Throwback City
Stories from Seattle and Puget Sound's past that resonate today.
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Stories
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A slave mother's love in 56 carefully stitched words
For about $300, a 9-year-old girl named Ashley was sold as a slave. Her mother, Rose, remained a house slave at a mansion in South Carolina.
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Why we're stuck in traffic: An answer from November 1966
Seattle traffic, as you know, has become monstrous. Delays on regional freeways doubled between 2010 and 2015, according to the Puget Sound Regional...
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The strange, twisted story behind Seattle's blackberries
Growing up in Seattle I spent summer evenings like this picking blackberries. These days I spend more time trying to fend off blackberry vines in my...
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Here's why old Seattle is OBSESSED with hydroplanes
Jon Osterberg remembers the first time he saw a hydroplane, more than 50 years ago.
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If these walls could talk, the stories they would tell
If this house could talk, what stories would it tell?
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Was Seattle a bad place to build a city?
How much do you know about the history of the place you live? If that place is Seattle, points of interest include how the natives of this area lived,...
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The man behind Seattle's boys in the boat
The old wooden rowing shell that hangs in the University of Washington crew team’s dining hall doesn’t look all that remarkable. You see boats like it...
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A Wild Tale Of Kidnapping And Newshounding In The Northwest
It was the Northwest’s most notorious kidnapping case. Little George Weyerhaeuser had been snatched off the streets of Tacoma and held for $200,000 rans...
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Seattle's First Library Was Also Its First Counterculture
David Hyde travels back in time through the magic of radio with writer Knute Berger to the site of Seattle's first library.
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The Strange, Short Story Of Washington State’s Income Tax
What is the history of Washington state's political allergy to an income tax? Steven Thomson of Olympia posed this question to KUOW's Local Wonder . We...
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My Grandfather And The Plane That Changed Seattle
There’s an old photograph in my father’s office that I’ve always wondered about. In it my grandfather and nine other young airmen stand in front of...
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How Seattle Turned Into A Parking Lot
Warning: If you live in Seattle, this might break your heart. Once upon a time, Seattle was a pioneer in transportation planning. City officials thought...