Diablo Dam incline railway climbing Sourdough Mountain, 1930. Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, 2306.
Children waving to ferry, 1950. Courtesy Museum of History and Industry.
Loggers in the Northwest woods. Courtesy Washington State Digital Archives.
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Ten years ago this week, on March 22, 2014, a catastrophic landslide near the community of Oso – between Arlington and Darrington in Snohomish County – killed 43 people, making it the deadliest landslide disaster in United States history. Besides loss of life, the disaster had severe impacts on the local economy and environment, and damaged a half-mile section of State Route 530, which took months to repair. The landslide was a stark reminder of how dangerous and unpredictable Washington's landscape can be.
Fifteen millennia ago, the retreat of Ice Age glaciers gouged out Puget Sound and released floods that tore up Eastern Washington. These shaped the basic landscape, which fluctuated even as the first humans moved into the region. Approximately 5,600 years ago, a landslide at Mount Rainier produced a mudflow that spread northward as far as modern-day Kent. As recently as 1450, a landslide in what is now Skamania County completely blocked the Columbia River, creating a lake 100 miles long. When the water finally burst through, it gouged out nearly four miles of rapids – a boon for Native American fishermen, but a bane for travelers.
In modern times, we've seen Mount Saint Helens blow its lid, which led to the deaths of 57 people. Fifteen years ago, a massive landslide in Yakima County demolished a half-mile of highway and redirected the flow of the Naches River, but caused no loss of life. And given the number of fault zones that traverse the region, we can expect more geological movement in our future. How well we prepare is up to us.
Just months after Edison's men flipped the switch in Seattle, Tacomans began lighting their city streets and running trolley lines with power bought from private firms. The city found this arrangement unacceptable. Tacoma was in the vanguard of the municipal-ownership movement when it took control of its own public utilities and began harnessing the power of nearby rivers. This week also marks the March 23, 1926, anniversary of the first delivery of electricity from Cushman Dam No. 1.
An even greater event in the annals of Washington's hydroelectric history took place on March 22, 1941. On that day, two small service generators at Grand Coulee Dam went online for the first time, sending some 10,000 kilowatts of electricity into the Bonneville Power Administration’s transmission network. Small as it was, there was more hoopla for this event than when the dam's main generators began to fire up just a few months later.
News Then,History Now
Out at the Cape
On March 22, 1778, Captain James Cook gave Cape Flattery its current name after he unwittingly missed the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Captains Robert Gray and George Vancouver met near the same spot 14 years later. Vancouver left to explore Puget Sound and Gray went on to find the Columbia River.
Good for the Grape
On March 26, 1892, three years after Walter Granger organized the Yakima Land and Canal Company, water gushed into the Sunnyside Canal for the first time. Farmers and orchardists soon established themselves along the canal, and although the Panic of 1893 slowed work on expanding the irrigation system, it eventually led to bountiful harvests in the Yakima Valley, and later proved beneficial for the state's wine industry.
A City Takes Shape
After Quincy was established as a stop on the Great Northern Railway line in 1892, an influx of homesteaders began settling in the area. By the turn of the century, the growing community had a hotel, general store, real-estate office, lumber yard, livery stable, and hardware store. On March 27, 1907, residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of incorporation and elected the first town officials.
Wedding Day
A century ago, marriages between men and women of different races were banned by many states, including California, where Gunjiro Aoki and Gladys Emery fell in love. The press tracked their elopement to Seattle, where they tied the knot on March 27, 1909, at Trinity Parish Church.
Here to Play
On March 26, 1917, the Seattle Metropolitans hockey team – coached by Pete Muldoon – won the Stanley Cup by defeating the Montreal Les Canadiens Habitants three games to one. Both teams played in the Stanley Cup finals two years later, but the championship match was cancelled after five games – the last being held on March 29, 1919 – due to that era's flu pandemic.
News to Convey
Seattle's first underground newspaper, Helix, hit the streets on March 23, 1967. It was founded by Paul Dorpat and published over the next three years by a band of co-conspirators (in)famous for also dropping pianos from helicopters and staging multi-day outdoor rock festivals.
"Daily it is forced home on the mind of the geologist that nothing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the level of the crust of this Earth."