Book Description

Primary source material is the current buzz concept among historians. This colorful and fascinating collection of documents traces the paper trail that is the story of Washington State from its years as a territory starting in 1854 (showing the officially recorded seal of the Washingtonia held in the Washington State Archives) to the Google map of the state that is archived in the cloud. In that 150-year span we have a letter from the chief surveyor of the territory to the acting governor in 1860 protesting the protection that a Canadian boat has given to his escaped slave. We have Governor Pickering's transcribed telegram to President Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of Thanksgiving 1864. The Point Elliot Treaty is a poignant document that transfers all of the land that becomes Seattle from the various Native tribes. A series of letters from a young woman in Spokane to her boyfriend laments the "sporting life" she finds her self mired in (that would be prostitution). The book includes posters and letters that support and condemn women's right to vote; prohibition of the sale of alcohol; aid to the unemployed during the Great Depression. Here are the manifests for materials to create the massive and highly secretive "instant" city at Richland that was the Manhattan Project. The Cold War invaded Washington, and the American Legion distributed their brochure entitled How to Spot a Communist. The modern era is represented by an ad for the first Lame Fest concert featuring Mudhoney and Nirvana, the original box that contained Windows 95, a post calling all protesters to the WTO conference, the Good Fruit Grower's celebratory comments on the rise of merlot. Historian Lorraine McConaghy has traversed the state and sifted through the files of over 100 disparate archives to cull some 400+ items represented in this book.