Ezra Meeker’s Boom Years
Dennis M. Larsen ’68
WSU Press: 2016
The demands of craft brewing in the last few years, along with declining European hops production, has driven the price of hops up as much as 50 percent, creating a windfall for growers in Washington. It’s not the first time in state history that hops brought a grower financial success.
Puyallup Valley pioneer Ezra Meeker first started planting hops as a cash … » More …
A sampling of Northwest locations in the National Park Service Centennial Photo Gallery.
Explore additional NPS centennial photo gallery images across the United States.
Read about “Preserving the story of America.”
It started with a sea voyage and a jellyfish.
Master glassblower Leopold Blaschka was already a successful maker of glass eyes when he fell ill in 1853. His doctor prescribed time at sea and Blaschka spent the journey from Bohemia to the U.S. and back drawing and studying sea creatures. Back home, Blaschka began making and selling cunningly accurate models of invertebrates, in part because he had already invented glass spinning, a technique that enabled him to create very detailed—and anatomically accurate—glass pieces.
Before the invention of photography, hand-drawn and blown glass models of organisms were highly sought after. Blaschka’s sea creatures were based not … » More …
Fort Hunt was built during the Spanish-American War on a portion of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate to help bolster the Potomac River’s coastal defenses.
It later served as a staging point for the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, hosted an ROTC unit for African American soldiers during segregation, and now is managed by the National Park Service.
But until historians began digging, a clandestine piece of the 136-acre site’s military service was so tightly hidden away, it was at risk of being lost forever.
“This started coming together during a tour when someone raised their hand and mentioned their neighbor used … » More …
When the United States formally became a nation in 1787, everyone involved, from George Washington down, knew there was a piece missing. The nation might be bound together by a Constitution, but it actually remained a conglomeration of states, religions, ethnicities, regions and cultures. The lack of national unity was a serious threat, as the Civil War would demonstrate.
But how do you create national feeling? As twentieth-century philosopher Allen Bloom put it: “How do you get from individuals to a people, that is, from persons who care only for their particular good to a community of citizens who subordinate their good to the common … » More …
Doug Bradley ’74 and Craig Werner
University of Massachusetts Press: 2015
Music is embodied, a word that means it grabs you by the guts until you do something: dance, weep, make love … something. Music is visceral in another way, too: We connect the dots of our personal histories based on the tunes we were listening to at the time.
For a veteran, that might be more than she … » More …
Gustav Sohon (1825–1903) was an artist, interpreter, and topographical assistant. Sohon executed some of the earliest landscape paintings of the Pacific Northwest. One of his first assignments was with Lieutenant John Mullan, who was surveying the country between the Rocky and Bitterroot Mountains for the Pacific Railroad Surveys led by Isaac Stevens.
Read about Mullan in our feature “Lost Highway.”
In March 1965 WSU photographer James H. Barker, ASWSU President Dave Warren, and economics instructor Robert Cole joined and documented the march to Selma in support of voting rights for African Americans.Read more in “Seeing Selma.”
Photos by James H. Barker
Politics & Influence of Christian Missions in Northwest Alaska 1897–1918
Anthony Urvina ’85 with Sally Urvina
University of Alaska Press: 2016
Tucked away in cabinets and forgotten closets at the Alaska regional offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Juneau was a collection of old documents known simply as the Reindeer Files.
Anthony Urvina ’85, a natural resource manager at the BIA, began digging through them in 2003 while trying to … » More …
Apple trees were among the first food-bearing plants brought here to help make life more bearable for those who considered themselves English no matter on which side of the Atlantic they chose to live. In an age when water was suspect—as well it should have been for only shallow wells were in use—any sweet juice that could be turned into fermented liquor was considered as necessary as it was popular. And cider—drunk sweet, allowed to harden and often turned into brandy—was the most popular colonial juice of all. Drinking vessels from which to quaff the beverage were as diverse as the homes in which … » More …