HistoryLink

Last updated
HistoryLink
Available inEnglish
OwnerHistory Ink
URL www.historylink.org
Commercial501(c)(3) nonprofit
LaunchedMay 1, 1998 [1]
Current statusActive

HistoryLink is an online encyclopedia of Washington state history. The site has more than 8,100 entries and attracts 23,000 weekly visitors. [2] It has 500 biographies and more than 14,000 images. [3] [4]

Contents

The non-profit historical organization History Ink produces HistoryLink.org, stating that it is the nation's first online encyclopedia of local and state history created expressly for the Internet. Walt Crowley was the founding president and executive director.

History

In 1997, Crowley discussed preparing a Seattle-King County historical encyclopedia for the 2001 sesquicentennial of the Denny Party. His wife Marie McCaffrey suggested publishing the encyclopedia on the Internet. [5]

They and Paul Dorpat incorporated History Ink on November 10, 1997, with seed money from Priscilla "Patsy" Collins, by birth a member of Seattle's wealthy and prominent Bullitt family. [6] The prototype of HistoryLink.org debuted on May 1, 1998, and attracted additional funding for a formal launch on January 15, 1999, with 300 entries. [2] [7] The website was noted for its coverage of the 1999 WTO protests in Downtown Seattle, maintaining a live webcam feed pointed at the intersection of 4th Avenue and Pike Street that refreshed every 30 seconds. [7] The website received more than 1.5 million views during the WTO protests, which overwhelmed the server at times. [2] In 2003, HistoryLink expanded its content to cover Washington state history, including new essays and features. [8] Meanwhile, History Ink continues, focusing on the production of history books. [5]

A 2008 grant from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation funded several freelance writers to expand coverage of Snohomish County. The Snohomish County Historic Preservation Commission has funded yearly grants for the same purpose. [9]

Content

HistoryLink primarily features articles that are similar to a traditional encyclopedia entry, as well as timeline entries and first-person accounts called "People's Histories". [9] The website has around 50 historians who are paid a rate of $775 per article. [2]

Awards

Crowley and HistoryLink.org have won many awards, including

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Community Transit</span> Bus transit agency serving Snohomish County, Washington

Community Transit (CT) is the public transit authority of Snohomish County, Washington, United States, excluding the city of Everett, in the Seattle metropolitan area. It operates local bus, paratransit and vanpool service within Snohomish County, as well as commuter buses to Downtown Seattle and Northgate station. CT is publicly funded, financed through sales taxes, and farebox revenue, with an operating budget of $133.2 million. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 7,133,700, or about 24,400 per weekday as of the fourth quarter of 2023, placing it fourth among transit agencies in the Puget Sound region. The city of Everett, which serves as the county seat, is served by Everett Transit, a municipal transit system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Group Health Cooperative</span>

Group Health Cooperative, formerly known as Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, later more commonly known as Group Health, was an American nonprofit healthcare organization based in Seattle, Washington. It was acquired by Kaiser Permanente in 2017 and now serves as the Kaiser Washington region. The new region would serve the majority of Washington state except for the Southwest Washington counties of Clark and Cowlitz, which would continue to be served by the Portland-area Kaiser Permanente Northwest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gordon S. Clinton</span> American politician (1920–2011)

Gordon Stanley Clinton was the 43rd mayor of Seattle. After defeating incumbent Mayor Allen Pomeroy in a close election in 1956, Clinton served two terms, from 1956 to 1964. Upon taking office, Clinton established the Metropolitan Problems Advisory Committee, headed by local community leader John Ellis, to suggest approaches to dealing with chronic local and regional problems. During his administration, Clinton tackled issues as divergent as regional governance, international trade, and discrimination in housing. He was a Republican.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Bullitt</span> American businesswoman and philanthropist

Dorothy Stimson Bullitt was an American businesswoman and philanthropist. A radio and television pioneer, she founded King Broadcasting Company, a major owner of broadcast stations in Seattle, Washington. She was the first woman in the United States to buy and manage a television station.

King Broadcasting Company is an American former media conglomerate founded in 1946 by Dorothy Bullitt. The company was owned by the Bullitt family until it was sold to the Providence Journal Company in 1991; it is currently a subsidiary of Tegna as the licensee for its remaining stations. Based in Seattle, Washington, it began with one AM radio station and grew to include a large group of broadcast television and radio stations as well as a cable television network throughout the Western United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Snohomish High School</span> High school in Snohomish, Washington, United States

Snohomish High School (SHS) is a secondary school located in the Snohomish School District, in Snohomish, Washington, United States. SHS, built for 1200 students, contains 1,689 9th–12th graders. The school serves primarily those students living north of the Snohomish River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northgate Station (shopping mall)</span> Shopping mall

Northgate Station is an enclosed shopping mall in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is located in the Northgate neighborhood on Interstate 5, adjacent to Northgate Way and Northgate station, a light rail station. The mall is anchored by Barnes & Noble, and Nordstrom Rack.

The Duwamish tribe is a Native American tribe in western Washington, and the indigenous people of metropolitan Seattle. The Duwamish tribe today includes the People of the Inside (Dxw'Dəw?Abš), for Elliott Bay environs today; and the People of the Large Lake (Xacuabš), for those around Lake Washington of today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Everett Public Library</span>

The Everett Public Library (EPL) serves the residents of Everett, Washington. EPL operates a main library at 2702 Hoyt Avenue and the Evergreen branch, at 9512 Evergreen Way. The main library overlooks Puget Sound and the southern end of Whidbey Island. The library has noteworthy artworks, including works by Dudley Pratt, Ransom Patrick, Guy Anderson, Jack Gunter, and Sonja Blomdahl. The library circulates over 900,000 items per year, provides book and media collections, reference services, on-line resources, in-home library services, and programs for adults, children and families. The library's staff includes specialists in adult reference, children's books, and local history. The Everett Public Library introduced a bookmobile service in May 1924; the first of its kind in Washington state, and the second in the West. It is also one of the few public library systems in the United States that has two full-time history specialists on staff. Northwest Room co-founders Margaret Riddle and David Dilgard retired after 31 and 40 years respectively, and their positions are currently filled by Lisa Labovitch with the second role waiting to be posted.

Walter Charles Crowley was an American historian and activist from Washington state. He first entered the public sphere in Seattle through his involvement with the social and political movements of the 1960s, especially the underground press. He later became more widely known as a local television personality and for his pioneering work as a local historian, including co-creating the website HistoryLink.org, which he considered to be his crowning achievement.

<i>Helix</i> (newspaper)

The Helix was an American biweekly newspaper founded in 1967 after a series of organizational meetings held at the Free University of Seattle involving a large and eclectic group including Paul Dorpat, Tom Robbins, Ray Collins, and Lorenzo Milam A member of both the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service, it published a total of 125 issues before folding on June 11, 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murray Morgan Bridge</span> Bridge in Tacoma, Washington

The Murray Morgan Bridge, also known as the 11th Street Bridge or City Waterway Bridge, is a vertical-lift bridge in Tacoma, Washington. It originally opened February 15, 1913, to replace an 1894 swing-span bridge. The bridge connects downtown with the tidal flats, it spans the Thea Foss Waterway, originally known as the City Waterway. Designed by noted bridge engineering firm Waddell & Harrington, the bridge has some unusual features: higher above the water than most lift bridges, construction on a variable grade and an overhead span designed to carry a water pipe. The bridge structure also contained a series of switchback ramps that connected what is now Cliff Street with Dock Street. According to the Department of Transportation, the towers are 207 feet 1.75 inches (63.1381 m) above the water, with the road deck 60 feet (18 m) above the water level at zero tide. It was modified and updated in 1957 and was used to route State Route 509 through the tidal flats. The bridge was bypassed in the late 1990s when State Route 509 was routed around the edge of the tidal flats. While WSDOT wanted to tear down the bridge, the City of Tacoma convinced the state to transfer ownership to the City. In the past, the bridge has been heavily used by commuters and emergency services in connecting the Port of Tacoma with downtown Tacoma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Denny</span> American judge

David Thomas Denny was a member of the Denny Party, who are generally collectively credited as the founders of Seattle, Washington, USA. Though he ultimately underwent bankruptcy, he was a significant contributor to the shape of the city. Roger Sale, in his book Seattle, Past to Present, described him as having been "the pioneer to turn to if one had a plan that would be 'good for Seattle', and one needed a respectable tone and a willing investor."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rainier Club</span> United States historic place

The Rainier Club is a private club in Seattle, Washington; it has been referred to as "Seattle's preeminent private club." Its clubhouse building, completed in 1904, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was founded in 1888 in what was then the Washington Territory. As of 2008, the club has 1,300 members.

Dorothy Priscilla "Patsy" Bullitt Collins (1920-2003) was an American philanthropist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seattle Weather Collective</span>

The Weather Underground organized collectives around the United States in an attempt "to challenge the state directly in solidarity with Third World liberation movements, particularly the Black Power movement in the United States and the Vietnamese in Southeast Asia." Collectives organized the white working class against imperialism by holding militant demonstrations and engaging in small scale property damage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Dorpat</span> American historian

Paul Dorpat is a historian, author, and photographer, specializing in the history of Seattle and Washington state. He had a weekly column in the Seattle Times and is the principal historian of HistoryLink.org, a site devoted to Washington state history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joel M. Pritchard Building</span> Library, later office building in Washington, United States

The Joel M. Pritchard Building at the Washington State Capitol campus in Olympia was built in 1957–1958 to house the Washington State Library, which had outgrown its previous location in the basement of the Washington Supreme Court's Temple of Justice. The building's architect, Paul Thiry who also designed the Century 21 Exposition complex in Seattle, used Modern design incorporating the Wilkeson sandstone quarried a few tens of miles away and used in the state capitol and other buildings. It was the last monumental building added to the capitol campus and one of the few departures from the Olmsted Brothers' 1928 campus plan. It was described as "among the most important regional archetypes of mid-century architectural design and thought...a textbook on how Washingtonians looked at the future in the 1950s". It was named for Joel M. Pritchard, a U.S. Congressman from Washington and the state's Lieutenant Governor. Thiry won the American Institute of Architects/American Library Association Library Building Award for the design, the first such award to be presented. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seattle Municipal Street Railway</span> Historic transit system in Seattle, Washington, U.S.

The Seattle Municipal Street Railway was a city-owned streetcar network that served the city of Seattle, Washington and its suburban neighborhoods from 1919 to 1941. It was a successor to the horse-drawn Seattle Street Railway established in 1884, and immediate successor to the Puget Sound Traction, Power and Light Company's Seattle division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Central Building (Seattle)</span> Building in Seattle, Washington, U.S.

The Central Building is a historic building at 810 3rd Avenue in downtown Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington.

References

  1. "About HistoryLink.org". HistoryLink.org. Retrieved July 9, 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Lacitis, Erik (February 16, 2024). "HistoryLink, WA's own online encyclopedia, was born before Wikipedia". The Seattle Times . Retrieved March 1, 2024.
  3. Kahn, Dean (August 20, 2007). "Web site links readers with state history". The Bellingham Herald . p. A3. Retrieved February 3, 2023 via Newspapers.com.
  4. "HistoryLink Expands". Seattle Post-Intelligencer . March 4, 2003.
  5. 1 2 3 Long, Priscilla (January 20, 2005). "Crowley, Walt (1947-2007)". historylink.org. Retrieved September 23, 2007.
  6. Cassandra Tate (July 3, 2003). "Collins, Dorothy Priscilla "Patsy" Bullitt (1920-2003)". historylink.org. Retrieved 2007-10-13.
  7. 1 2 Stiffler, Lisa (January 15, 2019). "Beating Wikipedia by 2 years, Seattle's HistoryLink remains an innovative online encyclopedia". GeekWire . Retrieved January 16, 2019.
  8. "HistoryLink to expand services". The Columbian . Associated Press. March 4, 2003. p. C5. Retrieved February 3, 2023 via Newspapers.com.
  9. 1 2 Schucht, Eric (February 3, 2023). "Local historians spotlight 'unsung heroes' of Snohomish County's past". The Everett Herald . Retrieved February 3, 2023.