Over the years, April 25th has grown into a date circled on the calendar by our team at the Washington State Archives.
On April 25, 1963, the Olympia Archives Building opened up “in the shadow of the Capitol Dome,” ready to take records into what was seen at the time as a technologically-advanced facility.
The Washington State Archives’ Digital Archives has an extensive collection of census records from across the state, dating back to 1847 — 42 years before Washington became a state.
Researchers at the State Archives recently came across these photos of the aftermath from the Wellington avalanche, a disaster that struck the Cascade Mountains near Stevens Pass in 1910.
Seattle is proudly preparing to field a National Hockey League team starting in 2021, the first major league hockey team to hail from the city in nearly a century.
The Well Fed, Well Read campaign is an annual food and book drive put on by the Combined Fund Drive, Thurston County Food Bank, and South Sound Reading Foundation.
Some of Washington state's most prosperous cities were, at some time in the past, nearly destroyed by fire. In 1887, a fire reduced half of Walla Walla to ash. In 1889, Seattle, Spokane, and Ellensburg all experienced conflagrations that changed each city's developmental trajectory.
The University of Washington Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture has been collecting zoological specimens for more than 130 years to help document critters from Washington state and around the world.
This 1933 photo features the cake for Washington Governor Clarence Martin's inauguration to his first term in office. From the Susan Parish Photograph Collection, 1889-1990.
Years ago, the Washington state legislature included a Senate Committee on Public Morals.
Gunshots rang through downtown Spokane in a firefight between Fred “Tiger” Johnson and the police as Johnson attempted to flee across Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railway yards. After he robbed a streetcar, he attempted to avoid arrest but was outgunned by law enforcement. Tiger was shot twice, then booked by the Sheriff's Office on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, highway robbery, and first-degree assault.
