0509, 2022

Virginia V and the Mosquito Fleet

Washington Our Home
September 5, 2022
History, Maritime, Podcast, Puget Sound, Western Washington
0
307

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | RSS | More

Before there were roads around the Puget Sound region, there were rivers. Before the stagecoaches, there were Salish canoes. And before the planes, the trains, and the automobiles…there was the water, and the ships that traveled upon it. In the earliest days of human habitation in what is now Washington State, the fastest way to get from place to place around the Salish Sea was by paddling a canoe, whether

0205, 2022

Historic Fort Steilacoom

Washington Our Home
May 2, 2022
History, Military, Podcast, Western Washington
0
776

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | RSS | More

Located in Pierce County, western Washington, in the City of Lakewood are the remnants of a once critical military instillation known as Fort Steilacoom. It occupies the same piece of land where today’s Western State Hospital exists – another historic topic for a future podcast episode, to be sure. But Fort Steilacoom, by its own right, has firmly entrenched itself in the history of Washington State. Built in 1849 to

0401, 2021

Earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | RSS | More

Two weeks after Valentine’s Day, 2001, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the south sound region of Washington state near where the Nisqually River empties into Puget Sound. It was nearly 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, and the state legislature was in full swing. The violent tremors lasted nearly a minute, rocking the state capital of Olympia and the nearby cities of Lacey, Tumwater, Nisqually, DuPont, and Shelton. The shocks registered

0302, 2020

Medicine Creek: In Search of Treaty Tree

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | RSS | More

In 1854, the Medicine Creek Treaty between regional Native American tribes and Washington’s territorial government kicked off a years-long conflict that forever changed the story of the Pacific Northwest. Sixty-eight years later, in 1922, the Sacajawea Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a bronze plaque commemorating the momentous treaty, upon the single remaining Douglas Fir that remained at the place where the treaty was signed. It became

0204, 2012

Young man in a hurry: The life of Isaac Stevens

Washington Our Home
April 2, 2012
Central Washington, History, Legislature, Western Washington
6
3025

Isaac Ingalls Stevens was the first governor of the newly-formed Washington Territory in 1853. I’ve been reading more about the significance of his life since I began diving into library books about Washington state history. In a previous post I wrote about how I visited the cemetery where our first territorial lieutenant governor, Charles Mason, is buried. He served as the acting governor of Washington Territory while Isaac Stevens was