100 Years In The Northwest

Intro: From the Gold Rush days to the WTO riots, the 20th century has been a rich and wild ride for Seattle and Washington, putting it on the world stage. Here are some highlights from a state of superlatives.

1900-1909:

1900: First cars in state appear on the streets of Seattle and Spokane.

1901: John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin open their first shoe store, at Fourth Avenue and Pike Street. By the end of the century Nordstrom would be a leading fashion retailer, with 71 department stores nationwide.

1903: Seattle Symphony debuts, a symbol of the brawling, booming port city's newfound wealth and class.

1904: Bing Crosby is born as Harry Lillis Crosby in Tacoma and raised in Spokane. The singer and actor, who died in 1977, was later named one of the most influential Americans of the century by Life magazine.

1906: Bainbridge-bound steamer Dix collides with a schooner and sinks off Alki Point; 39 die. It is the deadliest boat collision in Northwest history.

1907: What would later be called the Pike Place Market opens in Seattle, a place for local farmers to sell their goods directly to the public, instead of through "greedy" wholesalers.

1909: Seattle's first World's Fair puts it on the world map. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition draws 3.7 million visitors to the grounds of what would become the new campus of the University of Washington.

1909: Harbor Island, the world's largest man-made island, is completed in the Duwamish waterway near West Seattle.

1910-1919

1910: In the deadliest natural disaster in state history, 96 people die on two Great Northern Railway trains stuck in the snow in the Cascades near Stevens Pass. It prompts the railroad to build the 8-mile-long Cascade Tunnel, which opened in 1929, at the time the longest in the nation and fifth-longest in the world.

1914: The 42-story Smith Tower is completed in Seattle, the tallest building west of Chicago and tallest here until 1969.

1915: Snoqualmie Pass Highway (now Interstate 90) opens as a gravel road, the first cross-state highway. It runs along the path of a former trail used by local Indian tribes.

1916: Labor unrest rocks the Northwest. In the mill town of Everett in 1916, at least seven die in a confrontation between the "Wobblies" (the radical Industrial Workers of the World) and authorities.

1917: Seattle Metropolitans defeat the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup, the first time it was captured by a team outside of Canada or the East Coast. It would be the first of only two professional sports titles to be won by a Seattle team in the century.

1917: William Boeing sets up shop in a hangar on Lake Union. After selling a few planes to the Navy and Army, the company begins to take off, eventually becoming the world's largest aerospace company.

1917: The Hiram F. Chittenden Locks in Ballard open, linking saltwater Puget Sound and freshwater Lake Union, becoming a major tourist attraction.

1918-1919: A worldwide flu epidemic hits the Northwest hard. In Seattle, 1,772 die.

1919: The nation's first general strike hits Seattle, as 60,000 workers walk off their jobs for nearly a week. The "Centralia Massacre" leaves four legionnaires dead in an Armistice Day confrontation between Wobblies and pro-business World War I veterans.

1920-1929:

1920: Aplets and Cotlets are created in Cashmere, near Wenatchee, and become a sugary sensation based on two of Washington's most popular fruits (apples and apricots). Other famous Washington candies include Brown & Haley's Almond Roca and Mountain Bars; and Frangos, created for the old Frederick & Nelson department store and now sold by The Bon MarchÀe.

1920: Seattleite Eddie Bauer establishes his first store in downtown Seattle. By the end of the century, there would be 584 stores around the world with "Northwest heritage" apparel making it one the hottest specialty retailers.

1923: The planned community of Longview is created, more than a half-century before "master-planned communities" became a buzz word.

1924: The first around-the-world flight begins and ends in Seattle. The trip takes 175 days.

1926: Bertha Landes is elected mayor of Seattle, becoming the first woman mayor of a major city in the United States.

1930: One of the more unusual engineering feats of the century, the sluicing down of Denny Hill and other hilly parts of Seattle, ends after 32 years. The flat Denny Regrade area just north of downtown is created.

1931: Paul Tutmarc of Seattle and Art Stimpson of Spokane invent the electric guitar in Tutmarc's basement.

1932: The George Washington Memorial Bridge (Aurora Bridge) is completed, part of the new U.S. highway system that would spread across the nation, sparking the auto age.

1932: Warren G. Magnuson of Seattle becomes a state representative. In 1944 he would be elected to the U.S. Senate and become one of the most powerful members of the Senate, until 1980 when defeated by Slade Gorton. He died in 1989.

1935: The state's most-famous ferry, the streamlined Kalakala, begins making runs between Seattle and Bremerton. It is retired in 1967 and becomes a cannery in Alaska. Sculptor Peter Bevis would bring it back to Seattle in 1998 to try to restore it.

1936: In what many consider one of the top moments in local sports history, the University of Washington rowing crew wins a gold medal at the Berlin Olympics, much to Hitler's dismay.

1938: Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) opens its first store in Seattle, helping launch a national mountaineering and hiking craze.

1940-1949:

1940: Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Everett is elected to the U.S. House. In 1952 he is elected to the U.S. Senate, where he teams up with fellow Sen. Magnuson to give Washington the most powerful state team in the Senate in the 20th century. Jackson dies of a heart attack in 1983 while still in office.

1940: A year for bridges. The first Lake Washington floating bridge opens. Also, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, or "Galloping Gertie" collapses in a windstorm. (The floating bridge suffered the same fate in 1990.)

1941: Grand Coulee Dam, the biggest construction project in the world, is completed (77 people lose their lives in the process) and becomes the world's top producer of electrical power. The eight-year project on the Columbia River created a 151-mile-long reservoir used for irrigation and recreation.

1942: Jimi Hendrix is born as Johnny Allen Hendrix in Seattle. The Garfield High dropout would go on to become one of rock music's most legendary and innovative guitarists. He died in 1970.

1942: About 8,000 Japanese Americans are ordered to evacuate the Seattle area because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, leaving many homes and classroom desks suddenly vacant.

1943: Nuclear reactors are built secretly at Hanford to help develop the two atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan to end World War II.

1947: The modern era of UFO sightings was born when Kenneth Arnold of Boise, looking for a lost aircraft on Mount Rainier, spotted what a news account termed "flying saucers."

1949: The state's strongest earthquake of the century, with a magnitude of 7.1, rocks Western Washington. Eight die.

1950-1959:

1950: The Northgate Shopping Center (now Northgate Mall) opens as the nation's largest. It also is believed to be the first planned regional mall, featuring shops, restaurants, offices and a movie theater.

1950: One year after Seattle's summer festival of Seafair debuts, the Slo-Mo-Shun IV hydroplane smashes the world speedboat record on Lake Washington, going 160 mph. Seattle boats would then win the Gold Cup for five straight years, ending Detroit's long dominance of the sport and launching hydromania in Seattle.

1955: The Jet Age is ushered in with Alvin M. "Tex" Johnston's impromptu barrel roll of Boeing's first jetliner (Dash 80, the prototype for the 707) in front of 200,000 people lining the shores of Lake Washington during the Seafair hydroplane race.

1955: William Gates III is born in Seattle. By the end of the century, the boy from Laurelhurst and Microsoft cofounder (along with fellow Seattleite Paul Allen) was by far the world's wealthiest individual, worth about $90 billion.

1957: Boxing history. Sicks' Stadium in Seattle hosts what some called the sports event of the year in the country when the top professional heavyweight, Floyd Patterson, beat the top amateur heavyweight, Pete Rademacher, the first time such a pro-am matchup occurred. Seattle was to make boxing history again in 1999 when it hosted the first sanctioned mixed-gender fight. Margaret MacGregor easily took care of Loi Chow in that bout.

1958: J.P. Patches show debuts on KIRO-TV. The area's most popular and longest-running local kiddie show stars Chris Wedes as J.P., and Bob Newman as a cross-dressing Gertrude. It runs until 1981.

1960-1969:

1961: The Wailers, from Tacoma, release "Louie, Louie." The 1963 version by The Kingsmen, of Portland, becomes a national hit. In the 1980s, there would be a failed attempt to make it the official Washington state song. It remains "Washington, My Home" by Helen Davis.

1962: Seattle hosts the first World's Fair to be held in the United States in 22 years and the second in Seattle during the century. The "Century 21 Exposition" attracts 9.6 million fairgoers. The futuristic Space Needle becomes the city symbol.

1962: The postwar baby boom hits its peak. Seattle Public Schools enrollment hits 99,326. By the end of the century, it would be 47,400.

1962: Wing Luke elected to City Council, the first Chinese American elected to a major post in the United States.

1963: The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge across Lake Washington is dedicated, the second cross-lake bridge and the third floating bridge in the state. (The Hood Canal Bridge opened in 1961).

1963: Seattle's Jim Whittaker becomes the first American to reach the top of 29,028-foot Mount Everest.

1965: The second-strongest earthquake of the century in the state, with a magnitude of 6.5, jolts the Seattle-Tacoma area, killing eight people and causing widespread damage.

1967: Formerly dirt-covered Memorial Stadium in Seattle becomes one of the first outdoor stadiums in the world to install AstroTurf. The days of the infamous "Mud Bowls" for local high school teams are over.

1967: The freeway era begins in the Northwest as stop-light-free Interstate 5 is completed from Tacoma to Everett, near the route of old U.S. Highway 99.

1967: The first black city councilmen in the state are elected, Sam Smith in Seattle and Art Fletcher in Pasco.

1969: After one season, the Seattle Pilots abandon old Sicks' Stadium for Milwaukee, where they become the Brewers.

1969: The 50-story Seattle-First National Bank building (now the 1001 Fourth Ave. Plaza) is completed, the first of the new generation of downtown skyscrapers. The 609-foot building becomes known as "The box the Space Needle came in" because of its modern design. (The Needle is 605 feet tall.)

1970-1979:

1970: Thousands of people marching against the Vietnam War briefly shut down Interstate 5 through Seattle two days in a row in one of the more dramatic anti-war protests.

1971: The Boeing bust hits the Seattle area as the company cuts its work force from 100,800 employees in 1967 to 38,690 in 1971. The billboard: "Will the last person leaving Seattle - turn out the lights." becomes a new symbol of suddenly downtrodden Seattle.

1971: Starbucks opens its first store, in the Pike Place Market. By the end of the century it would become the world's leading speciality-coffee retailer, with 2,600 stores and hundreds more on the way.

1974: The third World's Fair of the century to be held in the state, Expo '74, draws 5.2 million visitors to Spokane.

1974: The controversial Boldt decision entitles Native Americans to 50 percent of the salmon catch in Washington state, reinstating a 19th-century treaty.

1974: Seattle Slew wins horse-racing's Triple Crown, taking the Belmont, Preakness and Kentucky Derby.

1976: The Kingdome, "the world's largest thin-shell concrete dome," is completed. Seattle gets its first professional football team (Seahawks) that year and its second professional baseball team (Mariners) the following year.

1976: Dixy Lee Ray elected as the state's first and still only woman governor. She lasts one term. Ray dies in 1994.

1978: Seattle becomes the largest city in the nation to desegregate its schools without a court order.

1979: Seattle SuperSonics win NBA championship, igniting a victory celebration not seen in the city since the end of World War II. A parade draws 300,000 people downtown.

1979: Part of the Hood Canal Floating Bridge sinks.

1980: Mount St. Helens erupts, spreading ash across the state, causing widespread devastation, killing at least 57 people and knocking 1,312 feet off the top of the 9,677-foot mountain.

1982: The first bodies are found in what was to become the greatest unsolved serial killing in the United States. The Green River killer is linked to 49 women - mostly prostitutes and runaways - slain in the 1980s.

1983: In the worst mass killing in Washington history, 13 people are killed during a holdup at the Wah Mee Social Club in Seattle's Chinatown International District.

1985: Columbia Seafirst Center (now the Bank of America Tower) is completed. At 76 stories, it helps Seattle reclaim a title of sorts - the biggest office building west of Chicago and north of Houston.

1989: Ted Bundy, a handsome law student from Tacoma, becomes one of the nation's most well-known serial killers and is electrocuted in Florida after being convicted of killing two college women. He also confessed to killing 11 women in Washington state, two in Oregon and two in Utah.

1989: Norm Rice becomes Seattle's first African American mayor.

1990-1999

1991: The rock group Nirvana from Seattle, led by Kurt Cobain (who died in 1994), takes the music world by storm with its debut album, "Nevermind." Pearl Jam is not far behind. The Seattle sound, and the grunge culture, is born.

1996: Gary Locke, the son of immigrants, becomes the nation's first Chinese-American governor.

1993: Westley Allan Dodd, hanged for the murder of three young boys, becomes the first person executed in Washington in 30 years.

1995: Amazon.com is founded in Seattle by former investment banker Jeff Bezos. It would become the Internet's leading retailer, making Bezos a multibillionaire and Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 1999.

1997: Ron Sims is elected King County executive, the first African American to run a county in the state.

1999: Safeco Field opens, bringing professional baseball back outdoors for the first time in 30 years. At $350 million, the ballpark with the retractable roof is the most expensive one yet built.

1999: The World Trade Organization holds its conference in Seattle. While many hold peaceful protests, others break windows and loot downtown stores and confrontations with police makes news around the world. Meanwhile, little is accomplished at the conference.

1999: Fueled by high-tech wealth, the Seattle area has an estimated 74,000 households with a net worth of at least $1 million, not counting the value of the house.

Sources: "Washington, The First One Hundred Years" by Don Duncan of The Seattle Times, 1989, The Seattle Times news archives; "Seattle Story," by Hector Escobosa; "A Century of Seattle's Business," James R. Warren; Paul Dorpat's "Now & Then" (Volumes I, II and III); Seattle Times researchers Sandy Freeman, Vince Kueter and Steve Selter; HistoryLink (www.historylink.org). Seattle Times staff reporter Jack Broom also contributed to this article.

Bill Kossen's phone message number is 206-464-2331. His e-mail address is: bkossen@seattletimes.co.