agriculture after the turn of the century. From 1900 to 1910 farms increased from 33,202 to 56,192; the years from 1910 to 1920 showed a gain of almost 18 per cent; and from 1920 to 1930, when many farms were abandoned, of 5 per cent. From 1930 and 1935, there was an increase of 13,477 farms, bringing the total to 84,381. During recent years the farm population of Washington has continued to increase, a large proportion of the new farm residents coming from the drought-stricken areas of the Great Plains. Of the State's 42,775,040 acres, more than one-third was given over to farming in 1935.
Washington is noted for its fruit, wheat, dairy and poultry products, berries, nuts, and potatoes. Annually, 2,000,000 acres in the Palouse, Big Bend, Horse Heaven, and Walla Walla regions of eastern Washington produce an average of 40,000,000 bushels of wheat. Washington's white (club) varieties are well known, the State product approximating one-third of the Nation's crop. The average wheat yield is 19.3 bushels per acre. In western Washington, the grains produced are used mainly for feed purposes. Oat production has reached a very high level in the alluvial flats of Snohomish, Skagit, and Whatcom Counties;
there, 50 to 100 bushels to the acre indicate the high average, while Skagit has set a mark of 175 bushels to the acre. Whidbey Island, one of the State's small wheat regions, has a record production as high as 117 bushels to the acre.
Washington produces annually about one-third of the Nation's apple crop, and 75 per cent of this is produced around the junctions of the Wenatchee and the Yakima Rivers with the Columbia. These districts also contribute largely to the total quantity of pears and peaches produced in the State.
Along the base of the Cascade Mountains and in the highlands of the Okanogan, Snake, Yakima, and Spokane valleys, where dry farming is impracticable, there are extensive cattle and sheep ranches. There were 327,000 head of beef cattle, largely within these regions, in 1935, breeds including the Aberdeen-Angus, Galloway, Hereford, and Shorthorn.
Other livestock on farms (exclusive of dairy cows) comprised 172,155 horses and colts, 752,000 head of sheep, and 20,000 mules. The Belgian and the Percheron horses are the most favored. The breeding of thoroughbred horses has been stimulated since horse racing became legal in 1932. Until 1935, when 73,301 hogs were marketed, half the hogs used commercially in Washington were imported; local production has since become commercially stabilized.
Large-scale dairying is centered in the western Washington counties, Whatcom, Pierce, King, Clark, Snohomish, Skagit, and Lewis, where the lowlands provide green pasture the year round; the foremost dairy counties of eastern Washington are Yakima, Spokane, and Stevens. The Carnation Farms in King County (see Tour 1b), with the largest herd of registered Holsteins in the world, have raised the standard of breeding stock throughout the State. Carnation Ormsby Butter King, a member of this herd, in 1935 produced an average of more than 50 quarts of milk per day, not only bringing back to the United States a world's record that had been held by Canada for 10 years, but also combining with it a record for butterfat—a feat unequalled in 30 years.
Rapid development has occurred in the poultry industry during the last two decades, particularly in western Washington, where mild winters and relatively low feed costs are favorable factors. Since 1917, when 160 carloads of eggs were imported from the East to meet western Washington demands, the industry has increased 300 per cent. Washington produced 780,000,000 eggs in 1935; shipments were valued at $3,944,000. That year there were 7,080,000 chickens on Washington farms.
Certain areas of the State are noted for specialized crops. The berry lands around Puyallup and Sumner, in Pierce County, are among the finest in the world and produce approximately one-fifth of the raspberries and blackberries grown in the United States. The loganberry was developed in this district. Extensive cranberry fields are cultivated in the boglands of Grays Harbor and Pacific Counties. Clark County annually produces from 10 to 15 million pounds of prunes and 25 per cent of the Nation's filbert crop.
Whatcom and Skagit Counties produce sugar beets, and much of the cabbage, turnip, beet, and cauliflower seed used in the United States. The Palouse region of Whitman County is Washington's heaviest producer of dry field peas. Of the 1935 yield approximately 49 per cent of the Nation's output was raised in that area.
Specialized truck farms are found near the urban centers—Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Walla Walla, Pasco, Kennewick, and Yakima; the later four, with especially long growing periods, produce some of the earliest fresh vegetables in the State. Lettuce, rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries, cantaloupes, onions, and celery are a few of the products composing the 70,000 carloads of produce grown annually in these vicinities. In conjunction with the truck farms are many of the largest hothouses in Washington, some covering thousands of square feet.
Bulb raising is an important branch of agriculture. Sixty million bulbs are planted annually at Lynden, Orting, Sumner, and Kelso—one of the largest plantings in the United States. It is estimated that Whatcom, Pierce, and Thurston Counties produce one-third of the daffodils grown in the country.
The State's total farm acreage has increased steadily in recent years, yet there has been a decline in the average size of farms—from an average of 275 acres in 1860 to 174 in 1935. The total value of farm products in 1935 was four times that of 1900, but only a little more than half of that of 1920. Leading crops in 1937 were: wheat, 48,725,000 bushels; apples, 30,340,000 bushels; prunes, 28,800,000 pounds; hay, 1,735,000 tons; pears, 5,694,000 bushels; potatoes, 9,400,000 bushels; oats, 8,060,000 bushels; and dry field peas, 1,858,000 hundred-weight. The 1937 fruit crop was valued at $33,981,000; truck crops at $5,678,000; general field crops at $70,871,000; and livestock and livestock products at $64,875,000.
Aiding in the development of agriculture in Washington have been the local bureaus of the United States Department of Agriculture, the Washington State Agricultural College at Pullman, with experimental
stations at Lind, Long Beach, Prosser, and Puyallup; the State Department of Agriculture, the Agricultural Advisory Committee of the Washington State Planning Council, and various commercial agencies. The State has a strong 4-H membership. According to recent figures, there are 490 local Granges with a membership of 71,000; the Washington Co-operative Egg and Poultrymen's Association has a membership of 22,000; and approximately 200 co-operative agencies, with a membership of 40,000, offer marketing service and financial aid to their members.
THE initiation of commercial and industrial activity in Washington must be credited to the Hudson's Bay Company and its trading posts. At Vancouver, during 1826 and the year following, a sawmill, forge, and gristmills were installed, and Fort Nesqually, after 1833, became for many years the leading port of clearance for domestic and foreign trade on Puget Sound. The company imported supplies and sold them to the settlers, who in turn brought such commodities as they produced to the trading posts for export to distant markets.
The first American gristmill on Puget Sound, operated at Tumwater in 1846 by Colonel Michael T. Simmons and his associates, used stone burrs taken from the stream that furnished power for the mill. Between the years 1852-4, Nicholas De Lin built a barrel factory, brewery, sawmill, and salmon-packing plant at Steilacoom. With goods to sell and in great need of articles of every kind, the settlers soon turned to shipbuilding. Captain Thomas Coupe launched several small schooners from Whidbey Island in 1852.
The major market for the people of Washington Territory was San Francisco, which was ready to buy lumber, fish, and hides and to sell the manufactured goods demanded by the pioneers. For many years, retail prices in Washington were determined largely by this traffic with California. In the early fifties, flour sold at Olympia for $20 a hundred pounds; potatoes at $1.50 a bushel; butter at $1 a pound; eggs at 75c a dozen. Sugar cost a "bit" a pound; coffee, 30c; and tea, 75c or $1. Molasses was 50c to 75c a gallon; hickory shirts, $1 each; sheeting and drilling, 16c a yard; axes, $2 to $8.50, according to design, size, and quality; candles, 62c to 75c a pound; sperm oil, $1.50 a gallon; whiskey, $1.25; brandy a little more, and gin twice as much.
Other imports, advertised in the pioneer press, included Franklin stoves, airtight cookstoves, tinware, tools, plows, cutlery, paints, glass, books, medicines, boots, "super super fine cloth coats," doeskin, satinette and corduroy pants, overcoats, and "new style hats."
During the sixties and seventies, lumber, coal, fish, and—decreasingly
—furs were the principal items of outgoing cargoes. Development of eastern Washington was aided by gold rushes and the opening of new roads, and trade flourished between settlements on opposite sides of the Cascade Range. Coastal commerce caused a rapid growth of marine construction; by 1875 Puget Sound had 14 shipyards, which launched n sailing ships and 1 steamer during that year. Exports in the same year were valued at more than $800,000.
Manufacturing had expanded by 1876 to include 25 grain mills, 16 breweries, 13 cooperages, 12 foundries and machine shops, 12 harnessmakers' and saddlers' shops, 4 tanneries, and 1 wool factory. River traffic on the Columbia to inland points and increasing settlement in the Walla Walla, Yakima, and Spokane areas aided the growth of the milling industry. The availability of water power encouraged small water-powered mills, even as hydroelectric development later aided in the transition to mass-production plants. By 1879 manufacturing consumed 4,395 horsepower, and, although lumber continued to hold first place among exports, diversified goods comprised 40 per cent of all manufactures in 1880.
The entrance of the Northern Pacific Railroad into Spokane in 1881 and railroad construction in subsequent years on the Coast—opening new markets—caused money to pour into the Territory and precipitated a great commercial upsurge. By 1885 vessels of Puget Sound registry numbered 169, of which 80 were steamers. Sound shipyards built 14 craft during the year, including 8 with steam engines. Factories multiplied so rapidly that by 1889 Washington industry employed 42,579 horsepower, representing an almost tenfold increase during the decade; while the importance of diversified manufactures also gained, until they constituted slightly more than 50 per cent of the $41,768,000 total value produced.
Major influences in the 1890's were the initiation of shipping lines to the Orient and, late in the decade, the gold rush to Alaska. The latter not only stimulated new marine commerce but became the foundation for several new industries, chief products of which were clothing, furniture, camp equipment, heavy machinery, and stoves. Almost 2,000 factories employed in excess of 30,000 persons in 1899, with machinery using 87,425 horsepower; and a heavy influx of population brought the total number of plants to 3,674 in 1909. A trend toward mass production was evident: while the number of employees doubled, machine horsepower increased four and one-half times, totaling 297,759. The 69,120
workers received an average wage of $706 for the year, and production was valued at $220,746,000.
All industry made exceptional advances after the beginning of the World War. Aircraft construction, started at Seattle in 1916, and shipbuilding became leading enterprises within the years that followed. Puget Sound shipyards built one-fourth of all the emergency freighters constructed for the United States Shipping Board. In the eastern part of the State, the flour-milling industry reached its peak during this period. Industrial plants numbered 4,198 by 1919; horsepower and employment had been doubled between 1912 and 1919, and production increased nearly fourfold, to a peak of $800,000,000 for the State.
The cessation of the war boom sounded the death knell of Northwest shipbuilding and caused a general contraction of markets. The stronger companies survived; but the others were caught in the vise of debts and shrinking sales, many being also overcapitalized, and within two years all but 2,908 factories had been eliminated. New developments during the slow revival of commerce were the rise of the food-processing industries and a period of extraordinary prosperity in the building trades. By 1929 the number of plants in operation had regained the 1919 total, and technological improvements and large-scale manufacturing had brought the installed horsepower of industry to a record of 194,891. Production neared the war-time high, with $795,561,000 worth of commodities, although wages remained somewhat lower, averaging $1,398 for the year.
The general depression forced reductions in all industries. Plants dropped 37 per cent in number by 1933, employment more than 50 per cent, and the average annual wage was lowered 34 per cent; while the value of commodities produced receded to $331,225,000. Once again, a stabilizing factor in the midst of the general downward trend was food processing, which maintained a relatively high level of activity, along with metal working, aircraft construction, and diversified manufacturing. These industries, which accounted for more than 60 per cent of commodity values in the State in 1929, were leading contributors to its wealth in 1937. The pack of canned and frozen vegetables, berries, and fruits in 1937 was valued at $29,566,163.
The most significant changes in commerce during recent years are the advance of maritime shipment and motor freight over rail transport. Particularly marked is the growth of waterborne commerce; the total for 1937 was $132,375,649, of which exports amounted to $92,566,594. Lumber exports rose from 36 per cent of the total produced in 1910 to
91 per cent in 1935, with other commodity shipments following a similar trend to a lesser degree.
LUMBERING
Washington is the leading lumber-producing State in the country. Though distinctly different in composition, the forests on both the east and west sides of the Cascade Range are predominantly softwoods. Eastward lies the "short log" country of white pine, ponderosa pine, cottonwood, and aspen; westward to the Pacific Ocean extends a dense growth of Douglas fir, cedar, hemlock, soft maple, alder, and spruce. Lumbering, of prime importance in Washington's development, began with the first white men to come ashore in the region—in 1788 Captain John Meares left Puget Sound with a cargo of ship spars, China-bound, though he ran into a storm and had to jettison his load. Four years later Captain George Vancouver replaced a broken spar with one cut from the forest of Puget Sound. With the establishment of fur-trading posts, wood was used in construction, and this soon led to processing of logs. At Fort Vancouver in 1825, millwright William Cannon first whipsawed logs into boards, and the next year a sawmill was set up with machinery imported from London.
The Hudson's Bay Company regularly accepted shakes and shaved shingles from American settlers in exchange for supplies. The first mill on Puget Sound and the second north of the Columbia River was built at Tumwater in 1847 by Colonel Michael T. Simmons and his associates of the Puget Sound Milling Company; it employed discarded machinery from the Vancouver mill.
When settlers appeared, timber was not only an obstacle to farming but also the readiest source of revenue, and the new arrivals at once set themselves to cutting away the edge of the forests. The Alki settlement at Seattle sent a cargo of piling to San Francisco in 1852, introducing oxen, borrowed from Puyallup Valley, to aid in moving the logs. A mill was started on Whatcom Creek, and Nicholas DeLin set up a mill at Tacoma with a wooden wheel turned by the flow from a 10-foot dam; but DeLin's mill, capable of cutting 2,000 feet daily, incurably sawed boards "on the bias," tapering them from end to end or both ways from the middle.
The Columbian of Olympia in 1853 reported: "There are now no less than fourteen sawmills run by water power, and one steam sawmill in process of construction on Puget Sound ... a large number of our citizens are . . . getting out cargoes of hewed timber, piles, shingles, and
cordwood . . . faster . . . than the number of vessels engaged in that business can carry them to market."
Henry Yesler completed the first steam mill on Puget Sound in 1853, and, as lumber was selling from $200 to $500 a thousand feet, more mills soon appeared: J. J. Fell built one on Appletree Cove in 1853; the Puget Mill Company started a steam sawmill and shingle mill at Port Gamble the next year; and in 1855 Peter Goutre and John Gould found water power and a mill site on Tulalip Bay. After the creation of a tribal reserve in 1857, the Tulalip Bay mill reverted to the Indians, who operated it successfully for the next 50 years.
Balked by the tall timber of great girth—trees 200 feet high and 12 feet in diameter were common—early loggers thinned out smaller trees with familiar tools and methods. River drives were impracticable, and logs were skidded over crude roads designed for the purpose. These skidroads, formed of short logs half-imbedded in earth and greased with the oil from dogfish liver, made it possible for 10 or 12 oxen to drag even the largest logs to the waterways.
Cutting ship knees, an early trade, was profitable but wasteful of timber, since only the angle of a big root or limb could be used. A heavy demand for spars and piling in 1860 increased lumber workers to 381. Early settlers at Olympia made barrel hoops of hazel-brush for shipment to San Francisco. In 1866 the Territorial loggers proudly sent to the Paris Exposition a slender flagstaff 150 feet tall, of which Governor William Pickering said: "The glorious flag of our beloved country will float from its top to the admiration of all visitors, far above the emblems and banners of any other Nation."
Sawmills began to tap the pine forests of eastern Washington during the sixties, but the heavier timber stands and more numerous waterways west of the Cascades led to more rapid development in that area. By 1871 the Territory ranked 21st in lumber production, with 56 mills, including 16 with steam engines, producing 128,743,000 feet of lumber.
In 1864 Congress granted to the Northern Pacific Railroad all odd sections of land in a 40-mile strip along its tracks in the Territory. This grant included huge areas of timber, and the railroad incorporated a land company to administer it. Since the agents of the railroad sold even forest areas for as low as $2 an acre, many new sawmills were started. Timberland with a minimum of 25,000 feet per acre cost no more than $120 for 40 acres, and while this condition prevailed many operators pyramided their holdings, and the industry entered a period of rapid growth.
"Fallers" chopped the trees down, while "buckers" cut or "bucked" them into 24, 32, or even 40-foot lengths, using a crosscut saw, or "Swede Fiddle." In the late sixties, some weary axman borrowed a saw and discovered an easier and more efficient method of felling. From that time, fallers worked on springboard scaffolds, set high off the ground to save clearing underbrush and to avoid the pitchiness of the lower tree trunk; this type of cutting not uncommonly left stumps 15 feet in height. A high-wheeled carriage or "big-wheel rig" was chained to a log and rolled away—the whole looking like an underslung siege gun. Logs could thus be moved faster and with fewer oxen or horses than on a skidroad. In the mills, the primitive saw-pit was superseded by the swift but wasteful circular saw, which often cut a kerf one-half inch wide. In 1880 the lumber industry employed 1,687 persons, contributing 57 per cent of the value of all manufactures in the Territory. The eighties marked the initial use of power equipment in logging. The earliest logging locomotive was built at Marysville in 1883 and ran on a maple-wood track. The donkey engine appeared at Bellingham Bay in 1887, and soon, on Grays Harbor and lower Puget Sound, adaptations followed. First tried was the Dolbeer donkey, an upright steam engine with a capstan. Improvements brought greater power, substituting a windlass, and the engine was mounted on skids for mobility. A "choker" loop of cable encircling a log was fastened to the long line, which the engine coiled, dragging in the log and "yarding" it. To keep pace with these innovations in the woods, circular head saws, gang edgers, power log-turners, and carriages were installed in the sawmills, and the logging railroads, using geared locomotives, were extended.
Helped by new railroad transportation and plentiful capital, production was boosted to 645,000,000 feet in 1887, more than half the total originating on Puget Sound. Machinery began to supersede manual labor, reduce costs, and speed up operations in general.
High-lead logging was begun in 1896 near Port Townsend. Instead of drawing logs with a straight, level pull, the cable from the donkeyengine drum was reeved through a block suspended from a spar tree and thence to the log. An even faster method, using the "skyline," by which a slingload of logs can be lifted and carried bodily on an aerial train, clearing underbrush, gullies, and streams, was introduced later. New capital, poured into Washington lumbering by Michigan and Wisconsin operators, notably the acquisition of enormous tracts by the Weyerhaeuser interests, was a decisive factor in the organization of the industry. Purchases were quietly negotiated with the Northern Pacific
Land Company, until, in 1900, the title to much of the remaining railroad lands was transferred. Following a survey of marketable timber, prices soared, and in some cases the cost of 1,000 feet of standing timber exceeded the original price per acre. By 1900 Washington had risen to fifth place among lumbering States; and doubled production gave it first position in 1905.
Important in stimulating the use of lumber was the development of a Douglas-fir-plywood fabricating process, supposedly at St. Johns, Oregon, in 1906, shortly after which mills were equipped for this purpose at Tacoma, McCleary, and Sedro-Woolley. Plywood is made by gluing together an odd number of veneer sheets, with the grains alternating at right angles; the result is a panel of great strength, reasonable flexibility, and unusual resistance to warping or shrinkage. Lumber production exceeded 4,000,000,000 feet in 1910 and, by 1914, embraced 912 plants, employing 37,734. Tractors, introduced into the woods at Gig Harbor in 1912, quickly found favor in handling lighter timber. The use of gas engines and electric motors spread among small mills, and the electrification of a large plant was tried in Seattle. Because electricity permitted greater efficiency in plant design, installations followed at Snoqualmie, Port Angeles, and, later, Longview. The Snoqualmie mill reduced costs with automatic stackers, electric trimmers and dust collectors, and an elaborate conveyor system of transfer cars. Wages were maintained at an average of $2.50 for a 10-hour day until 1918, when the 8-hour day was made general; around this time wages were doubled, and production increased fivefold. After a temporary slump in 1921, an increasing variety of machine tools appeared, and production rose to a peak of 7,541,229,000 feet in 1926. The lumbering industry's pay roll of 87,000 was 37 per cent of the State's annual total; 61c was the average hourly wage.
Automatic trimmers, improved high-speed planers, and efficient kilndrying systems were perfected, as was a machine for removing pitchpockets and gluing on patches in their place. Improved gear and new machines were introduced in the woods; for accelerating yard movements of lumber, electric or gasoline-powered carriers came into use, performing the work of 36 horses and 18 teamsters at a saving of 60 per cent. In 1929 a total of 901 plants, employing 52,170 persons, turned out lumber valued at $286,084,000, but within two years the plants in operation numbered only 500, with employment and production proportionately decreased. In some sections wages fell to the $2-a-day level; but, as production gained in 1935, organized labor raised wages to the 50c
basic rate for the 39,658 persons employed in 574 plants. Production reached 4,572,397,000 feet in 1936, and 4,712,698,000 feet for 1937. Two major trends are evident in the industry: the increase in numbers of small marginal operators employing 5 to 20 men—known as "gyppo outfits"—which usually offer little more than subsistence; and the growth of mammoth enterprises such as those of the Weyerhaeuser and Long-Bell Companies, often through absorption or elimination of moderate-sized plants. As the consolidation of timber holdings was effected, the advantage fell to the large corporation-owned mills, and, as depletion of timber resources advanced, these contributed the major part of the State's lumber output. About 100 mills, or less than one-fifth of the State's total, can turn out more than 100,000 feet each in an 8-hour shift; a few have 500,000-foot capacities, and one Longview mill is capable of 1,000,000 feet daily. Eastern Washington mills average 50,000 to 100,000 feet daily. Approximately four-fifths of the State's 574 plants operate in the Puget Sound and coastal regions.
From 1905 to 1926 the yearly production of plywood rose to more than 150,000,000 square feet, then soared to 700,000,000 in 1936. Of Washington's 30 or more veneer plants, 20 also manufacture plywood, using white pine, alder, birch, maple, Sitka spruce, hemlock, and imported Philippine mahogany. The uses of plywood range from map, model, and toy making to trailer, streamlined-train, and aircraft construction.
Wood-pulp and paper production have also developed rapidly, principally between 1921-9, when plants increased from 7 to 30, employment from 1,714 to 5,168, and the value of products from $10,233,000 to $47,093,000. A trend toward mechanization of existing plants rather than new construction caused the number of plants to remain stationary; while employment fell to 2,754, ar,d the value of products increased to $53,226,000 in 1936, when pulp manufacture amounted to 859,210 tons. Socially as well as economically, lumber has exerted important influences in the life of the State. The growth in complexity of lumber manufacture has stabilized plant locations and led to the development of important cities. The mass-production methods of the great mills in these centers are extremely specialized and have required the training of a highly skilled personnel of a different order from the skilled men of the woods. Backwoods camps represent another phase of the industry. Hundreds of little communities remain, though the timber cutting may be 20 miles away; others survive as supply centers, and some have become mere ghost towns. A few towns are literally "mounted on wheels"—and
consist of railroad rolling stock in the form of bunk cars, cook shacks and commissary, and tool and shop cars.
Washington retains approximately 280,000,000,000 board feet of its original stand of about 580,000,000,000. The most readily accessible forests have dwindled before axe and saw, or have been ravaged by fire and plant diseases.
The general industrial depression has curtailed the demand for lumber, and this, together with technological improvements, has resulted in widespread unemployment among lumber workers, and in the economic decline of many towns and cities dependent upon timber. Yet the great lumber resources of the State continue to hold out the promise of prosperity, and steps are being taken to conserve and replenish them. Today the industry looks expectantly, not only to the older markets for wood, but to new uses in products, such as rayon, plastics, and cellulose, that are being created through chemical and other scientific processes. Along these lines unlimited possibilities seem to exist.
MINING
Nonmetallic minerals, including coal, cement, clay, building stone, and other commercial materials, today yield Washington a much greater return than its metals. It was, however, the metals, particularly gold, that provided the first incentive to mining as a whole. Early-day prospectors, searching first for placer gold and later turning their attention to lode mining, blazed the way for the discovery and exploitation of the numerous minerals now known to exist within the State.
Gold rushes colored Territorial history and attracted streams of immigrants, some of whom settled down and occupied the new land. One of the first gold excitements in Washington Territory occurred in 1855 in the vicinity of Old Fort Colvile, on the east bank of the Columbia River, which for 30 years previously had been the chief inland post of the Hudson's Bay Company. The metal was discovered on the Columbia near the mouth of Pend Oreille River, and something in the nature of a gold rush followed. But, although considerable gold in the aggregate was removed from the area in subsequent years, the district proved disappointing to individual placer miners. At this time, conflicts with the Indians were frequent and most of the Territory was unsafe for prospectors. In 1858, however, peace was established with the various tribes, and this gave an impetus to prospecting that resulted in gold discoveries at widely separated points. The placers along the Similkameen River in what is now Okanogan County were first worked in 1859, and pros pectors searched over a vast area in that locality. The first quartz lode was discovered near Conconully in 1871. Gold mining began near the present city of Wenatchee in 1858, and for a time extravagant claims were made for this district; but here again results fell short of expectations, and the ground was soon worked out or proved to be of a low grade.
Two factors that encouraged early gold seeking were the completion of the Mullan road over Mullan Pass in the Rocky Mountains in 1862, which made access to the Columbia River much easier for miners working their way westward, and the establishment of steam navigation on the Columbia. Working south from British Columbia in the early sixties, prospectors discovered the placer deposits of Ruby Creek in Whatcom County, of the Sultan Basin in Snohomish County, and, across the Cascades, of the Peshastin Creek district, near Blewett, and of the Swauk country, near Mount Stuart. Most of these proved to be important gold-bearing districts.
The early prospectors with few exceptions sought gold mainly along streams and in surface deposits. The chief reasons for this were that placer mining required little preparation or equipment, and that the gold thus obtained was practically in a pure state and readily negotiable as money. Lode deposits of gold-bearing ore were therefore disregarded at first, even when they were known to exist. Gradually, however, as more permanent mining camps were established, miners devised ingenious methods of recovering gold from free-milling ores. The arrastra, a crude ore-grinding apparatus, was usually built almost entirely by hand from material on the ground. It consisted of a stone-lined pit in the center of which stood an upright with crossarms. Attached to the crossarms by a line were huge stones. The upright, powered generally by a hand-constructed water wheel, revolved, dragging the stones around the pit and grinding the ore that had been introduced into the pit with water. Arrastras were used in early days in the Blewett district, where oxidized, free-milling ore was available: remains of them may still be found. Stamp mills were installed around 1880, and hard-rock mining became prevalent. The Culver gold-quartz ledge at Blewett was, according to all available data, the first lode from which ore was taken to be milled by arrastras.
Prospectors in the early eighties, turning their attention to lode mining, made important discoveries, such as the silver-bearing lodes in the Colville district and the iron deposits of Snoqualmie Pass. But little mining development took place until 1887, when the industry throughout
the State began a major advance. The important mineral district of Monte Cristo in Snohomish County, discovered in 1889, was considered so promising that a railroad was constructed into the district at great expense. The ore, however, was complex and refractory, carrying gold, silver, copper, lead, and other minerals. Other discoveries in Western Washington were in the Index and the Berlin districts, and for a time there was considerable mining west of the Cascades.
Spokane experienced a gold rush when part of the Colville Indian Reservation was opened in 1896-8. New money poured into the industry in the Cascade area, justifying the Post-Intelligencer's statement in 1897 that while the district was "not a poor man's mining country . .. judicious investment of large capital will pay good dividends." Mines installed concentrators and slime tables to supplement the stamp mills of the reduction plants, and the cyanide process was found profitable. In general, however, operations often proved disappointing and there were many failures. When ores of a complex or "base" nature were encountered, the attempt to recover the gold content through methods successful with free-milling ores usually led to losses. Then, to, in many cases ore bodies did not prove constant; faults and slips in the leads were encountered; heavy rains flooded top workings; and snow hampered operations. These adverse conditions finally brought about a depression in the mining industry in western Washington, which continued to some extent until well past the turn of the century.
Among the important mineral regions in which gold is the principal economic metal is the Republic district, in the Okanogan Highlands, first worked in 1896. The ores here are complex and somewhat refractory, but are found in well-defined bodies and uniform veins. The Mount Baker district in Whatcom County has gold-bearing ores that yield readily to reduction processes, the gold being easily recovered by means of amalgamation or cyanidization; this district once occasioned considerable excitement, but the rush soon subsided. The Swauk placer district in Kittitas County has produced a large gold total, mostly through small, individual operations. Some lode mines have also been worked in the district. The Peshastin district in Chelan County, before mentioned as one of the oldest in the State, has been a heavy gold producer, from both placer and lode operations. Some gold has also been recovered from the beach sands of the Pacific Coast of Washington; the gold there is usually very fine and is associated with heavy minerals, which makes separation difficult. Lastly, some placer workings, mostly individual, have long been carried on intermittently along the Washington side of the Colum bia. Traces may still be found here of the diggings of early-day Chinese miners, who often worked ground scorned by white miners as low-grade.
In all, there are some 30 mining districts in Washington in which gold is of prime importance among the metals mined.
The latest chapter in the history of the search for gold within the State began in 1933, when the price of gold rose from $20 to $35 an ounce. The new price made possible the resumption of operations in many long-abandoned properties, and also gave great impetus to prospecting. Thousands of men, many of them unemployed, took to the mountains to search for new deposits, or combed over the old mining districts for gold that might have been overlooked. In many cases, owing to lack of experience or some other factor, these latter-day prospectors were unsuccessful, but a few of the more skilled or more fortunate came upon important new sources or rediscovered old ones.
Silver is a by-product in many of the mines of the State, often being found in conjunction with other metals, particularly gold, lead, or copper. In the Swauk district, for example, gold is alloyed with silver to such an extent that it has lost its rich, yellow color and is of a much paler tone. The Ruby silver camps, four miles south of Conconully, were very active for a few years, beginning in 1889. It was estimated that about 1,000 miners were in the camp at one time. The drop in the silver market stopped operations in 1893. That year prospectors discovered the Old Dominion Mine, near Colville, from which rich lead-silver ore was at first packed on horses to Spokane at a cost of $100 per ton. Five years later, the Young America and Bonanza deposits were opened up near what is now the town of Bossburg. More attention was then given to the search for ores of lead, silver, and copper. With the construction of the Spokane and Northern Railway into Stevens County, work was begun on the great ore bodies of the Chewelah district, Deer Trail, and other areas. Ores carrying a high content of silver have been mined in the Colville district, and in recent years about half of the State's silver has come from the mines near Republic. Twice in the history of Washington the annual value of silver produced exceeded that of gold. Copper ores of various kinds occur in separate bodies, and the metal itself appears in nearly all metalliferous veins throughout the State. Copper ores are found in larger deposits in the Chewelah, Chelan, and Index districts. The Tacoma Copper Smelter, a plant started in 1889 by a Tacoma financier, W. R. Rust, has increased its capacity through the years and is now capable of handling 45,000 tons of ore per month. In the Metaline district of Pend Oreille County, lead and zinc have
been mined for decades. Lead is also commonly found in ores containing other metals. Engineers report large, unexploited bodies of lead ore in certain parts of the Northern Cascades, and there are lead-producing mines in Whatcom, King, and Okanogan Counties. In Seattle is a large lead-processing plant, capable of utilizing much of the State's output of that metal in the manufacture of articles for trade. The commercial use of lead is varied and constantly increasing, and, since Washington has considerable deposits, the outlook for the industry appears promising. Zinc is often found in conjunction with lead, and a high-grade zinc is mined in Washington.
Large bodies of iron ore have long been known to exist in Washington, notably in the Cle Elum district of Kittitas County, around Snoqualmie Pass in King County, the Hamilton district in Skagit County, and the Colville and Valley districts in Stevens County. Some attempts have been made to smelt these native iron deposits—a blast furnace at Irondale, near Port Townsend, produced the first pig iron in the locality— but no permanent iron industry has been established.
Manganese, chromium, tungsten, molybdenum, and silicon are found at various points on the Olympic Peninsula and, in some measure, throughout the Cascade Range. Some of these deposits are of considerable potential value. Large manganese deposits are found principally on the headwaters of the Dungeness, Dosewallips, and Skokomish Rivers, and on Little River, south of Port Angeles; this metal is used in a steel alloy in armament manufacture. It has other important uses.
Platinum occurs with gold along Shishi Beach in Clallam County, along the Similkameen River, in Sultan Basin, and elsewhere. Cinnabar, from which mercury is extracted, has been discovered and mined at various points, particularly near Morton, in Lewis County. Antimony, widely used as an alloy in type metal, is found in Ferry, King, and Okanogan Counties. Deposits of nickel occur in Ferry and Okanogan Counties; recently, this metal has been employed as an alloy of copper in various kinds of sheet-metal products. Tin has long been produced from ores found at Silver Hills, near Spokane; and the ore has also been reported in Kittitas and Stevens Counties. Other metals, most of which are used in alloys, such as bismuth, cadmium, strontium, and cobalt, are found in small quantities throughout the State.
While the metal-mining industry of Washington has been a source of much wealth, the State's ore bodies, except for some iron, copper, and perhaps, magnesium deposits, are not large, in comparison with those of other mineral regions. Yet Washington does have a great deal of known
mineral wealth that has remained undeveloped because it is distributed over a wide area. Recent road building and power development, and the rapid technological progress being made in metallurgy, seem to favor progress for the local metal-mining industry.
Nonmetallic mineral resources have become increasingly important in recent years. Among these are cement, coal, clay, sand and stone, and other construction materials. In 1905 the Portland Cement Company established its mill at Concrete, on the Baker River. Today, six plants manufacturing Portland cement, situated at various points within the State and utilizing local limestones and clays, have a reported capacity of about 5,000,000 barrels.
The annual production of stone quarries is valued at nearly $2,000,000. There are granite quarries near Index, in Snohomish County, and sandstone quarries near Wilkeson and at Tenino. Some marble has been produced in Washington, and the new Capitol building at Olympia and other public and private buildings have been faced or partially constructed of local stone. Other building materials are the clays used for brick and tile and the colored mineral aggregates used in stucco, terrazzo, cement stone, and roofing. Magnesite—employed in the manufacture of building board and allied products—is found near Chewelah in deposits said to be the largest in North or South America. A considerable quantity of diatomite, used for insulation, is mined and processed here.
Of commercial value also are clays for stoneware and art pottery; the white kaolins of eastern Washington, suitable for the finest types of chinaware; silica sands, used as abrasives and in foundry work and glass manufacture; soapstone and talc, found in Skagit River Valley; sodium sulphate; and the red and yellow ochers, siennas, umbers, and other mineral pigments of which paints are made. There are also barylites, celestite, fluor spar, marl, shell, and a few gem stones. Asbestos is mined near Pateros, in Okanogan County, and processed in Seattle and Wenatchee.
The discovery and exploitation of coal deposits preceded the earliest gold rush. Dr. William Frazer Tolmie, of the Hudson's Bay Company, recorded coal outcroppings near the junction of the Cowlitz and Toutle Rivers in 1833, and 15 years later the company dug small amounts of lignite in the vicinity. Discoveries were also made on the Stillaguamish River in 1851, and on the Black River, near Renton, where the first mining was attempted in 1852.
The Bellingham Bay mines made the first commercial shipment to San Francisco before 1860, and were the only source of export until
1870. In the early sixties, a man named Van Ogle found extensively distributed coal in Carbon River Canyon but, fearing a single claim would be valueless, filed none. Mining in King County was undertaken after Lyman B. Andrews, in 1863, trudged into Seattle with a flour sack full of coal dug near Issaquah. Other deposits, comprising the Newcastle properties of the later-formed Pacific Coast Coal Company, also east of Lake Washington, were located in 1863. Railroad construction between Seattle and Newcastle during 1874-7 stimulated the industry.
In 1880 the Oregon Improvement Company, organized by Henry Villard of the Northern Pacific, acquired the Newcastle mines and railroad, and coal production in the Territory rose to 14.5,015 tons for the year. At Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893, the Northern Pacific's Roslyn mine displayed a 25-ton block of coal, supposedly the largest ever cut at that time. Coal mining, following the trend in related industries, fell increasingly under the control of a few large companies; mines, railroads, and steamship lines were often combined under the same ownership. Legislation was passed in the attempt to restrain monopolies. In 1918 coal production broke all records with more than 4,000,000 tons, and continued to maintain a relatively high level throughout the twenties, when other mining was curtailed.
Kittitas, King, and Pierce counties, in the order named, have been the principal coal-production areas in the State. Most of the coal mined has been consumed locally, the bulk of it going to railroads, domestic use, coke and gas manufacturing, and the bunker trade for steamships. The coal deposits of Washington include almost every type, from subbituminous to anthracite; and, though coal-mining has declined to some extent in recent years, it is hoped that in the near future the industry will be stimulated by new uses of coal and its by-products.
FISHERIES
The waters of the North Pacific are among the world's great fishing grounds, and the offshore banks of Washington, its salt water inlets and bays, and its coastal rivers are of leading importance in this region. Convenient to the coast of Alaska, the Aleutian chain, and the Bering Sea, Washington ports are outfitting, processing, and shipping headquarters for the whole vast Northern Pacific area.
The Indians had caught salmon long before the coming of the white man. In 1792 Captain George Vancouver described Puget Sound natives as "fishing for salmon with crude nets made of bark and young willows"
—and also saw their racks for drying the fish; while Captain Robert Gray was offered smoked salmon by Columbia River Indians. Salmon was a principal food and an important commodity for barter, especially among the Indians of the Columbia River region.
A device used for salmon fishing by the Puget Sound natives was the weir. Several tripods of alderwood poles were set up in a river or creek where the water was shallow, and, on these, platforms about six feet square were constructed above the level of the water. A fence of willow staves about eight feet long and one to two inches thick, lashed together with string, was built across the stream. The fishermen stood on the tripod platforms with a long dip net and took out the fish, held back by the fence.
Indians along the Columbia used nets woven of flax fibers or of strips of willow bark, with ropes of twisted cedar withes. Reef and seine nets varied in size, and were sometimes as large as 12 feet in depth and 100 feet in length. On the lower Columbia, fishing stations were, according to custom, passed on by inheritance. Fish was preserved by drying, then pulverized and packed securely into baskets lined with straw, dried fish skins, and mats. Each of these baskets weighed about 100 pounds, and, at The Dalles in 1805, Lewis and Clark noted a stock that totaled 10,000 pounds. Fish prepared in this manner, called pemmican by the Indians, kept sound and sweet for several years.
Early explorers and pioneers were amazed to find streams literally choked with fish during the spawning season. Around the first decade of the nineteenth century, the North West Company introduced the salting process; later, the Hudson's Bay Company developed a considerable export trade in quinnat, sockeye salmon, and isinglass (produced from sturgeon), to the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, China, Japan, and eastern United States. David Maynard and Chief Seattle packed salt salmon on Elliott Bay for shipment to San Francisco; the shipment, however, spoiled in transit. Before long, several small traders and fish packers were operating on a minor scale in various parts of the Territory. The Olympia Columbian of September 10, 1853, reported that several men were engaged in salmon fishing at Point Roberts. About 1857, John West, who later invented a canning machine, began salting salmon in barrels on the lower Columbia. Four years later, the Territorial legislature passed an act prohibiting nonresidents from taking fish on the beach of the Columbia between Point Ellis and Cape Hancock. The first floating cannery in the Territory, equipped with a brick furnace and an iron cauldron, was launched in 1867 by an ex-shipwright, S. W. Aldrich,
a jack-of-all-trades, who fished alone and made his cans himself. In 1871 Megler and Jewett, canners at Beachfield on the Columbia, introduced the first can-soldering and lacquering machine and the steam box. V. T. Tull started to pack salmon in 1873 at Mukilteo, and here, four years later, the Jackson-Meyers Company opened the first Puget Sound cannery. Whaling out of Sound ports gained importance early, and oils were obtained from the eulachan, or candlefish, and the dogfish, the latter yielding 60,000 barrels annually. In 1876 F. W. Warren's cannery at Cathlamet installed the first steam pressure cooker, built of threeinch planks. This mechanism so reduced spoilage that it quickly replaced the earlier iron retorts.
In 1881 there were 35 canneries on the Columbia River, with an output of 550,000 cases valued at about $2,475,000. During that year H. Levy exported 100 barrels of smoked salmon to London. The completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which made it possible to ship fresh fish to Eastern markets, soon helped expand the local industry. Capital investment and consolidations in the packing industry multiplied during the nineties, culminating in the incorporation under the laws of New Jersey of the Pacific Packing and Navigation Company in 1901, with an authorized capitalization of $32,000,000. The company gained control of many Puget Sound and Alaska plants but, as the result of stock manipulations, collapsed with great loss to stockholders. Fishing gear up to this time represented in a large measure a development of the reef nets, basketwork, brush weirs, and traps employed for centuries by the Indians; although a crude fish wheel had been introduced on the Columbia as early as 1879 by the patentees, S. W. Williams and Brother. Gill nets, the oldest type of apparatus used in the fisheries of the region, are either of the "drift" or "set" type—that is, movable or fixed. The gill net, which entangles the fish, is used chiefly in stream or channel fishing. The purse seine, reputedly introduced by the Chinese in 1886, came to be much employed in deep waters, especially after the appearance of the gasoline-powered boat equipped with winches to close and raise the seine when filled. The "beach-haul" type of seine was much used along the bars of the Columbia, horses dragging the laden nets ashore. Traps or pound nets, built of webbing or wire netting supported by piling, were generally placed in estuaries. The fish wheel, which became increasingly popular, was a rotary scoop, mounted on a stationary or floating base and revolved by the stream or tidal flow. Trolling has also been much practiced in northern waters.
Around the turn of the century, drastic changes occurred in fishing
and packing. In 1903 E. S. Smith patented the "Iron Chink"—so called because it replaced Chinese labor—a machine that butchered and cleaned 60 to 85 salmon a minute. During the same year, the Pioneer, a gasolinepowered purse-seine boat, appeared on Puget Sound and motorboats began to replace scows.
Experiments with by-products, in order to find use for the enormous wastage, were widely undertaken at this time. Oil and fertilizer derived from herring proved a profitable venture from the beginning.
The annual value of fisheries products by 1910 reached $5,559,ooo, exclusive of oysters, and the industry employed 3,643 workers. In 1913 a record catch of nearly 41,500,000 fish was taken, representing a wholesale value of $5,312,000. That year the value of processed salmon alone reached the sum of $14,073,000, and 15,611 workers engaged in the industry earned a total of $3,065,000. An important innovation was the introduction in 1908 of the Japanese oyster, found to thrive better here than in its native waters.
Several factors, among which unlimited catches were but one, had led to the serious depletion of Washington's fishing resources. Logging operations had caused the drying up of many small streams that had served as spawning beds for the salmon; sewage from waterway cities and villages had been permitted to empty into near-by streams; sawmills, woodworking plants, and pulpmills had crowded river mouths and streams; dams had been built for electric power and irrigation, without provisions being made for the passage of salmon. Natural losses had been caused by the trout, which follows the salmon to the spawning grounds and there devours countless thousands of eggs.
The first regulatory legislation to lower the rate of depletion was enacted in 1890, a year after the State had been admitted to the Union. By provision of this and subsequent laws, only certain types of fishing were allowed in specified waters; seasons and quotas were established, and fishbreeding grounds were rotated. In 1934 an initiative measure abolished the use of fish wheels, traps, all fixed gear, and "beach hauls"; specified areas were set aside for gear fishing, and regular fishing seasons, quotas, and the rotation of fishing fleets were established. Steps were also taken to conserve and replenish the stocks of rivers and streams. (See Natural Setting).
In 1939 the total salmon pack for the State was 727,116 cases. Seattle is a leading halibut port of the world, with an average annual load of 22,000,000 pounds. The appearance of albacore (tuna) in commercial quantities, in August 1938, off the shores of Washington, created much
excitement; this species continues to be a valuable item in Washington fishing. The importance of by-products is steadily increasing; from parts of halibut, ling cod, and sable fish, once wasted, more than 1,000,000 gallons of oil are extracted annually. The conversion of waste into fish meal and fertilizer has also been found profitable. Improved methods of freezing have made possible the development of new products and different ways of handling the old. In 1937 a total of almost 3,000,000 pounds of clams, scallops, and crabs were taken. More than 2,000,000 pounds of fresh, and 70,000 cases of canned, oysters were shipped in IO<35, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the Pacific Coast total; since that time the quantity has steadily increased. A rise in the quantity of devilfish caught has been noted since 1938, when the catch totaled over 40,000 pounds.
The fisheries in 1937 employed 9,300 workers (3,400 in canneries), who received an average of $250 for a season of two and one-half months. Fishermen on 400 or more ships worked on a share basis. For a season of 7 and 8 months, respectively, the purse seiners averaged $460, while the deep sea fishermen averaged $800.
Probably the most effective technological change during recent years has been the shift to the Diesel-powered scow; several of these are in operation on Puget Sound and in the North Pacific. New fishing methods are coming in slowly, however, due chiefly to the pinch in the industry caused by the depression and other factors. Sport fishing is growing in popularity, and the manufacture and sale of gear for this purpose is a prosperous business.
LABOR
Workingmen of Washington have been mainly migrants, laboring in gangs in the woods, mines, and fields, and on the seas and rivers, often living in camps and bunkhouses that any day might be knocked down and transported elsewhere. It was so in the early days of building the Territory, and now that cities have arisen, it is still true, though to a lesser degree. Today, temporary work-towns shelter the men laboring at Washington's great power dams; and transient camps spring up during harvest time in the fruit-growing valleys. Lumber camps burrow deeper into the remaining forests; and, in the spring, fleets of vessels, large and small, spread out along the coastal ways as far as Alaska.
This more or less fluid character of Washington labor, its lack of domestic stability, has had its effects both on the workingmen and on their labor organizations. If the State has at times been called "radical,"
the cause may be found, not in the existence here of tensions deeper than those prevailing elsewhere, but in a certain directness and ruggedness of manner in which the men and their employers have bargained or fought it out. Perhaps on both sides there has prevailed a kind of impatience, based on a sense of the brevity of time in which problems would have to be solved.
On the other hand, despite its local peculiarities, Washington's labor history follows the general pattern of that of the country as a whole and consistently reflects national influence and events. Washington's growth was part of the westward expansion of the Nation, and of its railroads, industries, and finance, following the Civil War. The beginning of modern development in the Territory was marked by a great influx of settlers from the industrial East and Middle West. Population increased from 23,955 to 357,232 between 1870 and 1890.
During this period, the labor movement nationally was changing in form and growing in strength and stature. The Knights of Labor rose from secrecy to become an open, nation-wide organization. Assemblies of the Knights were soon formed throughout Washington Territory. As part of their social aim "to secure to the workers the full enjoyment of the wealth they created," their platform in the territorial elections of 1886 advocated a bureau of labor statistics, postal savings, industrial compensation laws, graduated income taxes, and weekly payment of wages. They favored compulsory arbitration and "ultimate" prohibition of alcohol—measures no longer favored by labor—as well as abrogation of anti-labor and vagrancy laws and the abolition of imported contract, child, and convict labor.
The Knights played a prominent part in the anti-Chinese riots of 1885-6. The completion of the railroads had stranded many Chinese along the coast; and these had been collected by contractors and hired out in gangs in the hopfields, mines, canneries, and mills. With a depression under way, this cheap labor aroused the hostility of the unions, of small employers unable to compete with hirers of contract labor, of businessmen who disliked the frugality of the Chinese, and of the unemployed who regarded the Chinese as competitors for jobs. The Knights, under the leadership of Otto F. Wagener, took advantage of prevailing feelings and organized widely. Violence was provoked during 1885, and militiamen were used to suppress disorders at Seattle, Tacoma, and other coastal towns.
Seattle and Spokane Falls were burned in 1889, and in the reconstruction, which synchronized with a period of general prosperity, labor
was in great demand. Wages rose, and organization increased. But the trend that set in was away from the Knights and towards the newly formed American Federation of Labor. The Western Central Labor Union was created in 1888, and marine organization first showed power in 1889, when inland boatmen on Puget Sound, supported by sympathetic strikes on the Columbia River, prevented wage reductions. In the coal strikes of 1888-9, militia and imported strikebreakers were used against the Knights.
In the first years of the 1890's the American Federation of Labor had almost completely supplanted the Knights. The new organization confined itself strictly to hours, wages, and conditions of labor; abandoned political campaigns for lobbying; and restricted membership mainly to skilled workmen organized by crafts—a policy directly opposed to that of the Knights.
During 1890, the carpenters' brotherhood joined the national strike for an 8-hour day; the Tacoma Trade Council, earliest central body in the State, was formed; smeltermen, printers, shingle weavers, and the railroad brotherhoods gained strength. The State legislature approved Labor Day as a legal holiday in 1891, and by 1893 locals of the Western Central Labor Union had organized a State federation. When the Western Federation of Miners was formed, most remaining miner assemblies of the Knights passed into it intact.
Shop and maintenance labor on the railroads flocked into the American Railway Union, founded by Eugene Debs on the basis of industrial rather than occupational categories. A new depression around the middle of the decade threw many out of work, and Coxey's Army attracted support from Puget Sound cities; 1,600 joined for the march on the National Capital and many crossed the Cascades. The Governor ordered out militia against them, and at Yakima they were waylaid by railroad police and scattered. The Great Northern Railroad strike of the American Railway Union won improved conditions early in 1894, but the later Pullman strike in Washington, felt mostly at Spokane and Tacoma, was defeated.
Organized labor aided the Populist movement so effectively that William Jennings Bryan carried the State in 1896, and John Rankin Rogers was elected governor. As the Populists began to wane, the unionspolitical activity continued under other influences, conspicuously that of the Social Democratic party after 1900. The Seattle Union Record was founded in that year, and the State federation of the American Federation of Labor in 1901.
Legislation to improve industrial conditions reached an impressive total in Washington subsequent to 1903, often preceding such regulation elsewhere. Acts were passed restricting the employment of women, requiring safety devices in factories, establishing the 8-hour day for public employees, and providing for the "permit system" for child workers between the ages of 12 and 14. In 1905, the State Bureau of Labor was created, and laws were enacted providing for wage payment in legal tender, rather than company scrip, and giving labor the power to secure wage liens.
The American Federation of Labor maintained that collaboration must replace strife between capital and labor, but an organization with a different view, the Industrial Workers of the World, emerged in 1905. Soon active in Washington lumber and agricultural centers, the I.W.W. adopted at first the Socialist concept of class struggle, asserting that trade unions, through a general strike, would supersede the capitalist system and establish a free society. It planned unions based on industrial lines and addressed itself also to unorganized, semiskilled, and unskilled migratory labor. The new organization was bitterly attacked by Samuel Gompers, head of the A. F. of L., and by employers and local authorities. Spokane banned street speakers in 1909, and the I.W.W. worked up a "free speech" campaign, during which more than 600 were arrested.
The struggle ended in a compromise, when the police granted a permit system for speakers.
In 1907 the State legislature enacted a 16-hour law for railroad crews, but, although it thus limited the workday, it required that the individual worker bring suit before penalties might be invoked. The protection of miners was strengthened at succeeding sessions, and in 1911 a compensation act established the principle of industrial insurance.
The thirty-third national convention of the A. F. of L., held in Seattle in 1913, sanctioned the amalgamation of existing lumber unions and promised to aid a campaign for the long-sought 8-hour day. Since the shingle weavers in 10 years had made but small gains, a membership drive was launched, and a paper, the Timber Worker, was founded; but the drive failed. Resisting wage cuts after 1914, teamsters and longshoremen struck in the Puget Sound area, despite widespread efforts to reaffirm the principle of the open shop. The strike was ended by Federal mediation.
A minimum-wage bill for women and the establishment of an industrial welfare commission marked the 1915 session of the State legislature. An initiative fixing a general 8-hour day in industry was lost at the polls
in 1914, after being opposed by lumber operators and some farm groups; and a measure prohibiting collection of fees by employment agencies was passed, but proved ineffectual.
A local employers' organization, the Commercial Club, intervened in a shingle weavers' strike at Everett in May 1916; forty men suspected of membership in the I.W.W. were seized and beaten, and street meetings were prohibited. The I.W.W. called for a free-speech demonstration, and on Sunday, November 5, workingmen embarked from Seattle on the vessels Verona and Callista. As the Verona entered Everett at Pier 2, which was crowded with special deputies, gunfire broke out. Men dropped on the decks, and panic swept the ship. Listing heavily, the Verona was backed away; and both ships returned to Seattle. Two on the dock and five on board the Verona were killed, several were reported drowned, and 50 were wounded. At Seattle, 300 passengers were jailed; 74 were held for murder in the first degree, but were released without trial when the first to be tried was acquitted.
As wartime living costs mounted, the timberworkers' demand for the 8-hour day at a $3 wage, for better sanitary conditions, and for union recognition was reinforced by strike action, which won support in other vital industries. The Lumbermen's Protective Association raised $500,000 to fight the unions and to defend the old hours and wage rates. Lumber strikes in the Northwest increased from 44 in 1916 to 295 in 1917, and so demoralized production that the War Department intervened and appointed Colonel Brice P. Disque to co-ordinate the industry. Under the sponsorship of the Government, the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, often called the "4-L," was created. It united employers and workmen in the same organization, and worked towards patriotism and a maximum output. Strikes were reduced to 74 in 1918, and in the same year the 8-hour day in the lumber industry was decreed by Colonel Disque.
The end of the war brought a cut in production, and the mounting unemployment and a renewed open-shop campaign combined to weaken the unions. In Seattle, a general strike—the "Seattle Revolution"— began in support of thousands of striking shipyard workers. On February 6, 1919, approximately 60,000 walked out. Shops, mills, newspapers, and transportation stopped; the strike committee organized labor guards to keep order, and maintained vital services. Mayor Ole Hanson spent $50,000 for special police and deputized 2,400 businessmen. The strike ended peaceably, leaving a vivid impression. Raids and arrests soon began against Socialist and union groups, as fears were fanned of the "bolshe vik" menace. Under the pressure of a powerful campaign, public sentiment was turned against the unions in spite of the well-known conservatism of local labor leaders. The Associated Employers of Washington was formed to combat radicalism in the State.
In the nervous atmosphere thus created, a tragic event occurred at Centralia on Armistice Day, 1919, during an American Legion parade in that city. The I.W.W. had attempted to organize the lumbermen of the Centralia region and, despite several conflicts, had established headquarters there. According to Commons' History of American Labor, the Armistice Day parade took the route leading to the I.W.W. hall, and shooting broke out in which four legionnaires were killed. An I.W.W. member, Wesley Everest—also a veteran—was mutilated and lynched; and another I.W.W., a 19-year-old boy, was arrested and became insane while in jail. Almost 1,000 arrests were made of I.W.W. members and persons suspected of radicalism. A feverish attack was begun against all organized labor. A trial was held in Montesano at which nine workingmen were convicted of murder in the second degree, after the testimony of nearly 300 witnesses had revealed an extreme conflict of opinion as to which group had actually begun the assault. After church groups, investigating the trial, recommended clemency, all but one of the defendants were released; the last prisoner was freed in 1939.
Organized labor was subjected to various kinds of attack while the "red scare" prevailed; conservative unions were suspected, the more aggressive were branded "bolshevik," and the legislature passed a criminal-syndicalism act. Spokane conducted a trial costing $250,000 but failed to secure convictions; Tacoma police arrested 50 delegates to the Central Labor Council. Associations of water-front employers, lumber operators, and the Inland Empire Employers pressed a drive for the open shop.
Maritime labor on Puget Sound was disorganized by the defeat of the coastwise strike in 1921, and the coal mine and railroad unions of the A. F. of L. lost ground the next year. The "4-L" dwindled to the point where it maintained a foothold only in smaller camps and mills, although it still claimed 10,000 members in 1921; the A. F. of L. lumber unions in 1922 had only 800 members and listed none in 1923. The last serious strength of the I.W.W. vanished in an abortive lumber strike called in 1923.
Labor banks were started in 1922, the first being the Trade Union Savings Loan of Seattle. The railroad-brotherhood banks opened branches
in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane and purchased buildings in Spokane and Tacoma, but remained solvent only a few years. Various Washington unions joined in the Farmer-Labor campaign of 1922-24, the leading candidate being Homer T. Bone, later United States Senator (1932- ). Weakened by protracted struggles and many defeats, organized labor lapsed into quiescence, the number of strikes diminishing from 112 in 1919 to 5 in 1925. As prosperity mounted, the skilled unions improved their position, though without expending further energy on the unorganized majority. Thus, despite the relatively high percentage of craftsmen's unions within the State, the basic industries were, after 40 years, never more than briefly and partially organized. Lumber, fishing, marine transport, and agricultural unions did not develop until after 1929-30.
The early thirties were characterized by widespread organization of the jobless. In the Puget Sound region, two groups, the Union Producers and the Unemployed Citizens' League, organized in 1931, gained members by tens of thousands; in Spokane, the Order of the Forgotten Man, founded in 1932, soon had 11,000 members. Co-operatives, selfhelp groups, and "production-for-use" associations sprang up throughout the State. With this impetus, labor's political activity revived. A lumber workers' industrial union, formed in 1931 at Seattle, enrolled 3,000 members and won a minor strike. Similar industrial unions appeared on the water front and in agriculture, all affiliated with a union federation called the Trade Union Unity League. During the next few years, these unions dissolved, and their members went into the A. F. of L. Workers in hopfields and orchards of the Yakima Valley struck in 1933 and were attacked by vigilantes and police. Later organizational attempts among harvest hands in this area were resisted by the Associated Farmers. In central Washington, serious conflict flared in the Roslyn-Cle Elum mines, where the workmen were organized in the National Miners' Union.
Finding encouragement under the N.R.A., labor began rapid organization in 1934. The marine unions, under the stress of a coastwise strike, attained a membership of 35,000 within 6 months. During the strike, the "Committee of 500" was formed to open the port of Seattle; while strikers resisted efforts of police and strikebreakers to move cargo at Smith Cove. Arbitration settled the struggle, and the unions won wage increases, control of hiring halls, and union recognition; also, the longshoremen secured a 6-hour day.
In western Washington, another influence appeared at this time.
The A. F. of L. teamsters' union, under David W. Beck, took jurisdiction over brewery employees in 1934, and later gained control over bakery, laundry, milkwagon, and cab drivers, as well as garage employees and department store clerks.
An organizing drive among lumberworkers of the State culminated in strike action by approximately 40,000 in May 1935, closing mills and camps. The Washington Industrial Council was formed to oppose the strike, and the National Guard intervened with drastic measures, particularly in Aberdeen and Tacoma; charges of Communistic activity were reiterated. A settlement was reached, however, which resulted in improved wages and conditions. Subsequently, a Northwest woodworkersfederation was formed with 100,000 members.
When water-front employers refused to renew existing agreements in October, 1936, the Maritime Federation closed coastal ports for nearly four months. The unions declined to settle separately, and, owing to their unity and their campaign for public support, the struggle was referred to as a "streamlined strike." A greater readiness to take political initiative became apparent among the maritime and woodworkers' federations. These policies paved the way locally for the influence of the Committee for Industrial Organization in the maritime, lumber, and mining industries. Membership in the C.I.O. was also swelled by the cannery workers (predominantly Filipino) and the fishermen, most of whom hire out from Seattle for seasonal work in Alaska waters. The State C.I.O. Council was chartered in September 1938, and held its first convention in the same month.
Trade-union organization was resorted to by professional and "whitecollar" workers; unions of teachers, office employees, and newspaper and editorial workers had an unprecedented growth. For the first time in the Nation's journalistic history, a daily newspaper was suspended because of a strike of newsroom workers. In 1936 the Seattle PostIntelligencer closed for three months during a strike, which ended in recognition of the American Newspaper Guild. Later a prolonged strike against the Seattle Star ended favorably for the Guild.
Noteworthy in 1936-7 was the return of the labor movement to the electoral field. The Washington Commonwealth Federation, an association of unions and other groups, including Democratic clubs, farmers, pension advocates, and unemployed, sponsored and helped to elect both State and national representatives. The federation also helped to block
passage of a compulsory arbitration measure and to repeal criminalsyndicalist legislation.
Today, organized labor seems once more on the defensive, as employer groups seek, through legislation and other means, to restrict its scope and power of action. The division between the A. F. of L. and the C.I.O. has been recognized as a source of danger to both bodies and to the future of labor as a whole. These federations temporarily put aside their differences in 1938 in order to defeat in Washington, with the aid of the State Grange and other groups, measures which they regarded as union-crippling.
JOHN BALL, Dartmouth graduate, a member of Wyeth's first expedition, having enjoyed the bountiful table and comfortable quarters of Dr. John McLoughlin in old Fort Vancouver, began teaching the sons of the officers and employees of the Hudson's Bay Company. Speedily they learned that only English might be spoken in school, under penalty of being obliged to wear a metal tag around the neck. Classes in the ordinary subjects of a grade school were followed by hours spent in gardening, by special request of Dr. McLoughlin. This school was opened in the third week of November 1832, and continued for five or six years, although Ball stayed only three months.
Contemporaneous with this Vancouver school was another in eastern Washington. Spokane Garry, an Indian educated in the Red River mission, opened a school for his tribe within the boundaries of the present city of Spokane, about 1833. A long building of poles, covered with tule mats woven by Indian women, housed this interesting adventure in education.
The next school was established in 1837 at Waiilatpu by Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, a former New York teacher. This school had only Indian pupils for the first few years but later was attended by the children of white settlers and several orphans adopted by the Whitmans. The murder of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and 11 other members of the mission in 1847 ended any further attempt to open schools for Indians for several years. Fear of Indian outrage closed the schools opened at Tshimakain in 1839 by the Reverend Cushing Eells and Reverend Elkanah Walker.
Education went hand in hand with religion in pre-Territorial days. Missionaries opened schools in their own homes or in the rough log cabins that served also as church, courtroom, and townhall. Textbooks in bewildering variety confronted the pioneer teacher. Relics of father's and mother's schooldays, transported by covered wagon, had to serve the second generation. Sanders' readers and spellers, Thompson's arithmetic Olyney's geography, Wells' grammar, Youth's botany, and
the Church Psalmist and Choir were most frequently encountered. Ushering in the Territorial period was the governorship of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, and popular education was an important plank in Governor Stevens' platform. His first message to the newly constituted legislature envisioned the day when every Washington boy, however humble his environment, should have his chance to enter college. He set in motion the machinery to procure from Congress a land grant in support of a university.
This first Territorial legislature of 1854 passed a law designed to provide public schools for all children between the ages of 4 and 21. Schools were to be financed by direct tax and by fines imposed for infractions of the penal code. Naturally, a thin and scattered population, poor roads, and the meager funds arising from small county and district levies resulted in crude buildings, mostly of logs, scanty equipment, and short terms. For decades, additional schools were built by private subscription in many counties.
But, even during this period of pioneering, higher education was brought within reach of frontier settlements. A private academy offering all high school branches was opened in Olympia in 1855 by Reverend George Whitworth, Presbyterian minister, afterward president of the Territorial university. Tuition might be paid in wood, hay, fruit, or vegetables. Puget Sound Institute, a Methodist school, opened in the same town the following year. A gray December day in 1856 brought five young nuns from House of Providence, Montreal, to start a day and boarding school in Vancouver. Providence Academy, an outgrowth of this earlier school, opened in 1873. One year earlier, the first Protestant school for girls, St. Paul's, opened in Walla Walla. This town had a select school or private academy in 1863, three others by 1865. For many years, Walla Walla was regarded as the educational center of the Territory.
Contesting the field with these private ventures, the university flung open its doors in Seattle on November 4, 1861, to 1 college student and 30 others below high-school grade. The university, which had existed on paper for 5 years, its proposed location shuffled from one town to another, had a grim struggle for existence for many years. Today it is the State's leading educational institution, with a registration of more than 10,000 (see Seattle).
Another educational landmark of 1861 was the creation of the office of Territorial superintendent to co-ordinate the work in the counties, issue teachers' certificates, hold conventions, and secure suitable text books. The office was abolished the next year and not re-established until 1871. The first report published by this office in 1872 gave the Territory 144 public schools, with 10 or more private ones. Another decade found only 10 graded schools in the Territory. The first teachersconvention was held in 1870, but there was no educational journal until 1884.
The first contract Indian school in the United States was established at Tulalip in 1869, when the Government undertook to pay for the board and tuition of a few Indian pupils in a Catholic school. Washington's admission to statehood in 1889, with the resultant increased Federal land grants, additional revenues, and a rising tide of immigration, had a marked effect on educational development. Within one year, six high schools had opened. A State normal school opened in Cheney in October 1890; at Ellensburg in 1891; and at Bellingham in 1899. (These normal schools are now designated Eastern, Central, and Western Washington colleges of education).
Washington State College, the State's agricultural institution, opened at Pullman in January 1892 (see Tour 4b). This liberally endowed and popular college ranks next in importance to the University of Washington. The third largest institution, College of Puget Sound, opened its doors in 1890 as an academy and advanced to college rank in 1914. It is a Methodist college. Whitman College, Walla Walla, founded as a seminary in 1859 by Reverend Cushing Eells as a memorial to the martyred Whitman, has the distinction of holding the first charter granted by the Territorial legislature to any institution. Its early history held years of incredible hardship and frequent suspension. A new charter was granted in 1883, changing the name to Whitman College. Scholarship is high in Whitman, and the school has an enviable reputation. Gonzaga University, Spokane, opened as a Jesuit school for boys in 1887, became a college in 1894 and in the amended charter of 1922, adopted the title of university. Whitworth College, also in Spokane, a Presbyterian school, opened at Sumner as an academy in 1883; the school reached college rank in 1890 and adopted its present name, honoring the man who founded the first Presbyterian church in the State. Seattle Pacific College, a Free Methodist institution opened in 1893 as a seminary, has enjoyed college status for more than a quarter-century. In the outskirts of Tacoma, at Parkland, is Pacific Lutheran College, which opened as an academy in 1894. Following a merger with another Lutheran college at Everett in 1920, the Parkland institution added liberal arts and normal departments. Walla Walla College, near the
city of Walla Walla, was established by the Seventh Day Advenrists in 1892. This school has sent more than 300 of its graduates to the foreign field as missionary doctors, nurses, and teachers.
In 1895, a year of grave economic depression. Washington passed the "barefoot schoolboy law," sponsored by John Rogers, later twice elected Governor of die State. This law provided for State support for schools, originally amounting to $6 per year for each child on the school census rolls. This law, and the subsequent increases in the amount of support to be given, permitted the development of a State-wide public school system.
Washington now has more than 350,000 pupils in public elementary and high schools, with undetermined thousands in private schools. A national survey (Ayres and Phillips, 1910-30), gave Washington fourth place, based upon literacy, per capita expenditures for education, and attendance. There are 8 junior colleges in the State—in Aberdeen, Centralia, Longview, Mount Vernon, Spokane, Yakima, Wenatchee, and Vancouver. There are also two denominational junior colleges and scores of private academies, nonsectarian and denominational, in various parts of the State, offering instruction in liberal arts, music, and the dance, and in commercial subjects. Edison Vocational School, Seattle, opened in 1930, offer* industrial training from boat building to commercial art.
The Washington State school system faces one very serious problem: the equalization of financial support for the common schools. Due to haphazard formation of districts, the unequal distribution of taxable wealth, and the existence of both very sparsely and very densely populated areas, the State now has approximately 1,500 districts (June 1938); many of these are very large and irregularly shaped, while many are small and poorly financed. Thus it is difficult to provide equal educational opportunity for all the children in the State. A Survey of the Common School Syitem of Washington (1938), made by the Washington State Planning Council, presents a careful study of the situation and makes some valuable recommendations; among these are the reorganization of the State department of education and the organization of a commission for the equalization of educational opportunity, to be appointed by the governor. In 1937 an attempt was made by the legislature to provide for equalization of financial support; this was one of several such attempts to meet the problem. Consolidation of schools and districts has increased, and transportation by bus is provided wherever necessary. Both of these solutions, according to the survey, are costly and, at the same time, not wholly successful.
During 1939, Work Projects Administration education classes had an average enrollment of 34,562 each month. The education program is sponsored by the State superintendent of public instruction, and contributing sponsors include local schools, public libraries, churches, clubs, and civic associations. Courses in general adult education and vocational education cover a wide range of subjects: mathematics, languages, mechanical drawing, creative writing, psychology, drama, first aid, safe driving, Braille for the blind, international affairs, horticulture, typing, bookkeeping, business English, printing, and carpentry. Instruction has been given in band music, orchestra, choral work, voice training, music appreciation, and history of opera. In co-operation with schools, lodges, churches, parent-teacher associations, and the Grange, cantatas, operettas, and orchestra and band concerts have been given. Americanization, naturalization, and literacy education have been outstanding phases of the program. The classes include both aliens seeking citizenship and foreign-born citizens.
There are 13 WPA nursery schools in Washington, all located in public-school buildings. They were developed to help pre-school children from under-privileged homes. During 1940, approximately 500 children were served in the State. The parent and home-making education program includes classes in family relationship, parent problems, child care and guidance, the family and its relation and obligations to the community, home planning and budgeting, sewing and tailoring, food and nutrition, consumer education, and various related subjects. Classes in sewing and homemaking are operating in many Indian reservations, and an especial effort has been made to preserve the arts and crafts of the Indians. In Spokane an outstanding Negro center has been maintained for several years, under the supervision of a graduate of Tuskegee; as a result, the county commissioners reported that there was practically no juvenile delinquency among the Negroes of that city.
Workers' education has been quite successful in the State of Washington, conducting on an average about 200 classes with a registration of 4,400 students. A good example of this activity is found among the employees of the Boeing Airplane Company plant, where classes are sponsored by the Aeronautical Mechanics' Union. This union, which requires all its members to take a short course in trade unionism, maintains a circulating library, and conducts special courses in economics and labor problems for the shop stewards and executive board members. The WPA recreation program embraces a large number of activities, such as sports and athletics, play-center activities, dancing, crafts and
visual arts, recreational music, and recreational drama. Recent reports show a total participation of 235,457 in the entire State for one month. The recreation project is sponsored by the department of physical education of the University of Washington, and various city and county school districts and park departments act as co-sponsors.
CHURCHES helped lay the foundations of the State in Washington. Missionaries shared all the hardships of the frontier with trader and trapper, making trails over mountain ranges, navigating the Columbia, threading their way through a wilderness. In building churches and schools, promoting agriculture and encouraging immigration, they did much to consolidate the earliest American settlements and strengthen the claim of the United States to this outpost, in opposition to Great Britain.
A little group of ministers volunteered for service in the unknown Northwest as a result of publication of the story of four Nez Perce Indians, who made the long journey to St. Louis in 1831 to ask General William Clark, Indian Agent, to supply them with the white men's Book. First to arrive were the Reverend Jason Lee and his nephew, Daniel Lee, representatives of the Methodist Episcopal church, who reached Fort Vancouver in September 1834, and continued on to the Willamette Valley. Dr. Marcus Whitman, the Reverend H. H. Spalding, and W. H. Gray, sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (an agency of the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Dutch Reformed churches), arrived in 1836 and established a mission at Waiilatpu, near the present Walla Walla, and at Lapwai, on the Clearwater. The Reverend Cushing Eells and the Reverend Elkanah Walker, sent by the same agency in 1838, established a mission at Tshimakain, north of Spokane. In 1839 the first printing press landed in the Northwest, a gift from the Sandwich Islands mission to Lapwai, and the first books in the Nez Perce and Spokane languages were printed here.
Roman Catholic priests, Father Francois Norbert Blanchet and Father Modeste Demers, conducted the first Mass in the Northwest in a schoolhouse in Vancouver, November 25, 1838. Blanchet established a mission on Whidbey Island in 1840. In 1844, Father de Smet and Father Ravalli, with laymen and six Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, arrived. Further reinforcements came from France in 1847. In 1866
Father Cataldo founded the Spokane Mission on Peone Prairie, and Father Ravalli opened a church in Spokane in 1881. Seattle heard its first Catholic service in 1853 and became the administrative center for the Western See in 1907. A bishop of Spokane was appointed in 1914 for the Eastern Washington Diocese.
The Methodist church, pioneering since 1834, established itself in Olympia in 1852, at Steilacoom in 1854, Seattle in 1855, and at Walla Walla in 1860. The Presbyterian church, after destruction of its mission at Waiilatpu, organized no other group until a church was incorporated at Chambers Prairie in 1858. Dr. George Whitworth organized the First Presbyterian Church in Olympia in 1860, another in Seattle in 1869. The Seattle group did not have a building of its own for six years, but in recent years it claims the largest Presbyterian congregation in the United States.
The Episcopal church organized at Olympia in 1865 and in Seattle the same year. The first pipe organ in Washington Territory was installed in Trinity Church, Seattle, in 1882. The Congregational and the Baptist churches both established congregations in Seattle in 1869. The Lutheran church, highly organized and vigorous, is represented in Washington by many congregations: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, Icelandic, Finnish, and American. Seattle alone has 29 Lutheran congregations. The Christian denomination and Seventh-Day Adventists are organizations numerically small but very active. The latter is particularly zealous in conducting schools all over the State. Russian Orthodox Church, Seattle, has a history of 45 years behind it. A second congregation was organized in 1937. Buddhist temples, one in Tacoma and two in Seattle, serve the Orientals in western Washington. The first Jewish congregation in Seattle, Ahabath Shalom, was founded in 1889; and its successor, the present Temple de Hirsch congregation, was established in 1899. According to the Religious Census of 1926, there were 11 Jewish congregations in Washington, with a membership of more than 13,000.
According to this same census, the leading denominations in the State, in point of membership, were the Roman Catholic (121,249), the Methodist Episcopal, (48,140), and the Presbyterian U.S.A. (34,425). The Methodist Episcopal led in number of churches. Among the various Lutheran groups, the Norwegian congregations totaled the largest membership. Other relatively large memberships were those of the Protestant Episcopal and Baptist churches. The churches of the Brethren, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, the Congregational church, sev eral smaller bodies of the Methodist and Presbyterian denominations, and numerous other faiths were also represented in Washington. A growing desire for co-operation among the larger Protestant denominations led to the organization of Washington State Council of Churches in 1933. This union throws its strength behind movements directed towards civic betterment and religious education.
THE State Department of Social Security superseded the State Department of Public Welfare by act of the legislature in 1937. From its headquarters in Olympia, the department supervises all public assistance programs, which are administered by the counties. There are four divisions: the division of children, division of the blind, division of old age assistance, and division of general public assistance. The Employment Service and Unemployment Compensation in this State operate under a division, separate from the Department of Social Security, known as the Unemployment and Placement Program.
The division of children of the State department, in co-operation with the United States Children's Bureau and the Federal Social Security Board, administers aid to dependent children in their own homes, services for crippled children, and child welfare services, including foster care. Rehabilitation and training of blind persons, programs of prevention of blindness and restoration of vision, and public assistance to the needy blind are provided by the division of the blind. Old-age assistance in Washington is on a budgetary basis; resources that cannot be included are established by law. The citizenship requirement has been abolished, and persons living in private institutions are eligible under certain conditions. The general public assistance division supervises assistance and services to all needy persons other than those in the preceding categories; these services include home assistance, medical and institutional care, Work Projects Administration certification, Civilian Conservation Corps selection, and Federal Security Administration referrals. Through the WPA Housekeeping Aide Project, in co-operation with local welfare agencies, experienced women are employed to give assistance in housework and child care in needy homes, where the homemaker is temporarily incapacitated. Approximately 400 women employees have made more than 160,000 visits to needy Washington families. Countless instances show that older children, previously forced to miss school, were allowed to return to their studies through this service. These WPA workers also have helped to make livable and
attractive more than 500 motherless, nearly or entirely destitute homes. The project is sponsored mainly by women's clubs of the State.
The WPA Hospital Assistance Project began in 1938 in the Pierce County Hospital, sponsored by the Pierce County Commissioners. Here women were employed to supplement the regular staff by performing unskilled tasks, thus allowing the technically trained personnel to spend more time in specialized services.
One of the outstanding institutions in the State is the King County (Harborview) Hospital in Seattle, which was opened on March 9, 1931. Dr. R. G. Broderick, of California, was engaged by county commissioners in 1927 to survey local public hospital facilities and to make recommendations; following the publication of his report—a detailed and shocking revelation of inadequate facilities and inhumane conditions—a bond issue of $2,750,000 was passed for the construction of a modern hospital and health center. The King County Hospital, embodying Dr. Broderick's recommendations, has been considered so successful in planning and arrangement that a model of Unit Number One, exhibited at the Century of Progress in Chicago, was chosen as part of a permanent display of hospital design under the auspices of the Rosenwald Fund in that city.
The medical service is completely supervised and, in the main, provided by the King County Medical Society through a voluntary nonpay hospital organization. Leading practitioners direct the medical services and supervise intern, resident, post-graduate, and clinical training. Scientific advances in methods of treatment initiated at the King County Hospital include the Harborview Burn Treatment, now used extensively in this country and in Europe. The school of nursing, general internship, and post-intern training in residence are all fully accredited.
The Orthopedic Hospital, also in Seattle, originated in 1907, when a group of women planned a hospital for the treatment of crippled children. At first they arranged for space in Seattle General Hospital, then built the Fresh Air House; finally in 1911 construction was begun on the first unit of the present building. A nonprofit organization, supported largely by endowment, the hospital provides care without cost to patients unable to pay; complete facilities for general as well as orthopedic treatment are offered, and a school staff is maintained for student patients by the Seattle School Board. Approximately 3,500 children from the Northwest, Alaska, and Hawaii are cared for annually in this institution, which has behind it the ceaseless activities of many women,
bequests from banker and lumberjack, and contributions from persons in all ranks of life.
The United States Marine Hospital was established in Seattle in 1932, under the United States Public Health Service. It is supported by Federal funds. Services are available for Government employees injured in the line of duty, as well as for members of the Merchant Marine, Coast Guard, Army, Navy, and Lighthouse branches of service. The church has nurtured many powerful social agencies. The Young Men's Christian Association, organized in 1878, has a membership of several thousands in its 22 centers. In addition to athletic training and recreation, it offers vocational training in both day and night classes in the Washington Technical Institute, Seattle. Similar in purpose is the Young Women's Christian Association, which has established attractive homes for business girls in the larger towns, with arts and crafts classes and recreation facilities. Knights of Columbus, Catholic fraternal order of more than 40 years' standing, has 30 councils throughout the State.
Jewish social service is administered by the guilds belonging to the different synagogues. The leading Hebrew cultural organization, Education Center in Seattle, is directed by the Council of Jewish Women and conducts classes in languages, arts, and crafts.
The Salvation Army, organized in Washington since 1887, operates 23 centers. Men's service institutions are maintained in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane. Seattle has the Evangeline Hotel for young working women and Red Shield Home for transient girls, while the Maternity Home is located in Spokane. Welfare work, especially directed toward rehabilitation, is carried on by Volunteers of America and Goodwill Industries.
Ruth School for Girls, Seattle, is maintained by women of the Protestant denominations, for the benefit of young girls who are wards of the Juvenile Court, but whose delinquencies are not serious enough to warrant commitment to the State School for Girls.
Since 1921 the Community Fund has provided general support for a network of social welfare groups in the large cities. Representative of character-building agencies are the Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls.
In Washington, as elsewhere, social organizations and church groups continue to afford substantial help and encouragement to the economically dependent. As an example, a sewing center organized in 1921 by Mrs. Bertha K. Landes, former Mayor of Seattle, and maintained by
the help of club women, formed the nucleus of sewing depots that were taken over by the State in 1933.
An important beginning has been made in the migratory labor camp program, under the Farm Security Administration. Each year thousands of farm workers descend into the Yakima Valley to help in harvesting the apple crop, and, after the great droughts of 1934 and 1936, many more families came from the stricken States. An investigation of living conditions showed that the transient workers lived in insanitary and inadequate camps, where sickness was prevalent. The Yakima Chamber of Commerce, in 1935 and again in 1937, appealed to the Farm Security Administration (formerly the Resettlement Administration); various studies were made by the State College of Washington and other agencies; and the proposal was finally approved.
According to the report of the Farm Security Administration, as of January 1, 1940, one standard camp, in Yakima County, and a mobile camp, with headquarters in Walla Walla, have been established; 142 tent platforms, 200 shelters, and 48 labor homes are under construction. When camp construction is completed, facilities for 342 families will be available. While these camps offer only the minimum of decent living facilities, they provide far better shelter and sanitary arrangements than the migrant workers have previously endured. Wherever they have been established, a great improvement in comfort and health has been apparent, and the spread of disease has been decidedly checked.
Sports and Recreation
FAVORED by its size and natural setting, Washington offers almost unlimited opportunities to the sports lover and to those who seek recreation. Mountains, forests, lakes, streams, and ocean coastline, vast primitive areas, in some cases unexplored, appeal to the most hardy seeker of wilderness trails and offer opportunity for every form of outdoor activity.
On the other hand, the sports enthusiast who does not care for untamed country, and the possible attendant discomforts, can find modern recreational facilities in attractive settings. While comparatively new as a State, Washington has golf courses, tennis courts, and athletic clubs, particularly in the larger urban centers, that vie with the finest anywhere. The first golf club in the Pacific Coast States is said to be the one organized at Tacoma in 1894. Now there are 65 well-maintained courses in the State: 15 private, and 50 open to the public. Those who prefer a spectator's role may witness the unusual sight of Indians paddling war canoes in intertribal competition (sec Tour 2C), lumberjacks in log-rolling contests, and hard-riding stalwarts "fanning" pitching mounts or roping steers at Old West rodeos. Football, basketball, hockey, soccer, crew, and automobile and motorboat racing are enjoyed in season. Professional boxing and wrestling bouts, frequently of championship caliber, are staged in Seattle and other cities; two of organized baseball's minor leagues—the Pacific Coast and the Western International—offer both day and night games; and there are several city leagues.
Horse racing is perhaps the oldest known sport in the State. Long before the arrival of white pioneers, the Yakima Indians of eastern Washington ran their ponies. In Snowden's History of Washington is a reference to early horse racing: "During treaty negotiations (1855) by Governor Isaac Stevens a holiday was suggested by Young Chief, one of the Cayuses' main men and a day was set aside for horse racing . . . in which the Indians delighted and the utmost good feeling prevailed." The typical Indian track was a straightaway, with a post at
one end, around which the racers turned and headed back for the starting point. As they neared the finish, the mounts were occasionally "helped in" by frenzied backers, who rode alongside and plied whips. The sport continues today on the Yakima Reservation. Blankets, shawls, clothing, saddles, feed, money, and mounts are staked on the results. At the present time, three race tracks operate in the State under the supervision of a three-man commission appointed by the governor, with pari-mutuel betting permitted by law. The larger tracks are Longacres, near Seattle, and Playfair, Spokane; brief meets are held at a smaller track at Wilbur. A total of $7,250,000 passed through the pari-mutuel betting machines at the three racing courses during 1938 and 1939, an average of $48,000 for each racing day of the season. The old-age pension fund was enriched to the extent of $360,000 by the 5 per cent allocated for that purpose from the revenue taken in the mutuel gross receipts.
Washington's mountain ranges and high peaks have lured venturesome climbers and explorers since early Territorial days. The first organized group of mountaineers were the Mazamas, of Portland, formed in 1894. Under the sponsorship of the Mazamas, the Mountaineers came into being in 1906. During the initial decade of organization, the Mountaineers climbed the State's principal peaks and constructed two rustic lodges; in 1921, after repeated efforts had failed, they obtained legislation for State parks.
Washington now has a total of 56 State parks, and 26 recreational areas in national forests are supervised by the United States Forest Service. There are more than 700 Forest Service camps, with accommodations for a total of 20,000 persons. The Cascade Crest Trail, beginning at the Canadian Border and extending to the Columbia River without leaving the confines of a national forest, has been well marked by the Forest Service; it follows the hump of the Cascades the entire length of the State. Information on sports and recreation centers is furnished by sportinggoods stores, chambers of commerce, and outdoor associations (see General Information). For the visitor to recreation areas, Washington has one admonition: "Remember the fire hazard." Regulations concerning entry to national parks and forests should be observed carefully and fire permits obtained where necessary. In winter and spring, when the snow is deepest, Washington's mountains are thronged with skiing devotees. It is estimated 60,000 persons spend $3,000,000 annually on this sport. Prior to 1930, skiing was practiced only by a few Scandinavians, private schools, and Moun taineers. Today there are more than 100 miles of well-developed skiing trails, numerous ski jumps, ski lodges, and modernized equipment; and international competitions have been held in the State. While jumping tournaments have been held at intervals since 1914, slalom and downhill races were not introduced until 1930. Yet the sport became so popular that the national ski championships in slalom and downhill racing were decided in Washington in 1934, and the United States team trials for the Olympic Games were held at Paradise, Mount Rainier, in 1935.
To keep pace with the increasing interest in the sport, the National Park and Forest Services have defined a number of skiing areas. Mount Rainier offers 10 courses at Paradise, the shortest 1 mile, and the longest approximately 4 miles, in length. Chinook Pass, just east of Mount Rainier, has 6 courses; Snoqualmie Pass, 9; Mount Baker, 10; Stevens Pass and Leavenworth, 5, and Deer Park (Olympic Peninsula), 2. In addition, there are areas in the Umatilla and Wenatchee national forests, at Blewett Pass, at Mount Spokane, and at Walla Walla. The 16 or more ski clubs in the State are members of the Pacific Northwestern Ski Association, which also covers Oregon and Idaho and is affiliated with the National Ski Association.
Countless lakes, streams, and extensive reaches of salt water have made Washington a mecca for fishermen; rugged heights, sagebrush plains, broad wildernesses, and Iogged-off territory attract the hunters of big and small game. Before 1932, however, the control and regulation of game by counties resulted in laws so inconsistent and confusing that depletion of game through lack of conservation measures was imminent. In that year the legislature gave the State control of the laws, their regulation and enforcement, and of the propagation of game, under the supervision of a 9-man commission. Uniform game laws and enforcement have given protection to wild life without necessarily curbing the sportsman. Virtually every city and town has its sportsmen's group, affiliated with a State or national organization, which aids the State game commission in determining the opening and closing of seasons so as to give the maximum of protection to game. (Fishing and hunting seasons vary from year to year; for license fees see General Information.)
Whether a stream wader, a lake fisher, or a salt-water enthusiast, the angler will find sport to suit his taste in Washington. Cutthroat and rainbow trout flash in the rivers; lake trout include Eastern brook, Dolly Varden, and Mackinaw, and the Beardslee trout of Lake Cres cent (see Tour 3A), said not to be found elsewhere. Other fish rising to bait in fresh water are bass, perch, chub, catfish, and crappie. Sturgeon are caught in the larger rivers—the Columbia, Snake, and Clark Fork. State hatcheries annually stock streams and lakes.
Salmon fishing, one of the leading outdoor sports, is followed by both the expert and the novice. Spinning and trolling are popular methods in catching the silver, the king, and other varieties. A light rod with drag reel is used in spinning, with a medium-test line and leads, depending upon the tide. Trolling is practiced in a powered or oared boat, with a heavy-test line from 600 to 900 feet in length.
Annual salmon derbies are held in a number of Puget Sound cities. Women as well as men enter these events, which begin in the spring and continue through the summer months. Qualifying preliminaries require contestants to catch a salmon of a certain weight; but, on Derby Day, finalists must fish at a specific time, accompanied by an observer. The size of individual catches determines the prize winner. The hunter seeking big game will find bear, cougar, and deer in the mountainous country. In deer season, which seldom lasts more than 15 days, the bag is limited to one buck; the law also forbids slaying a doe and the use of dogs. The mule deer, averaging 140 pounds dressed, is found on nearly all the islands of Puget Sound; the larger whitetail, dressing from 250 to 300 pounds, roams the Cascades. Herds of Roosevelt elk (wapiti) range the Olympic National Park, one of the three abodes in the country for this species. Complaints by farmers of elks' raids on crops, coupled with alleged deterioration of the species from overcrowding, have moved the State game commission to permit a short open season. The Olympic area is the haunt also of predatory animals, including the savage mountain lion (cougar).
The uplands of eastern Washington afford grouse, pheasant, and quail, while the best duck hunting is found in the marshes, sloughs, and lowlands west of the Cascades.
Puget Sound is ideal for boating, whether in the "flattie," the sailboat, or the expensive cruiser. Yacht clubs hold cruises and competitions throughout the year, featuring annual races from Seattle or Tacoma to British Columbia ports. Since 1926 outboard racing has built up a large following, more than 100 racers being listed with the Northwest Outboard Association. Regattas are held virtually every week-end from June until Labor Day.
Washington's rivers, lakes, and salt-water beaches provide every type of swimming. Indoor pools are also common; a number have been
constructed recently in the arid regions of eastern Washington, with the aid of the Works Progress Administration. Beaches and lakes of the bigger cities are serviced by lifeguards, and park boards hold free instruction classes for youngsters during the summer. The intense interest in swimming has produced an impressive array of aquatic stars, among them two former world's champions, Helene Madison and Jack Medica. Ray E. Daughters, of Seattle, is considered one of the Nation's outstanding swimming coaches.
The triumphs of the University of Washington's crew have been noteworthy. Coached by Alvin Ulbrickson, Washington oarsmen swept the Intercollegiate Regatta at Poughkeepsie in 1936 and 1937, with victories in the varsity, junior varsity, and freshman events. The University crew won at the Olympic Games in 1936. Hiram Conibear, first crew coach at the University, is credited with revolutionizing rowing technique among college crews throughout the country. Oddly enough, Conibear never had coached the sport prior to his arrival at Seattle in 1907, but had been a trainer for the Chicago White Sox Baseball Club. Nevertheless, within a decade, he developed the Conibear System, which has been almost universally adopted by other colleges. Eight of thirteen head rowing coaches in the United States are graduates of the University of Washington and disciples of Conibear. Racing shells made by George Pocock of the University of Washington are used by a majority of colleges.
Three colleges in the State have achieved national prominence in football. The University of Washington at Seattle and the State College of Washington at Pullman are members of the strong Pacific Coast Conference, and each has thrice sent an eleven to the Rose Bowl. Gonzaga University, of Spokane, is recognized as having one of the best independent college teams. The State's three large stadiums are: University of Washington Stadium (40,000); Rogers Field Stadium at Pullman (25,000), and Tacoma Stadium (23,000).
Amateur tennis is one of the oldest competitive sports in Washington, the first Pacific Northwest and Washington State title tournaments having been staged in Tacoma and Seattle, respectively, in 1891. These tournaments remain the major annual net events in Washington, with local entry lists supplemented by players from Oregon, California, British Columbia, and elsewhere.
Famous Washington sports figures include Gil Dobie, James Phelan, "Babe" Hollingbery, Mel Hein, "Turk" Edwards, Bill Smith, George Wilson, Bill Nesbit, Vic Markov, Ed Goddard, Charles Carroll, Max
Krause, and Ed Flaherty, in football; Helene Madison, Jack Medica, and Ray Daughters, in swimming; "Hec" Edmundson, Herman Brix, Ed Genung, Paul Jessup, and Steve Anderson in track events; and Al Unbrickson, Ky Ebright, Ed Leader, Tom Bolles, Russell Callow, George Pocock, in crew.
In hockey, Frank Foyston, Bernie Morris, and Bobby Rowe are well known, while the field of baseball has produced Vean Gregg, Spencer Harris, Fred Hutchinson, Geoffrey Heath, and Earl Averill. Harry Givan, Bud Ward, Jim Barnes, Mortie and Olin Dutra, "Scotty" Campbell, and Jack Westerland have added luster to the roll of golfers, and Wallace Scott and "Hank" Prusoff to that of the tennis court. In equally popular though less-publicized events, Will Thompson, Dr. J. W. Doughty, Ralph Miller, and I. M. Stamps appear for archery, and Hamilton Law, Richard Yeager, T. N. Royce, Mrs. Del Barkhuff, and Zoe Smith for badminton.
JOURNALISM'S first effort in the territory now embraced by the State of Washington was the Columbian, pulled from the forms of a 70-year-old Ramage press at Olympia on September n, 1852, and "published every Saturday at $5 a year." The Philadelphia wooden press had made journalistic history in Mexico City, Monterey, San Francisco, and Portland; and the first publication in Washington was also to have a useful career, campaigning for the formation of a new territory north of the Columbia River and later helping to establish Olympia as the Territorial capital.
During the early decades, the Territorial press was acutely sensitive to local opinion, and, whatever issues of national moment might be ignored, bitter clashes were common on a sectional scale. Since publishers risked but meager investments, their columns showed no subservience to interests other than those of subscribers; and the tendentious pioneer press, however absurd its heat and fury, readily responded to current enthusiasms of the frontier populace.
Wherever a boom began, a newspaper sprang to life—there was always the off-chance that the publisher might achieve wealth, and his paper influence, if the settlement flourished. Two papers appeared at Steilacoom: the Puget Sound Courier in 1855, a Whig organ, and the Puget Sound Herald in 1858, notable because it urged investors to buy land—at the site of Tacoma, miles away! Publications were also launched at Port Townsend in the late fifties, and at Whatcom when the Fraser River gold rush gained headway. After a gold rush into the eastern territory, copies of Washington weeklies, bearing firsthand accounts of the gold fields, sold for $5 a copy in California and what is now Montana. Settlers crowded into south central Washington, and, at the focal point, Walla Walla, the Washington Statesman was founded in 1861.
An ingenious innovation was conceived in 1861 by Alonzo A. Poe, Olympia correspondent for the Press of Victoria, British Columbia. While waiting for the weekly mail boat at Olympia, Poe printed local
news to be inserted as a supplement in the Canadian journal. The supplement quickly won a large Canadian subscription list, and soon afterward Poe printed a briefly successful local edition called the Overland Press. Later the paper was renamed the Pacific Tribune and, during the legislative sessions of 1867, was issued daily. It is often called the earliest Territorial journal to show such enterprise, but the Puget Sound Daily, at Seattle, a year earlier, had lasted for 81 days.
The Gazette, first paper north of the Columbia to introduce a wire service (1864), was printed at Seattle by J. R. Watson, who had quarters in the Gem Saloon building. When the local telegrapher received a dispatch, Watson would take up a collection at the bar to pay the toll, hastening then to issue a handbill with the latest news, which also appeared in the next regular edition. In 1867 the Gazette was transformed into the Weekly Intelligencer.
Other publications arose during the sixties at Vancouver, Kalama, Fairhaven, and Walla Walla, where the Statesman (1861) was soon rivaled by the Walla Walla Union. Olympia, the nexus of Territorial politics, was the scene of a disordered succession of short-lived weeklies, including the Temperance Echo of 1868, which eventually absorbed the Columbian. Of such brevity were the lives of most papers that, in the entire Territory, only 12 were active in 1872.
The pioneer press had served to further political partisanship and to attract new settlers to the region; and, through surprisingly unanimous espousal of the Union cause, it had helped to prevent any rift on the frontier during the Civil War and Reconstruction. But the heyday of the editor-ovvner-printer soon ended, as publishing, increasing in complexity and scope, required more specialized talents and greater resources than the lone printer could muster.
In the seventies, successful daily newspapers made their appearance, mainly representing the expansion of influential weeklies. The Pacific Tribune moved from Olympia to Tacoma in 1873, became a daily the following year, crusading against vice and crime, and was taken to Seattle in 1876. That same year the Weekly Intelligencer in Seattle also began daily publication and, in 1878, merged with the Seattle Post, which had been founded in 1876. The Tacoma Weekly Ledger began publication April 21, 1880, and became a daily in 1883. One of the partner-publishers of the Ledger sold his interests in 1882 and purchased Pierce County News, which as the Tacoma News became a daily in 1883.
The Puget Sound press and that of eastern Washington became
clamorous at the approach of the Northern Pacific Railroad; publishers wooed the railroad's favor and issued promotion appeals to attract settlers; journals poured from a score of presses, in many instances subsidized by railroad, land, and timber interests. The Times, founded at Spokane Falls in 1879, was soon taken over by the Chronicle; other Spokane publications subsequently merged into the SpokesmanReview, which continues to be the leading Inland Empire newspaper. On the coast, the Tacoma Ledger attracted settlers from other States by its widely circulated special editions. In 1884 a new daily in Seattle, the Call, unwisely supported a current anti-Chinese campaign. In opposition, business men subscribed a fund to start the Times, which presently absorbed the Call and several other papers and, as the PressTimes, acquired both Associated Press and United Press franchises and developed into a powerful conservative organ. In July 1896, Colonel Alden J. Blethen came to Seattle, purchased the Press-Times, and on August 7, 1896, brought out the first issue of the present Seattle Times. These were years of efflorescence in the newspaper field; there were 109 publications in the State in 1890, but the casualty list was long, too. Changes already in process became marked. The day of modest independent ventures overlapped a period marked by the absorption of many papers, and the bankrupting of others, by publishers with timber, land, or railroad interests at stake. In the years of consolidation that followed, the influence of the smaller publisher was definitely eliminated. Newspaper plants were developing into great enterprises; heavy expenditures were involved.
Some of the larger contemporary papers, strengthened by consolidation during this period, have continued to expand their circulation and to modernize their equipment and methods. The Tacoma News and the Tacoma Tribune, which began publication in 1908, united in 1918 as the News-Tribune of today. The Tacoma Times was founded in 1903. In Seattle, the Post-Intelligencer, descended from the city's first newspaper, the Gazette, founded in 1863, was sold to W. R. Hearst in 1922. It has a continuous-publication record, marred only by a lapse of 97 days during the American Newspaper Guild strike in 1936. Even during the fire of 1889, the Post-Intelligencer continued to print as usual. The Olympian, founded at Olympia in 1877, was continued under different names and different owners—subject to the stress of political change—and is still the important journal at the State's capital. Aberdeen-Hoquiam, Bellingham, Everett, Yakima, Walla Walla, Wenatchee, Vancouver, and numerous other Washington cities
have good daily newspapers, many of them descended from the days of individual and pugnacious journalism.
Of the small independent publications, mostly weeklies, whose influence proved disproportionate to their size, the earliest, the vitriolic Rebel Battery, appeared in 1878, attacking a Kitsap County lumber company. The Model Commonwealth was subsidized by a Socialist colony at Port Angeles, 1887-8, and the next year The Workingman, a weekly supported by the Knights of Labor, appeared in Seattle. The Union Record, beginning as a labor weekly after 1900, became a daily during the World War and attained a large circulation before its insolvency in 1926. Nine labor weeklies continue publication in the State. The unemployed movement of the early thirties developed several Seattle weeklies, of which the Vanguard and the Voice of Action were most widely distributed. The latter, before its suspension in 1936, was influential as a left-wing labor journal.
Since the eighties, Washington has had a varied and culturally influential foreign press. Groups in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellingham, Everett, and South Bend, in particular, have been served by newspapers in their own languages, and most numerous among these are the German and Scandinavian journals. In 1938 Seattle had Italian, Japanese, Negro, Jewish, Swedish, German, and Norwegian-Danish papers; in Spokane only the Svenska Pressen, Swedish and English, survives, and in Tacoma, the Western Viking, Norwegian and English. In South Bend, the Willapa Harbor Pilot, founded in 1890, publishes editions in German, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and English.
The most significant change in the character of the press generally has been brought about by chain publishing associations, concurrent with the increasing dependence on syndicated material. With the extension of chain ownership and the widespread use of syndicated features, the pattern of the average newspaper's make-up has tended to become standardized, and its principles generally conservative.
Since the World War the State's daily-newspaper map has been undisturbed except by the suspension of a few prominent papers, such as the 57-year-old Tacoma Ledger in 1937, of which a Sunday edition is still published. New enterprise has been confined to trade journals and community weeklies—"throwaways" distributed free in urban neighborhoods or small towns. In 1937 Washington had 8 daily and Sunday journals, 23 six-day papers, 7 semiweeklies, and approximately 200 weekly publications.
RADIO
At the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, held at Seattle in 1909, a vocalist sang into a mysterious device, and the melody came sputtering through earphones some distance away. After this first crude appearance in Washington, the radio retired to its proper sphere as wireless telegraphy, used solely to safeguard shipping. It did not remain long in seclusion, however, for Lee De Forest and William Dubilier, in Seattle, were experimenting independently of each other. Largely through their work, Washington was able to witness the swift evolution of radio from an early stage. In 1912 Dubilier set up a broadcasting transmitter in Seattle, and visitors to Seattle's summer Potlatch were invited to a curbside booth to listen through earphones to broadcast phonograph music. The Continental Wireless Telegraph Company began to broadcast recordings from a 320-foot wooden tower near the city. The enthusiasm of amateurs was contagious. Rooftops began to sprout antennae, and enthusiastic experimenters filled the air with code signals and weird static shrieks.
In 1919, Vincent I. Kraft, radio instructor at the Seattle YMCA schools, built the first local vacuum-tube station. A station at Everett began experimental broadcasts in November 1920. In 1921 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went on the air from a five-watt station. This and the Kraft station began scheduled broadcasting, on July 2, 1921, with a ringside account of the Dempsey-Carpentier bout.
The public response resulted in immediate expansion, and also in new difficulties. Broadcasters roaming freely over several frequencies caused such confusion that in 1922 the Federal Government established regulations requiring broadcasters to obtain licenses. By that time there were six regular stations in the field, all operating on 360 meters. Among these pioneer stations was KTW, owned by the First Presbyterian Church of Seattle, one of the earliest to broadcast religious services. Allotment of broadcast time was settled by daily argument before the United States Radio Commissioner. Radio broadcasting was still a nonprofit enterprise; advertising was prohibited, and stations were established by various firms chiefly as good-will offerings, in the hope that the publicity might return something on the investment. In Spokane, a boys' club, under the guidance of a science teacher, set up that city's first station, KFIO, in 1922. By 1924 the number of small stations made broadcasting conditions intolerable, and the Federal Government allotted definite channels for commercial stations,
licensing KJR and KFAO in Seattle, KEPY and KHQ in Spokane, and KMO in Tacoma. Radio broadcasting became a business. The arrival of the transcontinental networks, NBC in 1928, CBS in 1929, and MBS in 1937, gave radio a new significance, heralding the time when it would draw the Nation and the world into community. Education programs were begun in 1921 by Father Sebastian Ruth of St. Martin's College, near Olympia. Leading educational programs at present are sponsored by the University of Washington, Seattle, with lectures on science, home economics, current events, and general topics; and by the State College of Washington, Pullman, which serves eastern Washington with advice on new agricultural methods, farm management, and home economics.
Among nationally known radio artists from Washington are Bing Crosby, Lanny Ross, Mary Livingston, Helen Jepson, and Hugh B. Dobbs ("Captain Dobsie"). "Major" Edward Bowes, famous as a discoverer of amateur talent, was long a resident of Tacoma.
THE region of Washington, until 1853 merely an undefined part of the vast Oregon Territory, was first presented to the rest of the country by workaday writings not intended as literature but simply as factual depictions of the unknown Northwest. Yet these early shipslogs and explorers' journals are of literary value today, both as authentic first impressions of an untouched wilderness and as source material for modern story tellers.
First to describe the Puget Sound country was the English explorer, Captain George Vancouver, who twice visited it in the early 1790's and recorded his findings in A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World, published just after his death in 1798. From 1799-1814, Alexander Henry, a fur trader for the North West Company, kept a journal, which together with much material from the journals and notebooks of David Thompson, surveyor, was printed in 1897 under the editorship of Elliott Coues as New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest. Lewis and Clark's famous expedition was recorded in the journal of Patrick Gass (1807) and in their own journals (1814). Extensive scientific material on the coastal and Puget Sound region was made available in the five-volume report of Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the United States Navy, commander of an exploring expedition that visited the Pacific Northwest in 1841. An absorbing account of life in the Oregon country during the late 1830's and early 1840's was given by the Belgian missionary, Father Pierre Jean De Smet, in his Letters and Sketches and Oregon Missions and Travels.
The Astor expedition to the mouth of the Columbia was chronicled by the Scotch trader, Alexander Ross, and the French-Canadian clerk, Gabriel Franchere, and the Irish clerk, Ross Cox; and upon accounts of Astor's fur-trading venture was based the first literary work dealing with the Northwest, Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains, by Washington Irving. The publication in 1836 of this romantic portrayal greatly stimulated the interest of the East in
the western territory. A literary man who was actually among the early western travelers was Theodore Winthrop, a well-born New Englander who, after his graduation from Yale, journeyed across the Cascade Mountains in 1853. His The Canoe and the Saddle preserves delightfully the fresh reaction of a young mind to a young country. The book, originally entitled Klalam and Klickitat: Nature and Natives of the Northwest, was not published until 1862, soon after Winthrop's death on a Civil War battlefield.
The era of settlement produced a local historical literature, whose aim was to record names and dates and happenings before they faded from memory. Author of the first book to be published by a resident of Washington Territory was James G. Swan, a Massachusetts lawyer, who came West to represent Boston shipping interests, took a donation land claim in 1852 at Shoalwater Bay, and later moved to Port Townsend. His The Northwest Coast, or Three Years Residence in Washington Territory was published by Harper's in 1857, and the following year saw the publication by a Philadelphia firm of his Indians of Cape Flattery. Swan's friendly relations with the Indians led to his appointment as director of the Alakah Indian School at Neah Bay and as Northwest representative of the Smithsonian Institution; his unpublished diaries are now in the University of Washington library. Other early recorders were the Reverend Myron Eells, whose History of Indian Missions on the Pacific Coast and The Hand of God in the History of the Pacific Coast appeared in 1882 and 1888; Caroline Leighton, whose Life at Puget Sound was issued in 1884; and Arthur A. Denny, who wrote of the founding of Seattle in Pioneer Days on Puget Sound (1888). In 1889 appeared the first formal History of the Pacific Northwest, by Elwood Evans of Tacoma, who later collaborated with Edmond Meany in another history of the young State.
The Indians have provided a recurrent theme in Washington writing, from incidental mention in explorers' chronicles to specialized studies by later authors. Joseph A. Costello's The Siwash, Their Life, Legends and Tales was published in 1895. Edward S. Curtis' monumental work, containing firsthand ethnological and cultural data on Indian peoples of the United States and Alaska, was brought out in 20 volumes of text and 20 of photographs by the Harvard University Press, from 1907 to 1930. Katharine Berry Judson's Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest (1910) was the forerunner of a long series popularizing Indian myths. In 1923, Chief William Shelton of the Tulalip reservation undertook to write a booklet of Indian legends himself.
Interest of writers in local Indian material lapsed, however, until the late 1920's and the 1930's, when the subject was approached scientifically in monographs by Doctors Erna Gunther, Melville Jacobs, and Verne Ray, of the University of Washington, and the independent student Arthur Ballard of Auburn, who contributes to the University'! anthropology series.
After the coming of the railroads had broken down Washington's isolation and multiplied its population, a new perspective towards its past became possible. As early as 1903 appeared Colonel William Prosser's two-volume History of the Puget Sound Country. In 1909 Edmond Meany and Clinton Snowden set down their account of the colorful process by which fur-traders, homesteaders, military expeditions, shippers, and lumbermen introduced modern civilization among the timeless evergreens; and histories were written in 1916 by Clarence Bagley and in 1917 by Herbert Hunt and Floyd Kaylor. The literature of reminiscence continued to expand during the first two decades of the twentieth century with Albert Atwood's Glimpses of Pioneer Life on Puget Sound (1915) and The Busy Life of Eighty-five Years (1917). Ezra Meeker also ventured into fiction with Kate Mulhall: A Romance of the Oregon Trail (1926). Special historical subjects were taken up in The American Fur Trade of the Far West (1902) by General Hiram Chittenden, who later edited the life, letters, and travels of Father De Smet, and The Columbia River (1917) by William D. Lyman of Walla Walla. Two early novels based on fact were General Claxton (1917) by Cornelius Hanford, who afterward wrote on Seattle and Port Townsend, and Looking Forward; or, the Story of an American Farm (1898) by the Populist governor, John R. Rogers, who also published two economic treatises dealing with land and money.
Works with a literary, rather than a purely descriptive, intent began to appear at a time when their authors were, literally and sometimes indignantly, voices in the wilderness. The historian Edmond Meany, who in his later years became the embodiment of the State's history and tradition, spoke for these writers in 1889, the year that Washington became a State. Writing in the new Washington Magazine, he plunged thus into his topic—"Has Puget Sound a Literature?"
"No, Puget Sound has no literature but this region has plenty of real estate, timber, coal, iron and fish, and at present the inhabitants are scrambling over each other in their efforts to become rich out of the natural wealths of the land. There is no time to devote to the
production or the appreciation of a distinctive literature. . . . They buy and sell too eagerly. Literature will be fostered by and by." Though Professor Meany died in 1935 without having seen literature exactly fostered in Washington, he did live to see a great deal of it produced in many genres. The State was five years old when Ella Higginson published the earliest of the many volumes of fiction and verse that were to gain her a national reputation. Much of her verse (including the familiar "Four-Leaf Clover") has been set to music and sung by noted singers. Mrs. Higginson also wrote a travel narrative about Alaska, but she expressed the Northwest best in her novel, Marietta of Out West (1904.)—recently re-issued as a girlsstory—a shrewd sketch of personalities and foibles in a new community. Mrs. Higginson, who died in December, 1940, had been chosen State poet laureate by the State Federation of Women's Clubs in 1931.
Mrs. Higginson's early work received the backing of the regional magazine, The Literary West, published in San Francisco from 1902 to 1904 under the editorial direction of a Washington writer, Herbert Bashford, author of Songs from Puget Sea and other verse and fiction. Between 1908 and 1915 Ada Woodruff Anderson wrote her Columbia River and Puget Sound stories—Heart of the Red Firs, The Strain of White (about a half-breed Yakima), and Rim of the Desert. About this time, too, Owen Wister lived in the Okanogan country and wrote The Virginian. Between 1899 and 1915 Mary Crawford Fraser penned a succession of travel narratives typified by a two-volume work published in 1910, A Diplomat's Wife in Many Lands.
The World War and the years immediately following represented a lapse in literary activity. A new mood was discernible in the first notable post-war novel, The Bitter Country, written in 1925 by Anita Pettibone of South Bend: it drew upon the somber atmosphere of Swedish and Finnish fishing communities on the Naselle and Chehalis Rivers in southwest Washington, and its "dripping gloom" reminded one critic of Martha Ostenso's themes. This harbor country was also the scene of three later novels which deal with the social problems of the timber area: Robert Cantwell's Land of Plenty (1934), Clara Weatherwax's Marching! Marching! (1935); and the strike novel Disillusion (1939) by a young writer, Ben Cochrane.
Belonging to another strain in American writing was Melvin Levy's Matrix, supposed to be based upon actual figures on the university campus, published in 1925; this and The Wedding (1927) sounded a note of sophistication, repeated around 1930 by Bertrand Collins in
his novels, Rome Express and The Silver Swan. Levy and Collins afterwards turned to pioneer themes: Collins in Moon in the West and Levy in The Last Pioneers and in his play, Gold Eagle Guy. A resurgence of folklore also occurred in the middle twenties. Accounts of the feats of Paul Bunyan were collected almost simultaneously by James Stevens and Esther Shephard. Mrs. Shephard, whose Walt Whitman's Pose (1938) later presented an interesting critical thesis, repeated the exploits of the mighty logger as she had heard them told; Stevens dealt more freely with the legends, and later traced their sources eastward in The Saginaw Paul Bunyan. Stevens' other books, including the semiautobiographical Brawnyman (1926), are robust portrayals of the lives of footloose teamsters, loggers, and field-hands in the fluid society of yesterday.
Despite the beginnings made, there was still dissatisfaction with the progress of Washington literature. In 1927 Stevens and H. L. Davis (afterwards author of the Oregon pioneer novel, Honey in the Horn,) vented their exasperation in a pamphlet bluntly titled Status Rerum: A Manifesto, Upon the Present Condition of Northwestern Literature . . . Privately Printed for the Craft. Sternly they began: "The present condition of literature in the Northwest has been mentioned apologetically too long. Something is wrong with Northwestern literature. . . . It is time people were seeking the cause of this. Is there something about the climate, or the soil, which inspires people to write tripe? Is there some occult influence, which catches them young, and shapes them to be instruments out of which tripe, and nothing but tripe, may issue?" There was, of course, no reply, except the reply of time. In 1934 appeared Archie Binns' Lightship, a story of coast guardsmen on duty south of Cape Flattery. The Laurels Are Cut Down, an appealing story of a childhood on Puget Sound and a disillusioning experience with the American interventionist forces in Siberia, followed three years later; and in 1939 his The Land Is Bright, which utilized a diary kept by an Oregon Trail emigrant. Mighty Mountain, published in 1940, aroused considerable controversy with respect to its presentation of Stevens, first territorial governor. In 1937 the pioneering theme was developed also by the former Seattle newspaperman, Michael Foster, who after a sketchy first novel, Forgive Adam (1935), produced the Literary Guild selection American Dream (1937). Rooted in Washington soil is the work of Nard Jones, who wrote of eastern Washington in Wheat Women (1933) and All Six Were Lovers (1934), of young Seattle in The Petlands (1931), and of the Columbia
Basin in Oregon Detour (1930) and Swift Flows the River (1940), a story of steamboat days. Among these writers of genre stories is the State's newest novelist, Elizabeth Marion, whose The Day Will Come (1939) 's a family chronicle laid in her native Palouse country. Sophus Keith Winther, of the University of Washington, sets his scenes among Danish immigrants in the Middle West in his trilogy, Take All to Nebraska (1936), Mortgage Your Heart (1937), and This Passion Never Dies (1938).
Of the impressive number of publications by faculty members at the University and the State College, the majority are scientific rather than literary. Yet two University professors, Vernon Louis Parrington and his friend and preceptor, J. Allen Smith, have produced works so influential as to establish a new trend in American critical thought. Smith's pioneer work The Spirit of American Government, published in 1907, was a realistic political appraisal of the origins of the American Constitution; it offered the general conclusions which Charles A. Beard later documented and reinforced in his Economic Interpretation of the Constitution.
As Smith interpreted the Constitution in terms of economic realities, so Parrington applied to American literature the epoch-making method of social and economic analysis. The result of 20 years of labor quietly conducted at the University, Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought delivered a mortal blow to the "genteel tradition" in American literary criticism, and brought forward in a coherent pattern the chief lines of America's cultural development. Upon their publication in 1927, the first two volumes of Parrington's monumental work created an immediate effect and won the Pulitzer prize in history. Parrington died suddenly in England before completing the final volume of his study, but the materials for it were arranged for publication by his former student and associate, Harold Eby.
Other University faculty members who have written books of general interest include Edward Wagenknecht, biographer of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Geraldine Farrar, and Jenny Lind; and Ottis B. Sperlin, portrayer of Indian life in the novel, Heart of the Siyloo (1934). Vernon McKenzie, director of the school of journalism, has utilized his annual trips abroad to compose such commentaries as Through Turbulent Years (1938) and Here Lies Goebbels (1940), a study of Nazi propaganda. Melvin Rader, of the philosophy department, published in 1939 a searching analysis of the philosophic sources of fascism entitled, after a phrase of Mussolini, No Compromise. Glenn Hughes,
of the drama division, is the author of Imagism and the Imagists (1931), several plays, and The Story of the Theatre (see The Theater). Contributions by the University faculty to history and literary scholarship include: Frederick Morgan Padelford's studies in Spenser, Allen Rogers Benham's English Literature from JVidsith to the Death of Chaucer, Herbert Gowen's histories of China, Japan, and Asia, Edmond Meany's standard History of the State of Washington, and Russell Blankenship's American Literature.
Professor Hughes was also the originator of the pamphlet series, University of Washington Chapbooks, which for several years around 1930 presented advanced ideas on a variety of cultural topics. Brochures were contributed by American and European authors; and significant attitudes held abroad were discussed, including the social philosophy of Julien Benda, "Bovaryism," and the aristocratic estheticism of T. E. Hulme. Of special interest is the chapbook on Parrington by Joseph B. Harrison, of the English department, who from 1920 to 1922 headed the editorial board of the Pacific Review, a critical quarterly. In the later 193o's, a group of University students issued an experimental magazine, Perspectives, later replaced by Tempo.
Two fields in which Washington has been rather richly endowed are juvenile and mystery fiction. Writers for children have included Ezra Meeker with his Uncle Ezra's Pioneer Short Stories for Children, to Point a Moral or Teach a Lesson; Lurline Mayol, author of The Big Canoe (1933); Nora Burglon, whose latest work is The Cuckoo Calls (1940); Elizabeth Williams Champney, who wrote more than 40 juveniles and travel books between 1878 and 1917; Walter W. Phillips, whose Indian stories published from 1896 to 1902 were issued under the pseudonym of El Comancho\ Howard Brier, whose Skycruiser (1939) was selected by the Junior Literary Guild; and many others. Among plotters of mysteries who write under their own names are Babette Hughes and Harlan Reed, of Seattle, and Leta Adams, of Spokane. Two former Washingtonians employ pseudonyms: the mathematician Eric Temple Bell became "John Taine" when his pen dripped blood rather than algebraic symbols; and Zenith Jones Brown turns out American mysteries as "Leslie Ford" and English mysteries as "David Frome."
Despite its romantic history and inspiring countryside, Washington has produced little of importance in poetry. Audrey Wurdemami's Bright Ambush won the Pulitzer prize in 1936, but her work, as critics have pointed out, bears little relation to the surroundings in which she
grew up. A few nationally known poets spent brief periods in Washington: Vachel Lindsay lived in Spokane during the late 1920's; Genevieve Taggard spent her childhood years in Waitsburg; Mary Carolyn Davies was born in Sprague. In light verse, no one here has outdone the rhymes of Stoddard King of the Spokane Spokesman-Review, whose regionalism expresses itself thus:
In Western towns 'tis many years since it was last the rage For men to earn their daily bread by holding up the stage, Yet story writers still ascribe such wild and woolly bosh To Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and Walla Walla, Wash. Among the best known of recent Washington writers are journalists who have done much of their work outside the State. Most prolific of these is Anna Louise Strong, once feature editor on the Seattle Union Record, who has spent years in the Soviet Union as an editor of the Moscow Daily News. Among her books are China's Millions (1928), Red Star in Samarkand (1929), / Change Worlds (1935), This Soviet World (1936), and My Native Land (1940). Oriental topics have also interested Josef Washington Hall, formerly of the University of Washington, who under the pen name of Upton Close wrote Moonlady (1927), The Revolt of Asia (1927), Eminent Asians (1929), and Challenge: Behind the Face of Japan (1934). HarveyO'Connor worked on a Seattle labor paper before writing Mellon s Millions (1933), Steel: Dictator (1935), and The Guggenheims (1937). The late Ellery Walter's The World on One Leg (1928) and Dwight Long's Seven Seas on a Shoestring (1938) record the adventures abroad of two Seattle youths. Norman Archibald sketched his career as a World War pilot in Heaven High, Hell Deep (1935). Victor Hurley, now on the staff of a Seattle radio station, painted tropical life in several books. Harder to classify is the work of Max Miller, who writes of his experiences, sometimes faintly glossing them with fiction, as in / Cover the Waterfront (1932), and For the Sake of Shadows (1936), an impression of Hollywood. His latest books are Harbor of the Sun (1940), a history of San Diego Harbor, and Reno (1941).
One of the most interesting developments of the 1930's is the return to pioneer themes, in formal history and informal memoirs as well as in fiction. Within this decade have appeared a History of the Pacific Northwest by George W. Fuller, Spokane librarian and author of The Inland Empire; A History of the State of Washington, by Lancaster Pollard; Arthur H. Hutchinson's Little Saints Annoy the Lord, which
sweeps away some myths about Marcus Whitman; Roberta Frye Watt's Four Wagons West and Sophie Frye Bass' Pigtail Days in Old Seattle; James McCurdy's By Juan de Fuca's Strait; Dorothy Fay Gould's Beyond the Shining Mountains; Robert Walkinshaw's On Puget Sound; Guy Waring's My Pioneer Past; Glenn Chesney Quiett's Pay Dirt and They Built the West: An Epic of Rails and Cities. Apparently, the time has come when Washington writers in all fields feel moved to take stock of the past of their State and to examine it in the perspective of the present.
THE first artists among the white men in Washington Territory were the draughtsmen who accompanied the expeditions sent out by the British and United States governments. Lieutenant Zachary Mudge, T. Heddington, and J. Sykes, members of the Vancouver expedition of 1792, recorded scenes and events of the Puget Sound exploration. Titian Ramsay Peale, son of the outstanding Philadelphia artist and naturalist, Charles Willson Peale, was among the scientists and draughtsmen who accompanied the Wilkes Expedition, which reached the Pacific Northwest in the early 1840's. Peale and Lieutenant Wilkes himself made drawings of the local landscape, and Alfred A. Agate and Joseph Drayton, draughtsmen, sketched native tools, canoes, costumes, and portraits of Indians, as well as many geographical subjects; engravings of these drawings were published in the official report of the expedition.
Gustave Sohon, German soldier-artist of the 4th U. S. Infantry, accompanied Governor Isaac I. Stevens on his treaty-making expeditions of the 1850's, sketching scenes along the route and portraits of the great Indian leaders. Unlike most early painters of Indians, Sohon made no attempt to dress his subjects in the conventional war paint and feathers. His drawings are often the only existing portraits of the prominent Columbia River chiefs. Sohon and an artist named Stanley also executed sketches of the countryside, which were made into lithographs and included in Governor Stevens' general report of the United States railroad surveys.
Traveling artists not connected with official expeditions likewise found Washington scenery attractive. Henry J. Warre, a British artist, published in 1846 lithographs of Columbia River and Puget Sound views. Paul Kane, noted Canadian artist, sketched along the Cowlitz River country during his travels, recounted in Wanderings of An Artist, London, 1859.["Porte-Crayon," an artist for Harter's, drew Washington, scenes whica-appeared in the magazine in 1873A Edmund T. Coleman, a British landscapist living at Victoria, worked in the Territory about
1868; some of his drawings are now in the possession of the Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma.
Apart from these travelers, however, there were few in Washington who gave much thought to art during the nineteenth century. Indian craftsmen made baskets or dugout canoes that in design and execution often achieved the qualities of art. The pioneers and their descendants, in providing themselves with the simple necessities of shelter, clothing, and furniture, revealed imagination and a sense of beauty and form. But the strenuous life of the newly settled territory was scarcely favorable to professional painters, patronage, museums, or art study. Records of the Indian and pioneer arts of Washington are fairly numerous. In the State Museum, University Campus, Seattle, are two especially important collections: an exhibition of Indian material grouped ethnologically, and one of pioneer relics. Spokane has a valuable collection of Indian objects and wares in the Eastern Washington State Historical Society; and there are similar exhibits at the Conner Museum in Pullman and at the Washington State Historical Society in Tacoma. The Whitman College Museum, in Walla Walla, displays Indian objects and a historical collection drawn from the period of white settlement.
Although commonly associated with the remote past and with musty relics, the handicrafts are far from dead today; they survive as important activities both among the Indian and white populations. Tribesmen are still engaged in basket weaving, miniature totem carving, and the hewing of dugout canoes. While they have, apparently, no special interest in blankets or rugs, the Washington tribes produce baskets that rank in quality with any found outside of Alaska; their rich coloring, skillful imbrication. ai>d design based on geometric forms, on the whale and other animals, bespeak a high level of skill and imagination. Whidbey Island dugouts are still hewed and carved with the ritual ceremony of a century ago; and the Makahs on the Strait still fashion by hand their spear heads and harpoons for salmon fishing.
While modern production has replaced the handicrafts among the majority of the native-horn citizens, immigrants have brought to the State many of their homeland crafts. Among the Dutch at Lynden, wooden shoes, worn in the garden, are carved with a skill and artistry maintained for generations. Scandinavian and Dalmatian fishermen may be seen making nets according to the traditions of their ancestors. Finnish women hold annually a summer exhibit at Seattle to display their delicate and richly patterned needlework. In obscure Scandinavian settlements along the Columbia River doth is spwn at home, and tools and farm
implements are forged by hand. Even in the cities, within the very gates of industrialism, craftsmanship is honored; and handwrought precious metals and gems, hand-woven tweeds, handmade shoes, and objects of bone, wood, ivory, and wrought iron give proof that handiwork there is not dead.
The fine arts evolved more slowly. The early development of Washington spanned an era in which America experienced a rising financial control of its social life and the most violent impact of materialism upon its culture. After 1850 the daguerreotype became widely popular throughout the country, taking the place of much portrait painting. Of interest today is the following advertisement in the Washington Pioneer of May 13, 1854: "Samuel Holmes, DAGUERREOTYPIST, Olympia, W. T. will attend to all orders for the taking of Daguerreotype likenesses, and all other matters connected with the art. Rooms over the cabinet shop of D. C. Beatty." Several painters, most of them unknown to later generations, drifted westward and obtained commissions to immortalize the well-to-do. Time-darkened portraits in commercial houses and public buildings and sentimental landscapes, anecdotal subjects, and occasional copies of famous masterpieces adorning homes, provide a key to the taste of the times. What the captains of the age may have lacked in gentleness, the painters were, apparently, expected to provide in gentility. Washington became a State in 1889. Eighteen years later citizens of Seattle organized the Society of Seattle Artists; and soon the people of Seattle attended the first annual exhibition of Northwest art. In less than 100 years, local society had progressed from a struggle for existence in an actual wilderness to an artistic appreciation of it as portrayed in landscape paintings. If people had acquired more leisure during this process, they seemed to have lost no energy for organizing and creating—sometimes for the sake of richer living, often in a spirit of promotional competition between cities. Out of the Society of Seattle Artists evolved the Seattle Art Museum with its extensive collection of American, European, and Oriental art, and its many-sided educational program. The Seattle Music and Art Foundation has been a patron of the arts since 1923, and its annual exhibitions have been effective in broadening art appreciation. Outstanding, however, is the work done by this organization's Creative Art Class, which gives instruction without charge to children of four or more years, placing emphasis upon freedom of expression; it is one of the few schools of its kind in the world. In 1926 the H. G. Henry Art Gallery of the University of Washington was founded, and has since presented many exhibitions of European paint ings. The Puget Sound Group of Northwest Painters was organized in 1928 and had 40 members at the end of its tenth year. Tacoma, with the Ferry Museum, established while Washington was still a territory, has felt no inclination to acknowledge Seattle as a cultural superior. To the south, San Francisco with its metropolitan bigness and power and its cosmopolitan manners claimed leadership in every enterprise. On familiar terms with artists and dealers, San Franciscans frequented downtown galleries during noon hours; and the people of Washington were advised to cultivate this habit. In 1931 a local critic instructed the public that: "Seattle, as the metropolis of the Pacific Northwest, must lead in developing a distinctive regional art, which is as important to us in holding our place in the national scheme of things as our libraries, symphony orchestras, and big factories."
If regionalism has so far fallen short of developing a style peculiar to the Northwest, an important group of artists is now striving to express the special character of the Washington scene. In his Art in America Holger Cahill mentions Kenneth Callahan, Peter Marinus Camfferman, and Ambrose Patterson as Seattle representatives of the new regional movement in American art. Regional exhibitions have served to support and encourage artists, and, by prompting discussion in the press, have tended to improve the quality of public taste. Recent activity, centering in Seattle, includes the annual exhibitions of Northwest artists, the monthly one-man exhibitions arranged by the Seattle Art Museum, and the shows of the Group of Twelve and of the Women Painters of Washington. Tacoma is also on the rise as an art center, with its organization of artists, the exhibitions arranged by the Tacoma Art Association.
Several Washington artists have achieved considerable reputations. Paul Morgan Gusten of Seattle, born in Vancouver, Washington, in 1886, attracted attention with his mountain landscapes and Northwestern subjects, and has contributed murals to the University of Washington library, Roosevelt High School, in Seattle, and to Washington State College. Roi Partridge was born in Centralia in 1888. Widely known for his etchings and illustrations, he has received numerous prizes and awards, and has work on display at many of the country's most prominent institutions. He is now professor of art at Mills College, California. Thomas Schofield Handforth, born in Tacoma in 1897, is also the winner of many distinctions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship for study in the Far East. At present (1941) a resident of California, he is perhaps best known in America and abroad for his etchings and
book illustrations. The murals of Eustace P. Ziegler (1881-), of Seattle, adorn several buildings in that city and the Capitol at Olympian as well as buildings in the East.
Since 1932 the shrinking of private support for art which accompanied the depression has been met by the sponsorship of the United States Treasury Department, and by the WPA Washington Art Project, headed by R. B. Inverarity. Themes pertinent to the Northwest appear in murals commissioned for post offices of the region: Local Pursuits, by Ambrose Patterson, at Mount Vernon; Mail Train in the 80's, by Ernest Norling, at Prosser; and Incidents in the Lives of Lewis and Clark at Mount Kelso, at Kelso, are among the works sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts of the Federal Treasury. An all-over mural decoration devoted to marine scenes of Seattle, by Kenneth Callahan, was also commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts for the United States Marine Hospital, in Seattle; and Jacob Elshin has executed murals for the same agency in Renton and Seattle. Peggy Strong, of Tacoma, whose easel paintings have been widely exhibited on the Pacific Coast, was recently awarded a mural commission for the post office at Wenatchee. Exhibitions by artists employed on the Art Project have brought to light much new, vigorous talent; and the Index of Design division of the project has unearthed and reproduced many valuable examples of early American design. The Spokane Art Center, sponsored by the Art Project, includes an art school and an exhibition program, both of which have been eagerly received.
In the principal cities of Washington are sculptural works by some of America's leading craftsmen. Seattle displays George Washington, by Lorado Taft; William H. Seward, by Richard H. Brooks; Thomas Burke, by H. A. MacNeil; and Chief Seattle, by James Wehn, founder of the department of sculpture at the University of Washington. The Beloved Pioneer, a memorial to Ezra Meeker, by Victor Alonzo Lewis, stands in Puyallup; the same sculptor's Abraham Lincoln is in Spokane. In Fort Lewis is the Ninety-first Division war memorial, by Avard Fairbanks; in Hoquiam, Civic Government, by Dudley Pratt; and in Tacoma, the Cushman Memorial, also by V. A. Lewis.
Among the works by local sculptors at the Seattle Art Museum are Air Spirit, by Dudley Pratt, assistant professor in sculpture at the University of Washington, who has contributed several notable decorations and portraits to Seattle's public buildings; the wood sculpture Revelry of the Winds, by Dudley Carter, a pupil of Pratt; and wood sculpture by Halford Lembke. James Wehn, of Seattle and Crescent Beach, has
executed many monuments, reliefs, and medallions for institutions in various parts of the State, and designed the corporate seal of the City of Seattle. Other local sculptors of note are Drusilla Albert and V. Claflin Pratt, both of whom have won prizes at the Northwest Annual Exhibition. A. 1'himister Proctor, celebrated modeler of animals and one of America's leading sculptors, is now a resident of Seattle.
a A SONG too shrill for melody," a wild and piercing "oh-ah we-ah!" ^*-was the Indian "Song of the Catch," as they drove their canoes over the Columbia for the salmon run. Indian songs were magic songs, continuing monotonously to the steady drumbeat and the rhythm of the rattles in an effort to gain the assistance of superhuman powers. Then came the boat songs of the French-Canadian voyageurs of the fur brigades—work songs to strengthen the rhythm of their labor as they paddled their canoes and barges along the Columbia and other rivers of the Northwest. Their boat songs and the songs they sang to cheer themselves around the campfire were centuries-old French songs, such as "Dans Mon Chemin A Saint Malo," and "En Roulant Ma Boule," popular in France at the time their forefathers left for the New World. In every brigade there were fiddlers, and sometimes a Scot with his bagpipes went along to rouse the men in a black hour with "The Cock of the North." Around the fire a Scot might dance a Highland fling, and an Indian a native step, while the French and half-breeds danced French folk dances to the old tunes. In the morning a bugle call roused the men for the day's travel.
Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver, always stationed a Highland piper behind his chair at the head of the banquet table; and bagpipes were prominent on all state and ceremonial occasions. Religious instruction of the Indians was part of the duties of the factors, and McLoughlin began teaching them hymns and chants. Outside the forts on Sundays the Indians danced their old worship-dances in honor of the new God they had learned about.
The Whitmans came in 1836. Narcissa Whitman had a clear soprano voice, "as sweet and musical as the chime of bells." While her husband was making Waiilatpu ready for her, she stayed at Fort Vancouver, teaching the children "Rock of Ages" and other hymns. She had already taught her husband to sing on the long journey over the mountains. The Indians at Waiilatpu loved to hear Mrs. Whitman sing, and it was song more than anything else that won them, before they were crazed
by the famine and pestilence of that last bitter winter. The Indians learned quickly the songs the missionaries taught; Indian choirs were the first in Washington.
The American immigrants brought the songs of the times, particularly those that had been made popular by black-face minstrel troupes— the songs of Stephen Foster and others. For instruments they had Jew's harps, mouth organs, banjos, accordions, and occasionally a melodeon, a small reed organ. But most popular of all were the fiddles, and a fiddler who could play a dance tune, such as "Old Dan Tucker" or "Turkey in the Straw," was always in demand.
Richard Covington brought the first piano to Vancouver in 1846, quickly transforming his home into a social center. In 1851 George A. Barnes of Olympia imported a piano. Three brothers named Cornell were gaining popularity there as dance fiddlers, and Oliver Shead, "a splendid ballroom performer" who "had the advantage of being able to 'call' the quadrille changes," was also "in very general request." Vocal concerts soon followed. The Pioneer and Democrat reported one in 1855: "The vocal concert given by Mrs. M. A. Ham . . . Monday evening last, was well attended by the ladies and gentlemen of this place. Mrs. Ham labored under several embarrassments, much, no doubt, to her mortification . . . and we understand she was seconded several times by the instrumental accompanist she had engaged for the occasion." The first Protestant church north of the Columbia River was built at Steilacoom in 1853. With the growth of the churches, choirs gained favor and from these came the first singing societies. In 1870 at Yesler's Pavilion, 30 women and girls "filled the hall with the sweet airs and pretty harmony" in a cantata, The Flower Queen, for the benefit of the Episcopal Church. In the same year, St. Paul's Episcopal Church acquired the first pipe organ.
The first theatrical musicians to arrive were black-face minstrels in the 1860's. In 1864, the Taylor Brothers, singers and dancers, and Tom Lafont, the great "American Mocking Bird," noted whistler, appeared at Yesler's Hall. The same year Bob Ridley gave a banjo recital. Barney, the violinist, appeared first with Herman, the magician, in 1860 and returned frequently. In 1872 came David W. Nesfield, baritone, and Mlle. Marie Gaugain, danseuse, with Vivian, an impersonator. Miss Fanny Marston, with a powerful and well-trained voice, gave a concert in 1875, and Louise Irving, the "mocking-bird vocalist," gave a musical soiree with her husband, W. H. Nielson, violinist.
In 1877 appeared the first foreign artist, llma de Mirska, the Hun garian nightingale, said to have "the most flexible voice in the lyric profession." Maggie Webb, the "colored nightingale," who sang with the Kentucky Jubilee Singers in 1881, was immensely popular. The first opera troupe arrived in 1876, returning again the next year. The next opera came in 1881, and in 1884 three professional grand opera troupes and two local talent groups played the Standard Theater in Seattle. From then on the Northwest heard all the leading opera companies and all the leading concert stars.
Mrs. M. A. Snyder's Music Class gave their first juvenile opera, Little Red Riding Hood, with 20 fairy attendants in dances and tableaux, at Yesler's Hall in 1878 and continued annually for several years. The Arion Singing Club gave Pirates of Penzance in 1884, and in 1885 the Club was remodeling Yesler's Hall for its own use.
All special occasions and celebrations required music. Oftentimes it was impromptu, as in 1865 when a crowd at the Olympia wharf greeted the arrival of a new fire engine with the nonsense song: 'Tis half-past twelve o'clock and daylight's advancing, Johnny am a lingo-lay; O hoova-hava, hoova-hava, hoova-hava, hoova, Johnny am a lingo-lay.
Bands were organized early, and often the pieces played for celebrations were of local composition. One of the early Seattle organizations was the Pacific Silver Cornet Band, which played for the opening of Squire's Opera House in 1899.
Music became less spontaneous and more refined under the polishing efforts of music masters; it became something to listen to with your hat off. However, there was one place where the fiddle was still a fiddle, and men still sang for fun—the old saloon and dance hall. Saloons usually employed two, and sometimes three, musicians: one to pound out a tune on the piano, the other to play the fiddle. Although the songs were sometimes bawdy, they were just as often maudlin and sentimental ditties; and those who were adept in the playing of tear-squeezing melodies were well repaid. The vocalist was usually an itinerant laborer with more voice than caution, who could remember the words of songs or improvise his own; the tune was not so important.
Yet even here refinement began to creep in. Variety theaters took the musicians, vocalists, and specialty dancers out of the hall and set them on the stage. Then they began to train their acts, seeking ever more polished performers. Soon vaudeville was polite enough for anyone, though not yet rating a dress suit on opening nights. Orchestras
were increasingly employed in the theaters during the eighties. The prosperity of the Alaska gold rush period brought an acceleration of cultural development. Churches began to employ paid soloists and directors; one of these, at least, Theo Karle of Olympia and Seattle, became a star of the concert and operatic stage. Pipe organs were installed in all the larger churches. Operatic associations, singing societies, and choruses increased in number. German singing societies had been organized early in Washington; Turner Hall in Seattle was the home of one of these. Now several more were formed, and Norwegian, Swedish, and Welsh groups had their own singing societies. Thirty choral organizations were flourishing in the early 1900's. The Ralston Male Glee Club, organized by Bowman Ralston (who came to Seattle in 1907), a chorus of 55 voices, won second prize at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition; the chorus was accompanied by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The club sang repeatedly at Meany Hall to audiences of 10,000 or more. Changing the name to the Seattle Male Glee Club, Ralston continued the organization until his death in 1914; the Amphion Society was an outgrowth of the Ralston Glee Club.
In 1916, eleven American, German, and Scandinavian singing societies, two bands, the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, and two other orchestras, co-operated in a five-day summer music festival in Seattle. The last day, a Sunday, opened with a Grand Trombone Reveille, at six o'clock, from the Smith Tower and closed with Handel's Messiah, sung by the combined choruses.
The Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the first and leading symphony orchestra in the State, was organized in 1903, with Harry West as conductor. Henry Hadley directed the organization for two years following the exposition. Then as the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, with John M. Sparger as conductor until 1921, it continued to expand and to gain wider recognition. It was reorganized in 1926 as the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Karl Kruger directing, and came under the brilliant English conductor, Dr. Basil Cameron, in 1932. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was given its Northwest premiere in 1935; two years later the orchestra, with the co-operation of symphony musicians and choristers from Portland, Oregon, gave a very successful festival performance. Frequent broadcast concerts under Dr. Cameron won a large Pacific Coast audience. From 1938 through 1940 Dr. Nikolai Sokoloff, formerly director of the Federal Music Project of the Works Progress Administration, was conductor. Since then Sir Thomas Beecham has headed the orchestra.
Following the gold rush period, and simultaneously with the organization of formal music groups, there were interesting developments in theater music. Early in the century, all the legitimate theaters had orchestras, but the first motion picture houses employed pianists. One of the first theater organs in the country was an Estey installed in Klemmer's Dream Theater in Seattle. The pianist in that theater, Oliver W. Wallace, of London, England, was interested in organ music but found that, as played in churches, it was not suited to the theater. A skillful musician with a keen sense of theater, Wallace probably did more than any other man to adapt the organ to silent pictures. He became known as one of the country's leading organists and also as a popular composer. By the 1920's, organs had been installed in all the movie theaters in the State. Bernard Barnes, composer of "Dainty Miss," for the piano, wrote a textbook for theater organists, From Piano to Theater Pipe Organ (1928).
Then a few small orchestras began to appear in the movie theaters. The first theater concert orchestra in the State was introduced in the Klemmer Theater; this was the Russian Concert Orchestra, a symphonic group without piano. Arthur Kay organized the Coliseum Theater Orchestra; and Liborius Haupman, who had come to Seattle with the Russian Concert Orchestra, organized the Klemmer Theater, later the Columbia, Orchestra. George Lipschultz, violinist, conducted the Liberty Theater Orchestra. Classical numbers at first were played by the movie theater orchestras, but late in the I920*s they were replaced by jazz. Ragtime developed, during the early 1900's, in and about the saloons and dance halls, largely the product of untrained musicians, with such instruments as they could get their hands on. Saloon pianists playing by ear had a part in its development; Negroes, with the elemental sense of rhythm, had a larger part. Gradually the quality of the instruments improved, saxophones were added; and jazz arrived. Theater orchestras were the first to play jazz, and most of them had gone over completely to it by the end of the 1920's, when the theaters began to be mechanized for sound.
Musical unions vainly fought this technological development. Organists and orchestras were laid off in theaters throughout the State. For a time, jazz orchestras and bands were used on the stage between shows. Oliver Wallace, who is now writing music for Walt Disney pictures, conducted one of these groups in Seattle and Tacoma. However, no mechanical invention has yet proved satisfactory in the dance hall, and
dance orchestras, playing mostly jazz or swing, provide employment today for a large number of musicians.
In the field of chamber music, the Spargur String Quartet, founded in 1914 and still retaining its original personnel, has a national reputation. The Peter Merenblum String Quartet, organized at the Cornish School, was also well known.
Each year opera is brought to Washington by touring companies; and the Seattle Civic Opera Company, directed by Paul Engberg, gives a series of operas annually. Besides the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, there are good orchestras in several Washington cities: the Spokane Civic Symphony, directed by George Poinar; the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, directed by Gottfried Hearst; the Tacoma Philharmonic Orchestra, established in 1934 and directed by Eugene Linden; the Walla Walla Symphony, established in 1907; the Everett Symphony Orchestra; and the Lewis County Symphony Orchestra at Chehalis, shared by the neighboring city of Centralia.
In addition to the many glee clubs and choruses of the various schools in the State, there are 30 singing societies. Twenty-one music clubs sponsor concerts and encourage local musicians. The Ladies' Musical Club in Seattle, a leader in this work, also sponsors lectures on musical subjects. Washington has numerous fraternal bands, drum and bugle corps, and, in Bellingham, a Scotch bagpipe band.
David Sheetz Craig in 1915 founded Music and Musicians, a monthly journal published in Seattle to report musical activities on the Coast; Mr. Craig continued as editor until 1937. Oscar Thompson, formerly editor of a Tacoma newspaper, is now editor of Musical America.
The Whitman Conservatory of Music of Whitman College, in Walla Walla, is the oldest school of music in the Northwest. Its activities include glee club, chapel choir, opera, band, and orchestra. The College of Puget Sound in Tacoma maintains the Conservatory of Music; and Seattle College, Seattle Pacific College, Pacific Lutheran College at Parkland, Washington State College at Pullman, and Gonzaga University at Spokane, each has a department of music. Bing Crosby, radio and screen star, is a graduate of Gonzaga. At the Washington State College, the Associated Students co-operate with the students of the University of Idaho to bring famous concert musicians to the State. Cornish School in Seattle, which has become one of the leading centers of musical instruction in the West, was founded as a private school of music in 1914 by Miss Nellie C. Cornish. The establishment of the Cornish School Foundation made it a civic institution, privately operated
on a nonprofit basis, and it was enlarged to include drama, dance, and art. Many of the musicians in the Seattle Symphony Orchestra were trained at Cornish, and a number of Cornish students have danced in New York, London, and Paris. The school sponsors a children's orchestra, open to all children in Seattle.
The University of Washington School of Music, with an enrollment of 200, has a symphony orchestra of 70 pieces, concert band with 64 members, a chorus, and other singing groups. The annual High School Music Festival is sponsored by the University, and each year the Summer High School Music Institute offers instruction in band, orchestra, and choral work to students from Washington and neighboring States. Earl Robinson, a native of Washington and educated at the University, recently won praise and national recognition for his Ballad for Americans. Howard Biggs, Negro composer, a graduate of the University school of music, composed the songs, incidental music, and orchestral overtures for the Federal Theater productions of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, An Evening with Dunbar, and The Dragon's Wishbone; he also composed the organ music for the theater's Spirochete.
RHODODENDRON
THE first entertainments in Washington Territory took place outdoors around the campfires of the immigrant trains: spontaneous affairs depending upon whatever talent was available in singing, dancing, fiddle playing, reciting, and storytelling. As the people settled down and built houses, entertainment moved indoors into the buildings with the largest seating capacity. In the earliest period, these were the cookhouses of sawmills and mining camps. The first entertainments in Seattle were given in the cookhouse of Yesler's sawmill. As the towns grew, halls, and then theaters, were provided for the people's entertainment. The first entertainments were amateur, but as soon as the population grew large enough to support them, professional entertainers appeared; they came singly at first, when the country could not support even a small company. Instrumental and vocal concerts, elocutionary recitals, impersonations and readings, lectures, magical and sleight-of-hand exhibitions made up their repertoire; selections from Shakespeare formed a substantial part of it.
The first of these wandering performers of whom there is record was "General Jack Rag," "celebrated actor and vocalist," who gave a "grand entertainment," in the dining room of Olympia House, Olympia's only hotel, March 19, 1853. Tickets were 25c, children and Negroes free. Although Rag's repertoire consisted mainly of a series of tableaux called "Grecian Statutes," accompanied by explanatory song, and although he played without support, his shows were a marked success and were repeated frequently. Also in those "days when larger companies did not condescend to notice Puget Sound," Professor C. B. (Yankee) Plummer came to give "parlor entertainment" consisting of poetic and dramatic readings and comic recitations. He appeared frequently at Yesler Hall in Seattle and at Walla Walla and other Northwest cities, where he toured for several years. Said to have perfect command of face and voice, he was the universal favorite until about the time Charles Vivian arrived, and then he disappeared from Washington for several years.
Vivian made his first Northwest appearance in Olympia in 1872, supported by a variety troupe. Not only was he acclaimed a greater actor than Yankee Plummer, but Vivian was also a very handsome man. In the days when dress for men consisted almost entirely of jumper and overalls, he created a sensation when he "strolled out of the hotel in patent leather shoes, lavender trousers, black velvet sack coat, white vest and grey crush hat and exceptional linen and underwear." Small wonder Yankee Plummer disappeared! Dry-goods stores owed much to Vivian, who made the men of the old Northwest clothes-conscious. From then on, customs in dress changed so rapidly that in the early 90's in Spokane a dress suit was required for first performances.
Small troupes of black-face minstrels were among the earliest and most popular traveling companies, making their first appearances in the early 6o's and holding their popularity until the turn of the century. In 1877 the Tennessee Jubilee Singers, the first Negro troupers, appeared. Callender's Colored Minstrels appeared in 1883 and crowded the seats and aisles of Yesler Hall, and when the Kentucky Jubilee Singers came in the same year, more than 200 people were turned away. Circuses made an early appearance and were invariably well attended. Bartholomew's Great Western Circus showed at Walla Walla in 1867, and the Royal European Circus visited Port Townsend and Seattle in 1869. In 1871 Mlle. Lucy Jeal brought her circus featuring "lady gymnasts who threw somersaults with masculine ease." Sells Brothers and Barrettes played to 8,000 the first night in Spokane in 1889, just after the great fire.
Washington pioneers welcomed all types of theatrical entertainment: Barker's Great Panorama (1871); Dr. C. Pinkham's lectures on Phrenology closing with the examination of two heads, "admission gentlemen 25c, ladies 10c" (1871); Japanese acrobatic performers (1872), burlesque throughout the 70's, Haskell's Royal Marionettes (1874), McDonald's Band of Trained Indians (1875); Pedestrian Tournament, a pioneer version of the walkathon (1882); Polar Bear Sam's Alaska Indians in native songs and dances (1887). Trained cats were a town sensation at Yesler's Hall in 1875. In 1877 appeared the "Great Egyptian Mystery, or the London Sensation," a "full dramatic company of first-class artists, featuring living persons dissolved into air, tableaux, transformations, and the legendary tragedy of Faust." The first dramatic presentations also were given by amateurs. Later, professional companies appeared, barnstorming up the Coast from San Francisco. One of the first of these, the Pacific Theatrical Troupe,
appeared at Columbia Hall in Olympia in 1862. Uncle Tom's Cabin arrived in 1871. In 1875 tne Fanny Morgan Phelps Company brought Shakespeare.
In 1866 the Pixley Sisters first appeared at Yesler Hall in a program including songs, dances, and a farce. Annie, the oldest of the three, was 14 at the time. They lived in Olympia and appeared frequently in the Northwest cities. Annie joined various of the traveling stock companies, and for 10 years she was Washington's favorite actress. Then she went to San Francisco and the East. When she played Spokane in a return engagement in 1888, she was considered one of the leading actresses of the country.
The first transcontinental railroad to serve Washington was completed in 1883, and "Everybody's Favorite, the little sunbeam, Charming Katie Putnam, supported by an excellent company," was "one of the first to cross the plains to entertain the pioneers of the Northwestern country." For 12 years, until her farewell tour in 1896, she brought a large repertoire of popular plays, such as The Old Homestead, Lena the Madcap, East Lynne, and Old Curiosity Shop. She was a special favorite of the mining camps. Other Eastern companies followed in increasing numbers, and soon Washington was seeing all the leading American players in their latest hits.
The Von Sou Foong Company brought the first Chinese Theater to Seattle in 1883 for a very successful run. Although intended primarily for the Chinese residents, the performances, lasting from 7:30 to 12:30, drew many Americans, who found enjoyment in the clever pantomime, the weird music, and the strange theater technique. Chinese theaters have continued to appear from time to time.
Grand opera made its Washington debut in 1876 when a company of five, but "a host in talent and execution," performed The Grand Duchess, Maritana, and The Bohemian Girl. Deakin's Lilliputian Comic Opera Company, a small troupe of tiny people with a seven-foot giant, scored a hit with Jack the Giant-Killer in Washington cities in 1877.
Emma Abbott was a pioneer operatic favorite. When Harry C. Hayward brought her to Spokane in 1883 in The Bohemian Girl there was no suitable theater, "so he engaged a warehouse that stood on the northeast corner of Riverside and Post streets. The audience paid two dollars each for reserved seats on gang plows and farm implements. Nail kegs in the rear were a trifle cheaper. It was a fifteen-hundred-dollar house altogether." In 1887 Haywood received a wire from Portland, "How
much will you pay for one night of Emma Abbott?" He wired back, "$1,000 for Abbott." By nightfall he had raised the whole sum by popular subscription in a town of 4,000. When the train arrived with the singer and her company, a great crowd was there to give them greeting. In 1895 Pinafore was played on a scow on Lake Washington, with the audience seated in a grandstand on the beach. Little Buttercup arrived in a small boat, and the Admiral and his relatives in a steam launch; the villain was thrown bodily into the lake at each performance. Besides this entertainment for "nice people," the early West demanded another kind. In the earliest days, a large portion of the population were single men of the Wild West type—adventurers and prospectors and seamen of the coast cities. For entertainment they demanded "wine, women and song," a need which the saloon-dancehall supplied. The first women of the dance halls were squaws and half-breeds, but in the late 50's enterprising managers brought in the "Frisco Lillies" from California. While a measure of theatrical ability in music, song, and dance was welcomed, their first qualification was a talent for stimulating liquor sales. From the saloon-dance hall grew the variety theater, and from variety developed vaudeville, which, as the pioneer period passed, became polite family entertainment.
Washington's first theater, the Theater Comique in Seattle, was opened as a variety house in the basement of a saloon on Washington Street in 1876. It was of the "box" type: that is, it had a small stage and auditorium and, most important, a row of boxes around the sides, connected with a bar in the rear. The women did their song and dance on the stage and then, in costumes that for that period were considered the extreme of indecency, mingled with the customers in the boxes, encouraging the sale of liquors. The women became known as box-rustlers, and box-rustling theaters sprang up all over the West. In the 80's, under the stress of competition, managers began to improve their shows. One manager, opening the New Bijou, proposed to run a clean show in an effort to induce women to visit his theater. He was before his time; it was not till the turn of the century that variety became family entertainment, or vaudeville. In 1886, in order to secure better acts and to provide steadier employment for them, John Cort organized the first variety circuit in the world, extending from Butte, Montana, to San Francisco and including in it Seattle, Olympia, Spokane, Tacoma, and smaller Washington towns.
Spokane's first variety theater made its appearance in 1886. While it was recognized that a variety theater might not add to the moral tone
of the city, it was accepted as an indication that Spokane was keeping pace with the other cities. After the great fire of 1889, variety theaters flourished like tropical plants, the most notorious of all being the Coeur d'Alene. In 1895 the Ministerial Association unsuccessfully attempted to close the variety theaters, but by 1897 the proprietors had become so emboldened that they adopted the advertising plan of parading the streets on pleasant afternoons. Behind their bands came performers and a host of box-rustlers in carriages. The spectacle aroused much indignation. Under threat of closing, the theaters promised to abandon box-rustling. But promises are easily forgotten. Not till 1908, after an intermittent warfare of nearly 20 years, did an aroused public sentiment force the closing of the last pioneer box-rustling variety theaters. The season of 1883-4 marked a high point in theatrical entertainment. Katie Putnam, Emma Abbott, Fanny Janauschek, Callender's Colored Minstrels, and the Kentucky Jubilee Singers all played to packed houses as they toured the State. Henry Ward Beecher was second, and Katie Putnam third. Public performances in Seattle (with a population of 10,000) averaged at least 20 a week, with the Chinese Theater and the Bijou going every night, the Maison Dore two-thirds of the time, and Yesler Hall more than half.
The growing cities of Washington were known as good show towns. Not all troupes were successful, however. An unfavorable review could kill a show, and many an inferior company was forced to disband. One company advertised a week's engagement at the Root Hog or Die Hall in Spokane; but, after playing to empty benches for two nights, they slid out of town, because the Morning Review had advised giving them a cold shoulder. Said the review: "Let this be a warning to other theatrical companies. No free tickets were left at the office in this case. ... It will be wise for all others to come and see us at once. We want at least six deadhead tickets to a front seat." However, the press as a rule was very fair and a powerful influence in improving the artistic quality of the show and improving theater manners. It condemned the rowdyism of certain elements of the pioneer audiences, the earliest instance of which was noted at Jack Rag's first performance, when he was "dampened by a discharge of cold water from the pit." In 1884 the PostIntelligencer deplored the "custom of many men to keep their hats on during the performance and to indulge in other like eccentricities." When Cordray's Theater was opened in 1890, intoxicating liquor, the eating of peanuts, cat-calls, whistling, stamping of feet, and profane and boisterous language were forbidden. "We regard our patrons as ladies and
gentlemen and expect all to conduct themselves as such," said the management. As late as 1904, Seattle and Olympia papers were indignant because some of the tenderest scenes of a Florence Roberts performance were spoiled by hoodlums in the gallery.
The first legitimate theater buildings erected in Washington were Squire's Opera House in Seattle and the Gaiety Theater in Walla Walla, both opened in 1879. The Alpha Opera House in Tacoma was built in 1882. The theaters of Seattle and Spokane were destroyed in the great fires of 1889, but they were quickly replaced. The five-story Auditorium constructed in Spokane at an estimated cost of $250,000, was for many years the largest and finest theater west of the Mississippi. The opening was one of the great society events of Spokane. Box-office receipts for the first two nights (Carleton Opera Company in Manon) totaled $5,000.
John Cort was first to rebuild in Seattle with his New Standard, a variety theater. This old brick building still stands (1941) at Occidental Avenue and Main Street, now serving other purposes. Turner Hall and Armory Hall were remodeled as legitimate theaters. A store on Third Avenue and Madison Street was remodeled as the Madison Street Theater; but it was not a success, as the mice scurrying across the floor frightened the women, who all wore long skirts. After a few months, it was remodeled and modernized as Cordray's Theater. Seattle was not satisfied, however, and the magnificent Seattle Theater was built as a civic enterprise. Advance sales of 199 seats and 8 boxes for the first night totaled $3,771, and the theater opened out of debt.
In Tacoma in 1890, the Tacoma Theater (still standing, 1941), designed by Stanford White, was opened with the Duff Opera Company. Olympia's first legitimate theater, the Olympia, was built the same year. All these theaters boasted electric lights.
In the early 90's, Richard Mansfield, Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, E. H. Sothern, Robert Mantell, Maurice Barrymore, John Drew, Maude Adams, W. C. Fields, and everybody else of any importance in the American theater, toured the Northwest. In 1891 Sara Bernhardt demanded and received a guarantee of $3,000 for one night, in both Seattle and Spokane. This period, the golden age for road shows, saw the beginning of resident stock in Seattle; the Cordray-Wass Company, with R. E. French as the popular leading man, opened in Cordray's Theater in 1890. They advertised clean shows and Saturday matinees for children.
Then came hard times. Road shows disbanded, and many theaters were closed. John Cort went broke and left the city. Cordray's Theater went into the hands of the bankers. Seattle, once the most generous patron of showmen, was now considered the worst show town in the West.
The Alaska gold rush, beginning in 1897, put an end to hard times in Washington. Business boomed, and theaters reopened. John Cort returned to Seattle and in 1898 began building his Grand Opera House, which, at the time he opened in 1900, was considered the finest show house on the Coast. The building still stands at 217 Cherry Street, used as a garage.
At that time the Klaw-Erlanger interests were organizing their gigantic theater circuit, including in it all the leading legitimate theaters in the country. But when they came to the Northwest, they found that John Cort had already secured control of the key theaters from St. Paul to San Francisco; so they were forced to make him the Northwest manager. Klaw and Erlanger controlled the road show business of the country until 1910, when Cort organized 1,200 independent theaters in the National Theatrical Owners' Association, of which he was president until 1917. For this he was known as the "trust-buster." The purpose was to give the owners a chance to book a better class of shows, and under the leadership of Cort the legitimate stage reached the peak of its popularity in the years 1910-15. Cort was said to own more theaters than any other man in the world. He was a popular figure in Seattle and was one of the organizers of the Fraternal Order of Eagles.
Not only did all the larger cities of Washington support resident stock companies (dramatic presentations and musical comedy), but touring stock companies were sent out from Seattle. The first of these was the R. E. French Theatrical Company, organized during hard times in 1895. By 1901 it operated three companies out of Seattle, playing a circuit of every city west of Chicago.
In 1906 Laurette Taylor was playing leads in stock in Seattle. In 1912 John Cort took her to Cort's Theater in New York, to star in Peg O' My Heart through more than 500 performances. Other Seattle actors of the period to become stars in New York were Guy Bates Post and Sarah Truax (Albert), at that time Mrs. Post.
During the 90's variety had undergone a metamorphosis, and about 1900 vaudeville appeared, completely separated from liquor selling, and began to move uptown. Usually occupying vacant storerooms and featuring variety acts and short pictures, it became known as "store vaude."
During the vaudeville craze in 1901-2, new shows opened by the dozen in Washington, and in 1902 John Considine, of Seattle, organized the Sullivan-Considine Circuit. It was operated out of Seattle and was the first popular-priced (10c) "polite" vaudeville circuit. By 1906 it had grown so popular that an act booked in Seattle, or in certain Eastern cities, was assured a year's engagement.
Alexander Pantages, a Greek immigrant, learned the show business in the saloon-dance halls of the Alaska gold rush period, where he had arrived penniless. In 1902 he came to Seattle and invested his savings in the Crystal Theater, in which he was everything from manager to janitor. He operated it as a popular vaudeville house. Then he organized a western vaudeville circuit, competing with his friend, Considine. In 1904 he moved into the Pantages Theater, and in 1905 he branched out into stock with the Lois Theater, named for his wife. In 1915 he extended his circuit from coast to coast, showing American and European acts. He always played a lone hand, never combining with other theater men. In 1929, just before the crash came, he sold out.
The forerunner of moving pictures, the Great Stereopticon, featuring dissolving views of England, France, and the Holy Land, showed in Yesler Hall in 1871. In 1894 Edison released the first commercial (kinetoscope) motion pictures, and they were shown on December 12 of the same year in Seattle. The first theater showing of motion pictures was an Edison bioscope exhibition at the Auditorium Theater, Spokane, in 1896. The next year veroscope pictures of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight, the first series of pictures about a single subject, were shown in all the cities of Washington. On a film two and one-third miles long were 143,000 distinct pictures. Pictures were shown with increasing frequency in variety theaters and were a factor in the vaudeville boom. In 1902 Edison's Unique Theater, a picture house, was built in Seattle; hy 1903 all the cities of Washington could boast of motion picture theaters, showing such subjects as The Life of a Fireman, The Tramp and the Bulldog, Freight Train Passing Through Royal Gorge, and May Irwin and John Rice in their great kissing scene.
Then came improved picture technique and Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, and Charlie Chaplin. Picture theaters were built in all the small towns. Pipe organs were installed to accompany the silent pictures, then orchestras. Slowly but relentlessly, pictures began to crowd out the living professional performer. The movies took the smaller cities and towns first; one-night stands disappeared, and split-week houses became one-night stands.
The first talking pictures in Washington were shown unsuccessfully at the Synchrodrome Theater in Seattle in 1908. Silent pictures continued and reached their zenith in the 1920's. Then came the vitaphone with Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, and in a short time all movies were talkies. Competition became more relentless, until there were only three stock companies left in the State, two in Seattle and one playing intermittently in Spokane and Tacoma. Yet even during the decline, Katherine Cornell, delayed by a railway accident, found her Seattle audience still waiting for her in the theater at eleven o'clock. The scenery was rushed to the theater, the audience watched it as it was set up, and the show went on at two in the morning.
The depression administered the knockout blow to the commercial stage in Washington. The Henry Duffy Players in Seattle, featuring expensive guest stars, were forced to close; Tobey Leitch's Comedians, playing popular-priced stock and vaudeville circuits, in partnership with the movies and as "presentations" before the movies, continued for a time and then closed down. Vaudeville shows have been reopened from time to time in picture houses. Burlesque and "girl shows," however, continued throughout the depression in certain theaters that catered largely to men. Floor shows in clubs and roadhouses still offer a limited field for vaudeville acts.
With the decline of the commercial theater, the college and community theaters inherited the responsibility of maintaining the legitimate drama. Bread upon the Waters, a melodrama, was the first University of Washington theatrical production. In 1920 the department of dramatic art (superseded by the division of drama of the English department in 1930) was created, and the University was on its way toward developing an excellent theatrical school. In 1926 it inaugurated a series of famous films, one of the first to be established in any American educational institution, enabling students to follow the evolution of screen art. In 1934 the division of drama, whose plays had been given in Meany Hall, opened the small Studio Theater (seating capacity of 60) under the direction of Glenn Hughes, in order that the actors might have the experience and discipline of a long run.
The long-run record for an American college production was established at the Studio Theater during the 1934-5 season with Sidney Howard's Alien Corn, which ran for 50 performances. In the principal role was Frances Farmer, who shortly afterwards was discovered by Hollywood and is now a star. In 1935, after two seasons of experimentation, the unique Penthouse Theater was opened. It was designed
for the performance of drawing-room plays in a central acting space, surrounded on the four sides by elevated seats for an audience of 120 persons. Both these very successful theaters were located off the campus in the University business district. The Showboat Theater, set on piling on the campus water front on Union Bay, constructed as a joint enterprise of the Works Progress Administration and the University's division of drama, was opened in September 1938. The equipment is modern throughout, with a revolving stage. It is one of the few college theaters that run six nights a week throughout the year. The new Penthouse Theater has been opened recently on the campus, near the Showboat.
Under the management of the executive director, Glenn Hughes, playwright and authority on theaters and theater history, all operation expenses are met by box-office receipts, and surpluses are used to augment the equipment and to purchase books for the division of drama library. This library, now numbering more than 12,000 volumes and increasing at the rate of 100 a month, includes a circulating library of 2,000 plays for loan by mail throughout the State. The division of drama also has a puppet theater.
Cornish School, which operates a professional school of the theater, opened the Cornish Theater in 1920 with a group of one-act plays, directed by Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenburg. From this start developed the Moroni Olsen Players, who annually toured the country. The theater maintains three groups of players, offering classic and modern dramas.
The development of community theaters began in the period following the First World War. Some of the more successful ventures are the Tacoma Drama League (organized in 1919), the Bellingham Theater Guild, and the Spokane Little Theater, each of which presents a series of outstanding plays each year. Sarah Truax Albert has become a favorite of little-theater groups and ladies' clubs in readings of Broadway successes.
Seattle's civic theater, the Repertory Playhouse, was founded in 1928 by Florence and Burton James, who see the theater as a social force and a force for education. A series of six or more high-quality plays each season, with an annual summer drama festival that attracts visitors from many different States and foreign countries, have made the Playhouse one of the leading institutions of its kind in the country. Some of the notable successes have been Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Goethe's Faust, No More Frontier by Talbot Jennings, and Thornton Wilder's Our Town. In its fourth season, in collaboration with the school author ities, the Playhouse inaugurated a series of weekly matinees for highschool students, which proved so successful that in 1936 the Playhouse, the State Department of Education, and the Rockefeller Foundation co-operated to found the Washington State Theater, the first State theater in the country. It was a professional touring company playing throughout the State—Shakespeare's plays and classic and romantic productions—with matinees for high-school students and evening performances for adults. Audiences totaling seventy thousand the first year justified the experiment. Other activities of the Playhouse include public readings of worthwhile plays, which they cannot give production, and a complete theater school.
From pioneer times, Washington authors have shown an interest in the theater. Joaquin Miller's Forty-niners was included in the repertory of one of the early traveling companies. In 1895 in the Auditorium in Spokane, a light opera, the White Faun, by Professor Franz Mueller with libretto by Reginald F. Mead, was performed. It was described as a "romance of the wide, wild west with Indians, cowboys and refined young ladies disporting on the stage." The Moore Theater in Seattle was opened in 1907 with a comic opera, The Alaskan, by Joseph Blethen, libretto by Harry Girard, both Seattle men. When taken to Broadway, a New York reviewer noted particularly the song "The Totem Pole is My Family Tree."
The Wayfarer, a play "symbolic of doubting, wondering humanity," with scenes showing rivers of ancient Babylon, the plains of Judea, the streets of Jerusalem, and a war-torn village of Flanders, was written by a Seattle man, James E. Crowther, and produced by another Seattle man, Montgomery Lynch; it had its introductory performance at Columbus, Ohio, in 1919, running 24 days, with tremendous crowds in attendance. Later it ran at Madison Square Garden in New York for five weeks. July 24-29, 1922, it was produced out of doors at the University of Washington Stadium and was repeated the following year on popular demand. Gold Eagle Guy, by Melvin Levy, a former Washingtonian, was presented on Broadway; and Wings, by John Monk Saunders, educated at the University of Washington, was an excellent screen presentation.
More recently University of Washington courses in playwriting under Glenn Hughes have given impetus to young authors, and Washington's community and little-theater groups have given encouragement to local playwrights. Seattle Repertory Playhouse has produced plays by Garland Ethel, Albert M. Ottenheimer, Marianne
King, William Kimball, and Glenn Hughes. The prize play See How They Run, by George M. Savage, Jr., was produced by the Federal Theater. The Tacoma Drama League authors include Marietta Hunter Kennard, Elsa Nessensen, and Douglas Wight.
Federal Theater activities in Washington included an art project to build models of historic theaters (the completed models may be seen at Denny Hall on the University campus); a historical research project collecting and classifying material on Washington theaters, 1852-1910, from newspaper and program files; and three acting companies. Notable among the Federal Theater's productions were the Living Newspaper's Power, One Third of a Nation, and Spirochete and the Negro company's Stevedore (written by Theodore Browne, a member of the company), and Brer Rabbit and The Tar Baby. Washington has contributed many famous names to stage and screen. Besides those already mentioned, the roll includes Robert Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Josephine Hutchinson, Constance Cummings, Elena Miramora, Mary Livingstone, Guthrie McClintic, and the dancers, Caird Leslie and Marcel LePlat.
Washington has the equipment, theaters, actors, artists, technicians, musicians, and playwrights needed to create a great theater. It has a history of achievement, and certain groups again show an intense interest in the art of the theater. Its cities may become once more leading theatrical centers of the Pacific Coast.
THE first explorers in the region east of the Cascades found the dwelling of the horse Indians was, quite naturally, the tepee. Light in construction, its simplicity and mobility well suited the nomadic tribes who inhabited the Plains and were constantly changing their camps. But west of the Cascades an entirely different type of dwelling was common—the long house, with walls of crudely split wood and gabled or shed roofs, which were covered with cedar slabs or bark held together with wood pins or, sometimes, thongs. Floors, usually of dirt, had pits in the center for fires. Pins on the walls held dried fish, blankets, and trinkets. When numerous persons occupied the house, tiers of crudely fashioned bunks lined the walls, much in the manner of the early logging-camp bunkhouses.
As fish was the main sustenance of these Indians, many of their dwellings extended over the water on piling. Deep mounds of shells— the accumulated refuse from clams and mussels—mark the sites today. Examples of the long house are located at LaConner and Toppenish. With the entry of the white men, the era of the log cabin began. The log cabins built around 1825 by the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver, the oldest continuous settlement in the State, had a distinct style derived from Canadian and Great Lakes types.
To meet the constant threat of the Indians, the cabins in the various early posts were surrounded by bastions and palisades. The palisades, usually rectangular in plan, were formed of perpendicular rows of logs, driven close together in the ground, with the tips sharpened to prevent scaling. The corners were surmounted by blockhouses: square, peakroofed forts that projected beyond the face of the palisade, the overhang enabling the defenders to fire upon attackers through loop holes in the blockhouse walls.
These first cabins were most primitive, having one room with a crude loft. Then followed cabins having two rooms separated by an open corridor or "dogtrot," which served as entrance and washroom. A steep stairway or ladder led from this passage to the loft. Job Carr's
Cabin, the first house built by white settlers in the Tacoma region, has been reconstructed and is now in Point Defiance Park. Unpeeled logs were used for the early types, although some were not only peeled but squared as well. The bottom log was placed directly on the ground, notched at each end to fit the next log. Cracks were caulked with mud, chips, and moss. This form of construction caused drift and pull, in spite of the wooden pins, and resulted in many lopsided cabins. A good existent example is the two-room Sawyer cabin near Yakima, which, although built in the eighties, represents one of the earliest types. To overcome drift, the end of the log was cut on the upper side in the shape of an inverted V, upon which the end of the next log, cut to match on the lower side, was fitted to form a tighter joint. A good example is the Jackson Prairie Courthouse, south of Mary's Corner. At the time of its building in the 1840's, the house was on a branch of the Oregon Trail.
Roofs were covered with hand-split shingles or shakes, although clay was sometimes used, as for example in the Wayfarer's Cabin at Omak (see Tour Ja). The most common method of supporting the clay was to allow the top log of the end walls to project beyond the side walls sufficiently to support a pole along the eaves, which took the thrust of the close-fitted, clay-covered rafters and rose far enough above them to retain the clay. Along the gable ends the clay was held in place by boards that followed the slope of the roof.
The Whitman Mission, built in 1836 at Waiilatpu (about six miles from Walla Walla), was a rare example of adobe construction in the State. Crudely built by unskilled workmen, the little mission was also roughly, but ingeniously, furnished. Edmond S. Meany, historian, quotes Mrs. Whitman's description: "We had neither straw, bedstead nor table, nor anything to make them of except green cottonwood. All our boards are sawed by hand." The Jesuit Ahtanum Mission, near Yakima, which was built in 1847 and rebuilt in 1872, is a good example of pioneer architecture.
With the advent of sawmills and skilled workmen, about 1837, lumber squared by ax and saw began to replace the rough log; the shifting log-and-pin construction gave way to mortise and tenon, dovetail, and tongue and groove work. The latter system was much used by the Hudson's Bay Company in its forts. An excellent example of the tongue and groove joining is preserved in the restored Fort Nesqually at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, and a typical example of dovetail work may be seen at Fort Simcoe. The Covington House in
Vancouver, the oldest in the State (1845), was reassembled from the original materials in 1931; it shows the dovetail work, clapboarding, and gabled roof.
The interior of the early cabin was as roughhewn as the exterior; the floors were of tamped earth or of puncheons (split logs) covered with planks; windows were unglazed but often covered with hides or canvass; one end of the cabin, marked by a stick and mud or stone fireplace, was used for cooking. Later, the outer wall surfaces, as well as interior walls and ceilings, were finished with vertical boards and battens. Furniture was not only expensive but difficult to obtain. Crude box cupboards, stools, drop-leaf tables secured to the wall, and handmade bedsteads constituted the furnishings of the pioneer house. Following the boom in California (1849-50), sawmills multiplied rapidly in Washington. To these mill settlements came disappointed prospectors from the gold fields and others attracted by the Donation Land Law of 1850; forests were cut to feed the saws, and there arose, not log cabins, but mill houses. Clapboards, shingles, boards, and battens were used for the walls. Usually a story and a half or two stories high, with gabled roofs, the houses stood in uniform ugliness along the muddy streets. Wings, bay windows, hipped roofs, and porches were seen occasionally, but almost invariably the lean-to and the string of outbuildings—woodsheds, stables, milkhouses, and smokehouses—necessary in a period when fall slaughtering, soapmaking, and milking were important home processes.
The settlers, for the most part, were poorer people of New England, the Middle West, and the South, who sought the freedom, opportunity, and equality of the frontier. They followed the rules and conceptions of building known to their fathers. Predominant among the types brought to the West was the New England Colonial. Such houses as Major Granville O. Haller's and Captain Thomas Coupe's sprang up at Coupeville, Whidbey Island. One of the first brick buildings in the Territory was erected during this period (1855-60): the old Whatcom Courthouse at Bellingham, built of bricks from Philadelphia. The Barracks at Vancouver are typical of the period, having log walls sheeted with siding, narrow windows, and severe lines.
The church of the time was typically Georgian Colonial. The simple tower, usually above the portal, was of siding or shingles, broken here and there by small windows or louvers. The tower was frequently surmounted by a belfry, and a round or many-sided steeple. In some cases, such as the Claquato Church (west of Chehalis), the towers showed
excellent mortise and tenon work. In most churches some attempt towards finish was made; woodwork and pews were painted, often a soft yellow, and the walls were papered. The floors, however, were roughly finished.
During the Territorial period, while structures reminiscent of Colonial days were being built in Washington, a new architectural style—the Greek Revival—had developed in the East. It spread westward in the wake of the covered wagon and the oxcart, bringing the Greek style to schools, hotels, jails, and other public buildings, and Greek names to streets and towns—Ionia, Sparta, Athens, Corinth.
The people of early Seattle were determined to have a Territorial university and the building was erected in 1861, on the site now occupied by the Metropolitan Center buildings. Influenced by the Greek Revival, it had a two-story portico with four Ionic columns and classic entablature. Above the cornice ran a balustrade, over which rose the roof crowned by a square drum, in turn balustraded and topped with a belfry. It was the first and last example of classic architecture until almost 1900.
The influence of the Victorian Gothic was not appreciable in Washington until the railroads arrived in the late seventies and eighties. Then, in the "Parvenue Period," it was gratefully received by a people tired of the barrenness of pioneer life and more than eager to portray their social equality with the rest of the Nation. From extreme simplicity, architecture veered to extreme ornamentation; jigsaws and lathes were speeded up in an orgy of production. Houses of the period, such as the two-story Samuel Benn home in Aberdeen (1887), were high and narrow. A high, shallow porch with chamfered posts was often topped by another equally slim and ornamented; towers and roofs were edged with scalloped shingles; chimneys were numerous; bay windows with small diamond panes of colored glass sprang from corners embellished with scrolls, brackets, patterned wood panels, and jigsaw fretwork. The Stacy home in Seattle, built in 1883, shows an adaptation of the French style of the Third Empire, with mansard roof, dormers, and cupola. (It is now used as a restaurant.)
In 1889 disastrous fires swept the wooden business sections of the State's four largest cities. In rebuilding these, wood was replaced by brick, stone, and the new-fangled cast-iron fronts. Columns of one order were piled upon those of another; pilasters ran from base to cornice or, in some cases, embellished every other story. There were cornice-high tiers of bays, crenelated parapets, and fantastic brick and
stone tracery. A mixture of any and all styles commonly appeared: Gothic, Renaissance, Byzantine, Romanesque, and Georgian. The Spokane County Courthouse (1895), an example of modified French Renaissance, the Colfax and Dayton courthouses, and commercial buildings in the older business sections of the larger cities are excellent examples of architecture at the turn of the century. Among the good adaptations of the Gothic are the Saint James Church in Vancouver (1884-5) and the First Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, designed by Ralph Adams Cram.
Just before the twentieth century opened, however, the Romanesque style of architecture as adapted by H. H. Richardson brought a more restrained note. Washington has several good examples, notably the Pierce County Courthouse (1890-3) in Tacoma, built by Proctor and Dennis; the Old Capitol Building at Olympia, built in 1893 after the design of Willis A. Richie; and St. Aloysius Church in Spokane, built in the nineties by Preusse and Zittel. During this same period Stanford White, of McKim, Mead and White, designed the Tacoma Theater and the Tacoma Hotel, which was destroyed by fire in 1935. The theater building is in the style of the Norman chateau. The buildings of the Western Washington College at Bellingham, opened in 1899, are good adaptations of the Romanesque. While the Richardsonian style was not adapted to frame structures, it did influence residential architecture in the State, as elsewhere; the tendency toward the high and narrow gave way to broader and lower lines.
The Romanesque influence persisted into the early 1900's; one of the well-designed later buildings is Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral in Spokane, built in 1908. The Renaissance and Classic styles were still popular for public buildings and churches. Among the outstanding adaptations of the Roman Classic is the Federal Building in Spokane, erected in 1909. The Stadium High School in Tacoma was originally designed by Frederick Heath as a hotel for the Northern Pacific (1906), but was remodeled for use as a school building after the interior had been destroyed by fire; it is a fine example of early French Renaissance style. The Stadium beside it on the water front was constructed in a natural gulch in the form of a classical amphitheater. Tacoma's Public Library (1903) was designed by Jardine, Kent, and Jardine in the French Renaissance style. The Italian Renaissance is well represented by St. James Cathedral in Seattle, built in 1907.
With the growing industrialization of the country, land prices rose higher and higher. Then with the introduction of steel-frame con struction in the later eighties, the skyscraper type of architecture began to evolve. The struggle between old styles and new forms and materials continued; and the early skyscraper represented a compromise solution of the problem based upon the old formula of a classic column: base, shaft, and cap. The first three or four stories constituted the base with columns and classic voids; upon this rose the main shaft which, in turn, was topped with a classic frieze and projecting cornice, often out of all proportion to the building itself. A good example of the early skyscraper is the ten-story County-City Building (1916) in Seattle. Two years before the construction of this building, the 42-story Smith Tower had arisen in the same city. Designed by Gaggin and Gaggin, the Smith Tower is one of the tallest buildings on the Pacific Coast. One of the important building programs in the State was begun during the second decade of the twentieth century—the construction of the Tudor Gothic buildings of the University of Washington in Seattle. Several architects who had come to the State to help in the planning of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (1909) buildings remained to work on the University campus. Other State architects contributed their designs, as the buildings continued to arise between 1913 and 1940. The firm of Bebb and Gould, with Carl F. Gould, one of the leading Northwest architects, and Charles Herbert Bebb, of Mortlake, England, as partners, were responsible for the general plan and for the designs of many individual buildings. Among other architects having a share in the University program were Abraham Horace Albertson, Charles Henry Alden, John Graham, George Willis Lawton (Denny Hall), David J. Myers (Women's Dormitory), and P. D. Richardson. Three buildings of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, designed by John Galen Howard, now stand on the campus at Seattle: Meany Hall, Physiology Hall, and Engineering Hall.
Another large-scale program was begun in 1906 in Seattle: the construction of the Metropolitan Center, a planned business district, said to be the first in the country. John Mead Howells, the late Robert C. Reamer, Isaac N. P. Stokes, and other State architects have helped to design the eight modern structures in Renaissance style, including the Olympic Hotel, which now stand on the site of the old University campus. In 1916 New York City passed an ordinance against the old skyscraper type building, at least in cases of excessive height; other cities were not slow to follow. This indirectly produced the "set-back" type of architecture. The Northern Life Tower (1929) in Seattle, designed
by P. D. Richardson, is one of the best examples in the State. The Larson Building in Yakima, built in 1931 after a design by the local architect, John W. Maloney, the King County Hospital (1931), and the United States Marine Hospital (1932) by Bebb and Gould, both in Seattle, are also in the set-back style.
With the gradual development of modern functional design, numerous buildings have been erected in Washington approaching this ideal. One of the most admirable examples is the Hotel Edmond Meany in Seattle, built in 1931 after the plans of R. C. Reamer. Structural symmetry and free treatment of planes in this building show the influence of post-war German architecture. The city of Everett possesses two unusually good modern structures: the brownstone Public Library (1934). designed by Bebb and Gould with perfect relation to its function; and the City Hall (1930), designed by A. H. Albertson. The Thurston County Courthouse in Olympia, planned by a local architect, Joseph Wohleb, is simple and forthright in design. Seattle's Art Museum (1933), hy Bebb and Gould, is another good example.
The modern style, with its stress on function, has been used frequently in industrial and public buildings. The City Light Building in Seattle (1935), designed by Earl W. Morrison, is exceptionally pleasing and suited to its purpose. An interesting application of modernist design may be seen in the remodeled Colman Street Ferry Terminal (completed in 1937), Loveless and Fay, architects. The Water Department Shop in Tacoma (1939) succeeds in being both attractive and functionally admirable. The big United States Courthouse Building, recently completed in Seattle, is distinctly modern. Interesting architecturally and reflecting the dominant industries of the State are the numerous lumber mills, paper and plywood plants, canneries, oyster-packing plants, dehydrating plants, piers, grain elevators and docks, found especially in the port cities. Prominent among these are the Weyerhaeuser Sulphite-Pulp Plant at Everett, the Terminal Grain Elevator in Vancouver, the Aberdeen Plywood Plant, Olympia's Oyster-Packing Plant, Fisher Flouring Mills Company and Boeing Aircraft Company plants in Seattle, the Tacoma Smelter, the dehydrating plants in Yakima, and the piers of Seattle, Vancouver, Everett, Grays' Harbor, and Tacoma.
As in other States, the traditional styles have been used for special purposes. Thus, the neo-Classic style is still popular for such buildings as post offices, libraries, banks, and public buildings. Examples may be seen in the Seattle Public Library and, most imposing of all, in the
Photograph courtesy Washington State Progress Commission
VIEW OF THE OLYMPIC MOUNTAINS FROM SEATTLE
MOUNT BAKER FROM MOUNT CONSTITUTION IN SAN JUAN ISLANDS
Photograph courtesy Washington State Progress Commission
NORTH HEAD LIGHTHOUSE AT ENTRANCE TO CoLUMBIA RIVER
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water it.
SUNSET OVER THE PACIFIC AS SEEN FROM THE OLYMPIC PENINSULA AIRVIEW, DECEPTION PASS BRIDGE
Photograph courtesy of Seattle Po»t-Intelligencer
HALIBUT FLEET IN SEATTLE HARBOR FISHERMEN REPAIRING NETS ON OPEN DOCKS AT SALMON BAY TERMINAL
(This work is now done in a net shed constructed by the WPAl Photograph courtesy of Seattle Post-lntelligencer
PURSE SEINING, PUGET SOUND
- Photograph courtesy Washington State Progress Commission
SURF FISHING
DIGGING FOR CLAMS
Photograph courtesy Washington State Progress Commission
Photograph by Otto At. Jones
INDIAN CREWS BRING THEIR CRAFT NEAR THE FINISH LI
IN THE INTERNATIONAL WAR CANOE SWEEPSTAK
SAILBOATS RACING ON PUGET SOUND
Photograph by A. N. Nick
BACHELOR'S HALL TAKES TO THE AIR
An old houseboat is being lifted onto a new raft
A CATCH OF SALMON FROM PUGET SOUND waters -
State Capitol Buildings at Olympia. The Legislative Building, with its dome modeled after that of the Capitol at Washington, D. C, would have warmed the hearts of classicists a century ago. The group, designed in Roman-Doric style by Wilder and White, of New York City, was begun in 1911, and the latest building was finished in 1935. The Governor's Mansion, strictly and beautifully Georgian in style, in contrast to the other buildings, was designed by Bebb and Gould, of Seattle, consulting architects for the whole group.
The Gothic has been generally adapted for churches and schools. The University of Washington buildings at Seattle and those of the College of Puget Sound (1924) in Tacoma, designed by the local firm of Sutton, Whitney and Dugan, are excellent treatments of collegiate Gothic. The Community Church at Longview, the unfinished Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Spokane, designed by Whitehouse and Price, and St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle (1928-31) finely illustrate the ecclesiastical Gothic. The Trinity Episcopal Church (1921) in Everett, designed by E. T. Osborne of Seattle, is a noteworthy example of the perpendicular, or late English, Gothic style. Holy Rosary Church in Tacoma, designed by C. Frank Mahon of Seattle, is an admirable adaptation of the Gothic; its tower was voted by architects of the region as the finest example of Gothic architecture in the Northwest. Holy Rosary Church in Seattle (1938), also designed by Mr. Mahon, is an outstanding example of Lombard Romanesque, a style born in Italy and, in the opinion of the architect, eminently suited to the Northwest. Its campanile, as in the Italian churches, is the dominant feature. Another good adaptation of the Romanesque is the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (1926) in Everett.
Washington offers unusual examples of modern engineering and structural design in its huge dams and many notable bridges. Largest among the dams are the Grand Coulee, Cushman, Long Lake, Cle Elum, Bonneville (partly in Oregon), Lake Chelan, Diablo at Skagit River, and the Ariel on the Lewis River. Interesting also are the Lake Wash- ington Ship Canal Locks at Seattle (completed in 1916 under the direc- tion of Carl F. Gould), with a capacity second only on this continent to the Panama Canal.
The Longview Bridge (1930) over the Columbia, connecting Washington and Oregon, is the longest cantilever span in the country and also the highest over a navigable stream. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which recently collapsed, was one of the longest of the suspension type ever constructed; and the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, com-
pleted in 1940 at Seattle, is the largest concrete pontoon bridge in the world. The George Washington Memorial Bridge in Seattle (1932) is a noteworthy example of the deck-cantilever type. The Monroe Street Bridge in Spokane (1911) is one of the most graceful structures in the State.
Washington's contemporary architecture, as a whole, displays an honest use of materials and a sense of the relation between form and function. School buildings, such as those constructed with the aid of the Federal Housing Commission in Bellingham and Mount Vernon, reflect this modern point of view. Several new banks in Seattle, designed by C. A. Merriam and the firm of McClelland and Jones, show the same trend.
In domestic architecture, forms that are more appropriate to the local setting are gradually developing.