Rocking Thru the World: Our Young State of Washington: Part One

In November, 1851, twelve adults and twelve children from the State of Illinois were disembarked from a schooner on Elliot Bay in the forest wilderness of Washington State. When Leo A. Borah wrote this latest National Geographic Magazine article in the February, 1933, issue, there was still alive an 80-year-old gentleman, one of the original settlers. He was two months old when his parents brought him there. Washington, the Evergreen State: The Amazing Commonwealth of the Pacific Northwest Which Has Emerged from the Wilderness in a Span of Fifty Years is his account of the settling and thriving of Washington State. Indeed, it has thrived: from 24 people in 1851, it grew to 1.5 million citizens in the 1930 census and to 6.9 million in 2012.

Washington State is particularly important to the author: "To see Washington for the first time is to experience the thrill of discovering a new country. To live within its borders for eight years as I did; then to go away from it and return after a few years' absence is to know that thrill again," (p. 133).

Puget Sound is a large bay in the western part of Washington with direct access to the Pacific Ocean. There are 172 islands in the bay. Mr. Borah wanted to travel from the city of Seattle to visit one of the northernmost islands, San Juan, very close to Canada. He was a passenger on a small boat making its way among the islands. "Our boat threaded winding bays and tortuous inlets, often so close to the islands that pebbles might have been tossed from the deck to either shore. . . the scene was a fairyland of sea and sky, of forests, of vari-colored cliffs rising often hundreds of feet sheer from the water," (p. 134). He asked the captain of the boat how he would steer in heavy fog: by blowing the fog horn and judging the distance from the shore from the echo. The captain demonstrated the technique but Mr. Borah didn't grasp the nuances from one 'toot' to another.

San Juan Island was the site of the last British-American battle in the "Pig War." It was amicably decided that the Island belonged to America by the German Kaiser. The British fortifications are still maintained for history but the American ones have crumbled. Britain owns only a graveyard in which are buried some of its soldiers.

Mr. Borah traveled back to Seattle through fir and cedar forests. Photos show these cedar trees to be immensely tall - some grow up to 200 feet tall! This dwarfs our Kentucky trees; it reminds me of the Giant Sequoia trees in California (which Google says can grow to over 300 feet tall).

There are five volcanoes in Washington State. Do you remember when Mount St. Helen's erupted in 1980? In 1933, "Mount Baker still occasionally breathes smokily from several craters near its summit," (p. 144).

Seattle's fresh-water, deep harbor was gradually changing to a salt-water harbor in 1933. This was preferable due to the salt water killing barnacles from the ships. "The most important commercial event in the city was the arrival of the first gold ship from Alaska in 1897. From that moment Seattle became the outfitting point for the throngs that rushed to the Klondike. Its future as the portal of Alaska was assured. . .Seattle is built on hills so high and steep that cable cars are required to carry passengers up some of the streets in the heart of the business district," (p. 163).

What a beautiful state the eight-page section of color photographs depicted! The state flower is the rhododendron, some of which grow over twenty feet tall! Let's leave our story here and return to Washington the next time, for this is another really long article.