Digital Document Libraries

This website is conceived as a resource for teachers and students of Washington State History. It contains digital representations of a few primary source documents on the selected topics listed below. Although the geographic focus is Seattle, the topics reflect events at the state and national level.

Primary sources are documents created or received by a person or organization during the course of events or conduct of business. Primary sources are used by historians to write histories, which are interpretations of the past. Reading primary source documents provides a glimpse of what people were doing and thinking in the past.

Topic List

The Great Seattle Fire of 1889

Hoovervilles in Seattle

Unemployment and the WPA in Seattle

The Seattle Open Housing Campaign, 1959-1968

World Trade Organization Protests in Seattle