Prospectors headed to the 1897 gold rush in Alaska had to bring tons of provisions with them. Some imagined the possibility of airships carrying freight and gold back and forth to the Klondike, and suddenly, airships were being "seen" all over the world.

The Pacific Coast’s only indigenous oyster, the Olympia, was eaten into near-extinction. It could be making a comeback.

Tiny compared to other oysters, the Olympia was for decades raked out of Washington's beds by the ton. A local delicacy that once fueled gold diggers in California and loggers in Washington, the Olympia oyster became a major industry, yet was so tiny you could hold it between your fingertips. Invasive Japanese oysters took over its habitat, but the might Olympia might be making a comeback, thanks to interested shellfish farmers.

Bustling Seattle was building one freeway after another in the 1960s and 70s. One was going to slice right through the Washington Park Arboretum, until citizen activists stopped it in its tracks.

A racist Oregon Territory law drove George Bush, a free Black man, across the Columbia River to settle near what is now Olympia. Bush was Puget Sound's first settler and paved the way for what would become Washington state. Artifacts uncovered in Bush Prairie, George Bush's 1845 homestead, give clues about the family life of Puget Sound's first settler.

The UW "Boys in the Boat' crew is famous for beating the Nazis in the 1936 Olympics, but there was another race that pitted the vaunted Husky team against Native Swinomish paddlers. This is the story of how a race between rival crews brought Native and UW paddlers closer to the sport — and each other.

A rare photograph shows President Kennedy's 1961 detour under an unfinished Space Needle. The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, also called the Century 21 Exposition, was about the future, but it was rooted in the politics of the present. Organizers wanted nothing more than a visit by President John F. Kennedy. It didn’t happen. Or did it?