🌧️Washington

The Evergreen State

Washington is the only state named for a U.S. president. It sits in the Pacific Northwest between the rainy, forested Olympic Peninsula and the arid sagebrush of the Columbia Plateau, with the towering volcanoes of the Cascade Range in between. Seattle, the state's largest city, is home to Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks, and the headwaters of grunge music.

Lewis, Clark, and the Oregon Country

Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean at Cape Disappointment in November 1805, wintering at Fort Clatsop on the south side of the Columbia River (now Oregon). The United States and Britain jointly occupied the vast "Oregon Country" — including all of modern Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming — until the 1846 Oregon Treaty set the boundary at the 49th parallel. Washington Territory was carved out of Oregon Territory in 1853 and achieved statehood in 1889.

The Evergreen Coast

The Olympic Peninsula contains the largest temperate rainforest in North America, receiving up to 14 feet of rain per year. The Olympic Mountains, Puget Sound's 2,500 miles of shoreline, and the Cascades on the east give Washington some of the most varied geography of any state. Mount Rainier, at 14,411 feet, is the highest peak in the Cascades. Mount St. Helens, in southwestern Washington, erupted catastrophically in May 1980, killing 57 people and reducing the mountain's elevation by 1,314 feet.

Boeing and Amazon

Seattle has been the headquarters of Boeing since 1916 (though Boeing has shifted operations to other states since). Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque in 1975 but moved to Redmond, Washington in 1979 — today employing more than 50,000 people in the state. Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in a Bellevue garage in 1994 and is now the state's largest private employer. Starbucks opened its first shop at Pike Place Market in 1971.

Native Nations

Washington is home to 29 federally recognized tribes. Several coastal nations — Makah, Quinault, Quileute, Lummi, and Puyallup — continue traditional salmon, halibut, and (in the Makah's case) whale harvests. The 1974 Boldt Decision, a landmark federal court ruling, affirmed Washington tribes' treaty right to half of the salmon harvest, reshaping the state's fisheries.

Washington Facts

• Washington is the only U.S. state named for a president.
• It is the top producer of apples, hops, raspberries, and sweet cherries in the country.
• Seattle's Space Needle was built for the 1962 World's Fair.
• Grunge music — Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains — emerged from Seattle in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
• The Cascade Range divides the state into two dramatically different climates: rainy and mild west of the mountains, dry and continental east.

🗺️ Nearby States

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