Episode 52: The Weyerhaeuser Kidnapping
with Jeff Nickels
In 1935 young George Weyerhaeuser was kidnapped walking home from school in Tacoma. Over the following days the wealthy lumber family scrambled to meet the ransom demands and get him back safe.
Episode 51: Lavender Country
with John Wachter
Gay country and western band Lavender Country released their first album in 1973. Despite brilliant songwriting and musicianship the band never achieved mainstream success due to their defiant and “out” content.
Episode 50: Mount St. Helens
with Emmett Montgomery
In 1980 Mount St. Helens erupted, shooting ash all across the world. While most panicked, one strong willed resident refused to leave.
Episode 49: Doc Maynard
with Anthony Householder
After his marriage fell apart in Ohio Dr. David Swinson Maynard headed west on the Oregon Trail to get a fresh start in California. On the way he found love, changed course, and helped found the city of Seattle.
Episode 48: Wild Man of the Wynoochee
with Mike Schubert
John Tornow was an outcast from society who chose to live alone in the seclusion of the woods rather than in society. After a family dispute turned deadly he became a hunted man in a wilderness he knew better than anyone.
Episode 47: Federal Way
with Greg Stackhouse
Between Seattle and Tacoma sits a town everyone has been through but no one knows anything about. What is the history behind the worst named city in Washington?
Episode 46: Phoenix Jones
with Daniel Stoltenberg
A costumed man patrols the streets of Seattle looking for crime to fight. Some call him a hero and others call him delusional. Who is Phoenix Jones?
Episode 45: Black Market Butter
with Michael Draper
A notoriously corrupt Spokane police department spent the Great Depression robbing creameries and selling the stolen butter on the black market. A murder committed during one of these robberies went unsolved for over fifty years until a modern day investigator solved the case.
Episode 44: The Cult of Ramtha
with Caitlin Obom
J.Z. Knight claims she can channel a 35,000 warrior spirit from the lost continent of Lemuria. Along with her spirit guide she runs a cult out of the small Washington town of Yelm and has thousands of followers worldwide.
Episode 43: Mayor Bertha Knight Landes
with Kinzie Shaw
Just a few years after women’s suffrage took effect in Washington, Seattle elected Bertha Knight Landes as it’s mayor. A shrewd politician and dedicated public servant, she served as the first female mayor of a major American city.
Episode 42: War on Monkey Island
with Amalia Larson
Guy Phinney was a lumber baron who built a menagerie on his 200 acre tract of land east of Green Lake. In the 1940s it became home to a bizarre spectacle as the monkeys in captivity went to war with each other.
Episode 41: The Denny Regrade
with John Keister
The landscape of Seattle has been drastically altered by man. At the site of present day Belltown there used to be a massive hill stretching from Pike Place Market to the Seattle Center. What happened to this piece of land?
Episode 40: The Love Israel Cult
with Maddie Downes
Love Israel and his followers believed we are all one, love is the answer, and drugs got you closer to God. They lived on Queen Anne Hill for years until cocaine and financial troubles tore them apart.
Episode 39: Henry Yesler
with Brett Hamil
Henry Yesler’s sawmill transformed the young city of Seattle and brought jobs, money, and opportunity. This two time mayor and captain of industry led a fascinating personal life with an open marriage and attempts to communicate with the dead.
Episode 38: Bigfoot
with Nancy Guppy
The mythological creature of Bigfoot has origins in Coast Salish legends and has been a staple of the Northwest for years. While there have been thousands of sightings, there is no clear evidence that the beast actually exists.
Episode 37: The Seattle Pilots
with Justin Sund
Before Seattle had the Mariners it had the Pilots. Seattle’s first major league baseball team was a disaster, the stadium was a wreck, they lasted one season and finished in last place.
Episode 36: The Mercer Girls
with Gregr
The Mercers were one of the first families to homestead in Seattle. On the frontier there was a severe shortage of women, and young Asa Mercer decided to take matters into his own hands and solve the problem personally. It did not go well.
Episode 35: The Chinese Riots
with Zak Nelson
America has a long history of institutionalized racism and the Northwest is no exception. After the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 a large portion of the white population of Seattle decided to take matters into their own hands and drive Chinese immigrants out of town once and for all.
Episode 34: Chief Seattle
with Adina Gillet
Chief Seattle was a young boy when white explorers made first contact with the natives on Puget Sound. Over the course of his life he saw the complete transformation of his ancestral homeland and displacement of his people to small reservations.
Episode 33: Women’s Suffrage
with Laura Turner
The fight for women’s suffrage in Washington was always one step forward, two steps back. In the 1880s the right was granted, only to be taken away of few years later.
Episode 32: Vic Meyers
with Jim Stewart Allen
Vic Meyers was a successful band leader and vaudeville entertainer. His joke candidacy for Seattle mayor led to a career in politics and a five time stint as Lieutenant Governor.
Episode 31: Dave Beck
with David Gordon
Dave Beck worked his way up from abject poverty to become president of the most powerful union in the country. He shaped the city the way he wanted it to be, until he abused his power and lost it all.
Episode 30: Alexander Pantages
with Brandon Felker
Alexander Pantages ran away from his home in the Greek Isles at age 9. He wandered the world, worked hard, and became one of the most powerful men in the history of show business.
Episode 29: Marion Zioncheck
with Jacob Burgess
Marion Zioncheck grew up as a dirt poor Polish immigrant in Seattle’s Skid Road district. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, became a lawyer, and was elected to congress from Washington’s first district. The future looked bright, but an undiagnosed mental illness proved to be his undoing.
Episode 28: The City of Ballard
with Matt Hatfield
William Ballard was Captain of a small ship in Puget Sound’s mosquito fleet. A losing coin toss left him in possession of 160 acres of land north of Seattle which came to bear his name. A contentious battle over water left the young city of Ballard annexed into larger and more powerful neighboring Seattle.
Episode 27: Mother Ryther
with Kayla Teel
Olive Ryther was a housewife and mother who made a simple pledge in 1884 to never turn away a child she could help. Over the next 50 years she took in over 3,000 needy children and family members. Her legacy lives on to this day where the Ryther organization continues to serve the greater Seattle area and focuses on helping children with behavioral and substance abuse problems.
Episode 26: The Reverend Mark Matthews
with Steve Lange
The Reverend Mark Matthews believed that faith and politics should intertwined, which made him one of the most powerful and controversial pastors in the country.
Episode 25: The 1962 World’s Fair
with Alison Lührs
Ten million people visited the Century 21 Exposition, better known as the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. It started as the idea of a man whose life was touched by a similar event years earlier, and gave us the Space Needle, the Seattle Center campus, and Key Arena among so much more.
Episode 24: Anna Louise Strong
with Glenn Bristol
Anna Louise Strong was one of the most influential socialist writers of her generation. Her politics took her all over the world, but she is most remembered for the work she did in Seattle.
Episode 23: Harry Allen
with Nick Edwards
Harry Allen was born Nell Pickerell in 1882. The life of a trans man at the turn of the century wasn’t easy, and his life was fraught with heartbreak, violence, and trouble with the law.
Episode 22: Strike!
with Tim Tracey
A small dispute over shipbuilders in 1919 escalated into the first general strike in the United States. Around 100,000 workers, a third of Seattle’s population, walked off the job, shutting down the city.
Episode 21: The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition
with Randy Miller
In 1909 Seattle hosted its first world’s fair, a raucous and wild event that resembled a turn of the century Burning Man and left us with the University of Washington campus. The expo was hailed for its efforts to highlight our city to the world, but its legacy is marred by racist exhibits and the raffling off of a baby.
Episode 20: Hiram Gill
with Clayton Weller
Hiram Gill was a notoriously corrupt politician who served as mayor of Seattle. His time in office was a disaster and his legacy is one of the strangest of any mayor before or since.
Episode 19: George Vancouver
with Josh Chambers
George Vancouver was a British captain who “discovered” Puget Sound and proceeded to name everything in sight after himself and his colleagues.
Episode 18: The Everett Massacre
with Britney Barber
The Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies were a powerful union who fought for worker’s rights. An armed conflict between the union and authorities in 1916 was the bloodiest labor conflict in Northwest history.
Episode 17: Gay and Lesbian History
with Stephani Thompson
Today’s episode is a brief overview of gay and lesbian history in Seattle from 1893 to the present.
Episode 16: George Bartell
with Kris Corbitt
Trusted around here since 1890. George Bartell began training as a pharmacist at age 14. He sought adventure first on the American frontier, then in the Klondike gold rush, before building a drug store empire that thrives to this day.
Episode 15: Frances Farmer
with Elena Martinez
Frances Farmer was a bright and talented, but somewhat troubled young actress who had the misfortune of entering the mental health care system of the 1940s and 50s.
Episode 14: The Seattle Metropolitans
with Nathan Cox
Seattle got its first hockey team in 1916. The following year the 1917 Seattle Metropolitans were the first American team ever to win the Stanley Cup.
Episode 13: D.B. Cooper
with Kesan Holt
In 1971 D.B. Cooper hijacked an airplane, collected a $200,000 ransom then disappeared without a trace. It is to date the only unsolved skyjacking in American history.
Episode 12: Ivar Haglund
with Graham Downing
Restauranteur. Folk singer. Entertainer. King of the publicity stunt. Ivar Haglund is often cited as the person who most exemplifies Seattle.
Episode 11: Shanghaied
with Molly Arkin
Forcing sailors to work on ships against their will was big money in the old Northwest, and no one took advantage of men better than Maxwell Levy, king of the Port Townsend crimpers.
Episode 10: Linda Hazzard
with Phill Arensberg
Seattle’s first female serial killer, Linda Hazzard was a quack doctor who starved her patients to death and helped herself to their valuables.
Episode 9: The Holy Rollers Sex Cult
with Mandy Price
Franz Edmund Creffield was a charismatic madman who charmed a group of Oregonians into his cult at the turn of the century.
Episode 8: John Considine
with John Boyle
John Considine was king of the box houses and one of the most powerful men on Skid Row. He was able to shoot down the chief of police in broad daylight and walk away a free man.
Episode 7: John Nordstrom
with Douglas Willott
John Nordstrom was a young Swedish immigrant with five dollars in his pocket. He went on an adventure looking for Klondike gold and became one of the most successful businessmen in Seattle history.
Episode 6: Goodspaceguy
with Mike Murphy
Goodspaceguy has run for office in Washington State 16 times and has never won. Who is this strange candidate and what does he stand for?
Episode 5: Roy Olmstead
with Alex Grindeland
Roy Olmstead was a police lieutenant turned bootlegger. He detested violence yet was able to run one of the most successful bootlegging operations during American prohibition.
Episode 4: Shelly’s Leg
with Kate Jaeger
On July 14, Bastille Day, 1970, a wet wad of confetti was shot out of a cannon and struck a woman directly in the torso. She lost her leg, but gained ownership of a Gay Disco club.
Episode 3: Frederick Trump
with Elicia Wickstead
Donald Trump’s grandfather was a German immigrant who moved to Seattle in 1891. The seed money for his family’s later real estate ventures came largely from his ownership of several houses of prostitution right here in the Northwest.
Episode 2: The Pig War
with Jon Axell
The United States and Great Britain almost went to war in 1859 after a small skirmish between civilians on a remote piece of disputed territory in the San Juan Islands. When all was said and done, the only victim of the lengthy standoff was a pig.
Episode 1: The Great Fire
with Ian Schempp
On June 6, 1889 a fire broke out in a cabinet maker’s shop downtown. The fire spread quickly and by the following morning the entire business district had burned to the ground.