Washington Territory History Project

04/01/2026

What's the depth there at the marina?

12/20/2025

PSA: There is a 100% chance of weather today, and at least 100% tomorrow.

11/24/2025

Pictured here is The Fidelity Building at 11th and Broadway in downtown Tacoma. It doesn't exist today, sadly. It was razed and replaced by the new Woolworth building in 1949. The Woolworth building isn't there anymore either.

Many folks identify Seattle's Alaska Building as "first" in at least a couple of categories. The two that come to mind are first steel-framed building, and at 203 feet, the first "skyscraper", which also made it the tallest building in the state from the time of its completion in 1904 until bested by Spokane's National Bank Building in 1910. But the Alaska Building actually wasn't first in either of the aforementioned categories if we include Tacoma highrises that no longer exist.

The Fidelity building was originally a 6-story building, completed in 1890, and yes, it was steel-framed. As far as I know, the first such construction in the state. Fidelity Trust was one of the largest financial institutions in the state.

The building's interesting two-tone appearance, and the fact that it sure looks like it identifies as a 12-story building in this picture, came as a result of a major expansion that was begun in 1907 or 1908, and certainly completed by 1909. At that time, it reined as the tallest building in Tacoma until the nearby National Realty building was topped out in 1912 at 233 feet, some 14 feet taller than Spokane's pride and joy, and making it the tallest building in the state until the Smith Tower in Seattle was completed just two years later.

This building also holds a special place in Creviston family lore.

One hundred years ago this past June 6th, the driver of Reo Roadster parked two and a half blocks away and got out, forgetting to set the brake. The empty roadster went flying down the hill along the sidewalk adjacent to 11th, eventually plowing into a crowd of people at the intersection with Broadway. Two of the people were run over and dragged by the car across the street several dozen feet until the roadster crashed in a heap into the northeast corner of the Fidelity Building. A 39-year-old woman named Lena Bradley was killed instantly.

Also killed was the former Chief Justice of the Washington State Supreme Court, Judge Merritt J. Gordon. Since retiring from the high bench, he more recently had served as chief counsel for the Great Northern Railway before scandal forced him out and into private practice. After his first wife died in 1922, he married my great-grandmother's younger sister Patricia "Minnie" (Creviston) Bergeson and adopted her two children, Virginia and Conrad, or as I knew him, "Conny".

Anyhow, that's the story. Maybe someday I'll tell another tale about how, when I was 7 1/2 years old, that I quite unintentionally found out I could run a whole lot faster than my oldest brother Sean. Conny was impressed, I think.

11/20/2025

"No Burnt Cork Offering" was a late 19th and early 20th century term used to describe a legitimate minstrel troupe with genuine black actors and musicians to separate it from blackface performers and troupes. Burnt cork was apparently what was used to darken the faces of white people in the latter type of performers, which also reveals a general distaste for the notion of white people disrespectfully lampooning black people, even back in those early days.

The attached picture of the minstrel troupe was taken on July 3, 1900. I found it on the Smithsonian Institute's website, and it depicts "George and Hart's Up-To-Date Georgia Minstrels" in front of their custom rail car at an unknown location somewhere in Missouri.

"George" was a man named J. Edward George, and "Hart" was Gardner Elijah Hart. Both were Minnesota men, George from Winnebago and Hart from Pipestone. The troupe itself went by different names over the years and claimed lineage dating back 30 years which, if verifiable, would have predated any involvement by either George or Hart. This lengthy existence is probably an embellishment.

In any case, Mr. George is standing third from the left in the white coat and shirt and boater hat. The women on either side are his wife Catherine "Kitty" (Creviston) and his mother, Flora Ann (McKee) George. The man to the right in a dark suit and his left hand in his pocket is Gardner Hart. I don't know the names of the rest of the folks.

Kitty Creviston was my great-grandmother's older sister. Imagine my surprise when I found her photo in the Smithsonian!

This troupe was fairly popular around the western half of the United States in the 1890s and early 1900s, getting good press everywhere they performed.

09/09/2025

A story about the 1856 hanging of Chief Chenoweth endures. It tells us that, with a rope around his neck and facing his imminent death, he took a moment to look upon his "guard" Amos Underwood and, paraphrasing, told him he was a trustworthy man and then gave him his daughter Taswatha for marriage.

Amos and Taswatha did indeed marry, and they had children together. From then on she was called Ellen Underwood. But this tale about the giving of Taswatha to Amos Underwood, by her father Chief Chenoweth, is problematic for several reasons.

For starters, Taswatha already had a daughter by the time this marriage took place. Or, at the very least, she was pregnant. Her daughter Isabelle was born on the 21st of May in 1857 according to various records, none of which were recorded at the time, mind you, so it is possible that her birthdate, although specific, could have been inaccurate. In any case, throughout her lifetime she listed her biological father as William King Lear, reportedly a soldier in the 9th Infantry. The story is sparse from here, but apparently Lear disappeared and didn't play much, if any role in his daughter's life, and she was raised by Amos Underwood as his own.

Lear, at least at the time, was not a soldier but a civilian being paid by the Army for his services as a packer. He was paid $90 a month, a tidy sum in those days, and he is recorded as being there at the military outpost in the gorge, Fort Cascades, for a succession of several months up until August of 1856. From there he disappears from the record until 1860 when he can be found in military records, still attached to the 9th at Fort Bellingham in today's Whatcom County.

Now let's do the math. If William King Lear and Taswatha got together in August of 1856, and 9 months later a baby was born, this is entirely consistent with the listed birthdate of Isabelle, 9 months later, in May of 1857. So, that Lear was her father makes perfect sense, and it is known that Isabelle was then raised by Amos Underwood and Taswatha, and when she came of age, she married Amos' brother Edward Underwood, which means she was simultaneously Amos' stepdaughter and sister-in-law. Pioneer times were plenty confusing!

But here's the problem. Chief Chenoweth was hanged on March 31, 1856, nearly 14 months before Isabelle was apparently born. If he "gave" his daughter Taswatha to Amos right before he was executed, how can it also be the case that William King Lear impregnated that same daughter just 5 months later?

To complicate matters further, Amos was a part of the Oregon Volunteers, and they were documented to have been in the Walla Walla country in late 1855, engaged in a pitched battle with those Indians in December when Chief PeoPeoMoxMox was killed in captivity which, it is said, this was an event Amos was a witness to.

After a hard winter near Wallula Gap, the Volunteers then went to the Snake River canyon in hunt of more hostiles before finally disbanding in early June of 1856. Again, Chief Chenoweth was hanged in late March of 1856, making it really hard to explain how he could have told Amos Underwood anything at all, assuming Amos was still with the Oregon Volunteers. Both accounts cannot be simultaneously true.

Pioneer tales are often full of embellishments, my own family history being a prime, glaring example. And often they are riddled with complete fabrications in order to gussie up the mundane past and make it look more interesting than it really was. It's too bad, really. I think the actual truth is usually plenty interesting on its own merits, and these tall tales only muddy the waters and make that actual truth harder to see.

So, the way I see it is this. Either Amos Underwood took part in the Battle of Walla Walla, the most protracted and costly engagement of the Indian Wars, or he wasn't there at all, and instead he was at Fort Cascades watching Chief Chenoweth about to be hanged. I seriously doubt both accounts can be true. And since we have actual records showing Amos was a part of the Oregon Volunteers, and since the math works well with the documented history of William King Lear's presence at Fort Cascades until 9 months before Isabelle Lear Underwood was born, I think we can label the tale of Chief Chenowith, with a noose around his neck in March of 1856, giving away his daughter Taswatha to Amos as being a very, very tall tale indeed.

09/02/2025

Such a great loss. Rest in peace Graham!

08/26/2025

The Coyote Wall, sometimes erroneously called "The Syncline", is an impressive, tilted basalt columnar cliff on the Washington side of the Columbia between Bingen/White Salmon and Lyle, best appreciated from across the river from Mosier, Oregon, where the attached picture was taken from.

I say "erroneously" because, geologically speaking, this is a part of the "Bingen Anticline", not a syncline. You can look those up if you're interested in definitions, but the reason for this post is because the Coyote Wall holds some special significance to me where it concerns my family history.

In late 1855 my 3rd Great Grandfather, Joseph Bradshaw, was deployed to Washington Territory as a member of the U.S. Army's 9th Infantry. They went by sea to Aspinwall in Panama, then by rail across the isthmus, the railroad having been completed earlier that year. From there they went by sea to Puget Sound and Fort Steilacoom. His wife Elizabeth, known as "Betsey", along with her toddler daughter (my great-great grandmother), had to find her own way out west to join him. This was because a few years earlier when the 4th Infantry was sent to Oregon Territory via Panama, families of the soldiers were allowed to come along as well. This was before the railroad across Panama existed, and the ensuing trek across the isthmus resulted in massive portions of the travelers getting so sick from jungle diseases that they couldn't leave for many weeks, and more than few died. The Army was not going to be accommodating or even encouraging families to come along in future deployments as a result.

So Betsey, now pregnant, along with her 1 1/2-year-old daughter Sarah, packed up all they owned and trekked from Fort Monroe, Virginia to Missouri, then across the Oregon Trail to The Dalles, a journey that took many months. They arrived at some point prior to August of 1856 and that's when and where her second child, Joseph Jr. was born.

It's hard to know where Joseph and Betsey and the children lived, but a book on the history of the gorge by James Attwell suggests that they lived at Mosier for at least part of the time. In any case, Joseph re-enlisted in the Army for another 5 years at The Dalles in June of 1859, and he either did that because he and Betsey had split up and he didn't have anything better to do with his life, or they split up because he re-enlisted. We will likely never know, because Betsey began telling a tale about how her husband "died soon after arriving" and it's a story that she stuck with until the end of her life, and one that the family of today believed until only recently when I discovered Joseph actually went on to live a fairly long life, dying in 1888 in Los Angeles.

So, by 1860 for sure, Betsey was with another man named William Gilmer. Their first child George was born in 1861, probably while they lived just a handful of miles south of The Dalles along Mill Creek somewhere. What is known of their lives during the next decade comes from George, and he said that they lived in Mosier and eventually across the river at "Rowland Bottom" during the latter half of the decade.

Rowland Bottom is what is known today as Rowland Lake, which back then was just a cove of the Columbia River, and it would be at the extreme right edge of this picture.

The Gilmer family is counted here in the 1870 census, one of only perhaps 5 or 6 total families living along the river between Bingen/White Salmon and Dallesport. Sarah, just 16-years-old at the time, was already the mother of two children, and stepmother of another child, and is listed in the same census about 10 miles away, with her husband William Creviston as one of perhaps 5 or 6 families living between Bingen/White Salmon and modern-day Stevenson, which didn't exist yet. I've since confirmed the location as the relatively flat area along the river below Underwood where the Broughton Mill now sits, shown as "Hood" on today's maps. It's possible the Crevistons gave it that name.

I have one earlier mention in historical documents of the Gilmer family at Rowland Bottom that strongly suggests the location of their homestead. In a book on the history of Klickitat County, William Gilmer's home is identified as one of the three polling places where county residents would go to vote during elections. This is in 1868. That same publication identifies the precinct and voting location by name as "15-Mile Point". Nothing on today's maps carries that name, but taking into consideration that Rockland, which is today's Dallesport, was designated as the County Seat at the time (just some guy's house, by the way), and Rockland had a boat landing, it makes sense that this landing would be the landmark or starting point for measuring anything along the river by miles. It also makes sense that anything called a "point" would be, well..."pointy".

Just at the base of the Coyote Wall is a jutting point that sticks out into the Columbia. It happens to be almost exactly 15 miles from where the landing at Rockland was. Further, research by Klickitat County historian and researcher Ralph Brown has identified a very early settlement along the shore at what is now Rowland Lake, occupied long before Mr. Rowland ever lived there and graced the place with his name. So, to me...this is enough confirmation to declare that Rowland Lake is the likely location of the original Gilmer Homestead, within a reasonable degree of confidence anyhow.

The Gilmers would leave this location in 1871 and settle in what is now called the Gilmer Valley, which is marked on today's maps as "Gilmer". After William Gilmer died in 1881, Betsey remarried once again to a man named Stephen Whitcomb, the original owner and builder of the Whitcomb-Cole cabin (pictured) which now sits at the headquarters of the Conboy Lake Wildlife Refuge in a restored state and is opened for visitors to enter and have a look.

The same year the Gilmers moved to the Gilmer Valley, Sarah and her husband, along with three children, moved to Puget Sound at were the first settlers at Lakebay, giving that place its name, and that is where she'd raise a total of 12 children.

08/18/2025

Norman Palmer Jr. was just 19-years-old when he was killed on March 26, 1856 near modern-day Stevenson. His older sister Emily (Palmer) Bell, in a letter to her father back in Illinois, expressed her desire to be buried next to her brother upon her death, which occurred in McMinnville in 1863 when consumption finally took her. The graves, just the two of them, were lost to time, forgotten, until 1914 when a road crew constructing a road through the gorge happened upon them while clearing dense underbrush on the eastern shore of Icehouse Lake, which is near Bridge of the Gods.
The graves were exhumed and moved to their present location, just over the embankment from the parking lot at the foot of the bridge on the Washington side, where they have been ever since.

That's an interesting story all by itself, I suppose, especially when the date of Norman Jr.'s death is taken into account. That was the day warriors from a confederation of tribes including the Yakama, Klickitat and Cascades Indians attacked the three settlements at "Cascades City", as they were sometimes called, which included the Upper, Middle and Lower Landing along the Cascades of the Columbia, today between Stevenson and North Bonneville, Washington. Norman Jr. had been killed and scalped that day in 1856, his body found in the pond next to the sawmill three days later. But that is far from all there is to say about this family, Emily in particular.

Norman Palmer Sr. led his elder children over the Oregon Trail in 1851. In Idaho they met Col. Isaac Ebey who was awaiting the arrival of his wife and children coming from Missouri. Norman continued on and ultimately settled at the Cascades. Emily was the lone exception among the elder Palmer children. She remained behind in Danville, Illinois with her husband, John Sconce, and their infant daughter Anna. John was a successful attorney who had occasion to partner a time or two with another upstart Illinois attorney named Abraham Lincoln. That, plus the tender age of their child, were the likely reasons they remained behind when all of Emily's siblings and father left for Oregon.

There were few other non-native people living at Cascades when the Palmers arrived, but among them were Francis Chenoweth, Daniel and Putnam Bradford, known as "Put", and Bolivar Bishop, familiarly called "Bish". In 1852, in a double ceremony, Emily's sisters Helen and Luna married Put and Bish with Francis Chenoweth presiding.

Norman Sr. made it back home, traveling via the Panama Isthmus, and missed seeing his daughter Emily because she and her husband, with their daughter in tow, made their own way to the gorge. It is said that they settled and started a farm near The Dalles, but at some point soon after arriving, apparently John Sconce died, leaving Emily a widow and little Anna without a father. Emily taught schoolchildren in The Dalles for a short time before moving in with Put and Helen Bradford at Cascades sometime in 1854 or 1855.

In the meantime, Isaac Ebey's wife had passed away at their homestead on Whidbey Island. It isn't exactly clear how it came to pass, but Colonel Ebey and Emily started a romance in 1855, much to the chagrin of Emily's oldest brother Corneilius, and they were eventually married in Portland on Feb. 2, 1856. By that time, most of the womenfolk had removed from Cascades to Portland, including Luna and Helen, due to the troubles between the whites and the tribes throughout the region. Col. Ebey wrote his new father-in-law, Norman Sr. back in Illinois and assured him that all would be well for the safety of his daughter and granddaughter. He would be moving them to the Sound Country, splitting time between Port Townsend and "The Cabins", his claim on Whidbey Island.

Those fears of attack ended up being justified. Emily was at Port Townsend when the attack on the Cascades occurred in March. News of her little brother's death hit her hard. In a heart-wrenching letter to her father she spoke of the mass grave that Norman had been buried in, along with at least a dozen others of the 17 settlers who had been killed that day. She spoke of her intention to have Norman's body removed and placed in a proper grave. This was eventually done, although it is not clear when, and Norman Jr. was laid to rest along the east shore of Icehouse Lake, and he would remain there until 1914 when the road crew discovered it.

It was also the case that Emily was not nearly as safe on Whidbey Island as her husband led Norman Sr. to believe. On Aug. 11, 1857, a group of "Northern" Indians, now known to be Tlingit, raided Ebey's Landing and the Cabins in the dead of night, chasing all of the occupants, including Emily and her children and stepchildren into the hills, with the exception of the Colonel, who had been shot and killed on the front stoop. Upon investigating at daybreak, Ebey's headless body was discovered and the raiders were nowhere to be found, having apparently taken the Colonel's head as a trophy. It was later learned that this attack had been in retribution for the killing of one of their chiefs during a skirmish with the U.S.S. Massachusetts at Port Gamble the previous year.

Emily, based upon the content of her letters back home, was crushed. Not much is known of her life after the death of her husband, but it is known that she returned to The Dalles and was a teacher for a time, before moving back in with Put and Helen at Cascades. She eventually married a man named Dr. L.M. Bell who was reportedly a U.S. Army surgeon. Little else can be found about him, or Emily, up until her death from consumption in 1863.
Emily's daughter Anna married (Canfield) but had no children, so she has no living descendants, which might explain why so little of her amazing life has been told. Anna was taken in by Put and Helen and eventually died in Hood River in 1908.

Emily got her wish and was buried next to her brother upon her death. In 1914 the two of them were moved to their current location by the foot of the Bridge of the Gods. Their gravesites are maintained and can be visited today. If you park where the circled car is and walk to the edge of the lot, you can readily see the graves below you.

07/03/2025

03/06/2025

Mossback's Northwest on PBS did a feature on, of all things, stumps a couple of years ago. It's an interesting piece. I wonder why they don't get more views than they do.

In any case, if you take a moment and have a look at the family on and by the stump at about the 3:43 mark, you'll be looking at my great-great grandparents, William and Sarah Creviston, standing at the base with some of the children and neighbors up above, including my great-grandma who, judging by her appearance looks to be maybe 15 or 16 (she's kind of in the middle of everyone). That would date the photo to about 1899 or 1900.

The Pacific Northwest has had many symbols over the years. At one time, it was the tree stump: it represented change, hope, frustration, and pride. Settlers ...