Former Staff
3/25/15 – Fishing with Brando
The Indian Affairs series in the Washington State Department of Fisheries central files was probably the last place we’d have looked for a reference to Hollywood, yet there was Marlon Brando’s name, as plain as day. In 1964, we learned, Brando participated in a fish-in along with a Puyallup tribal leader, defying Washington state law… Read the Rest »
3/18/15 – Favorite Reading Rooms: Seattle Municipal Archives
Editor’s Note: This week’s blog is part of our ongoing series on our favorite reading rooms. See previous installments here and here. Growing up a ferry ride away from Seattle, I can attest to the accuracy of the city’s reputation of gray skies, constant drizzle, and excellent coffee. What’s funny is that it took moving away… Read the Rest »
2/25/15 – Snowflake Bentley
A recent article in The Vault, Slate’s history blog, on illustrations of snowflakes from the 1860s caught our eye at SHRA, especially because it referenced Wilson Bentley, a figure better known to all Vermont school children as Snowflake Bentley.[i] Bentley, a farmer from Jericho, Vermont, followed the exquisite snowflake drawings of the 1860s with the… Read the Rest »
2/18/15 – YMCA Seattle
When SHRA researchers travel, we don’t limit ourselves to finding history just in the archives. The interdisciplinary nature of history allows historians to cast our net wide and glean historical understanding and appreciation from everything around us. While on a recent trip to Seattle, we found a plethora of valuable sources in the archive, but… Read the Rest »
2/16/15 – White Pine Camp
This winter I had the chance to spend time in a historic part of the Adirondack Mountains of New York. Adirondack Park – the largest state-level protected area in the continental United States and the largest National Historic Landmark – covers much of northeastern Upstate New York and played an essential role in the environmental… Read the Rest »
2/11/15 -Better Buy Her an Electric Toaster
“Does Your Wife Yawn when You Kiss Her?” asked a Seattle Times headline from July, 1957.[i] “Better Buy Her an Electric Toaster.” The latest romance, the article promised, was not between men and women, but “between women and electrical gadgets.” This sentiment was not surprising given the strong advertisement and sales campaigns during the previous… Read the Rest »
2/9/15 – Wolf Reintroduction
While not a find in the archives, we’ve just reached the 20th anniversary of a landmark event in environmental history: the reintroduction of wolves to Idaho and Yellowstone. In what a recent Idaho Statesman article called “one of the most controversial wildlife projects of the century,” in 1995 and 1996, 66 wolves were live-trapped in… Read the Rest »
1/28/15 – The Art of Flood Control
When you spend as much time reading through archival documents as we do at SHRA, sometimes there’s nothing as nice as flipping the page to find not a letter or report, but a drawing. Recently, Army Corps of Engineers papers from the early 1970s yielded just such a find. The sketches – each offering a… Read the Rest »
1/26/15 – Fighting Over Water
‘“I believe I hit him first,”’ the farmer reported. ‘“Then he picked up a chair and hit me over the head.’” Two men fighting in the American West in the late 1920s might not seem related to SHRA’s research. But in this case, the farmer was furious that he was not receiving enough irrigation water… Read the Rest »
1/21/15 – Little Leather Library Corporation
This past holiday season, one of SHRA’s researchers received a gift with a historical twist. Tucked under the tree were copies of Abe Lincoln’s Speeches and Addresses and Edgar Allen Poe’s The Gold Bug. However, what made these publications unique was their small stature. Rising a mere three and a quarter inches and stretching four… Read the Rest »