Museum of History and Industry - 3rd & 4th Floors

I'm back, and it's time to finish our little journey through the new Museum of History and Industry on Seattle's South Lake Union.

As I mentioned before, the third and fourth floors aren't full floors -- they're almost like exhibit boxes floating above the main floor. The third floor, the Linda and Ted Johnson Family Community Gallery, is another space for a temporary exhibit. Right now, the exhibit is "Punctum/Poetry," featuring work of high school students. There are poems written by Seattle high-schoolers, some based on pictures from MOHAI's photo collection; one wall also has three video screens showing videos of students interviewing each other with basic oral history interview questions -- "What do you want to be?" "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?", that sort of thing. Considering the Shaping Our City tower and the Personal Stories tower, MOHAI seems to be really in to gathering stories from people -- everyone, even commoners like us -- to keep for all time. That's pretty cool.

The fourth, and final, floor is the McCurdy Family Maritime Gallery. True to its name, this room is all about boats and boat life. There's a little display about Foss Maritime, and lots of pictures of boats and waterways in Seattle (to go along with the photos on the second floor, just after the Seattle's Great Fire exhibit). The two major items in the gallery are a Fresnel lens from the lighthouse on Smith Island, which guided sailors from 1885 to 1957, and a periscope. Not only is the city of Seattle, with all its lakes and maritime history, a great place to have a periscope, but MOHAI's new location -- right on a lake with lots of boats, near hills with big trees and fancy houses, a major freeway, and just blocks from the Space Needle and Seattle Center -- is a great place to have a periscope, so you can see the enchanting city outside, from inside. Even on that limited opening day, though, there was a line to play with the periscope, so if you go, be patient (especially when little kids don't realize there's a line of people waiting, and just run up to it and throw themselves at it).

One especially cool thing about MOHAI's new location is that it's on the water. Well, duh, I know, it's on a lake; but when a city's history is largely based on water travel and the many uses of major waterways, it hits home more when you can look right outside the window (which the building has plenty of) and actually see the water. From the windows on the second floor, you look out and you're looking almost directly into boats. From the windows in the Maritime Gallery, the entire view is water and boats (and the pretty city beyond the lake). It's all pretty well-placed, and MOHAI takes advantage of its location (Coincidence? Rule #39).

View from the second floor

Another upside to all of the windows in the armory is that MOHAI is able to create a couple of pretty cool "Now and Then"-type moments. There are two displays that show pictures of part of Seattle back in the 1900s (some are early 1900s, some are later 1900s), followed by text to the effect of "If you look up from where you are, out the window, there's that same site!" At the old location, you couldn't do that. Now, with all those windows, you can.

So, that wraps up our visit to the Museum of History and Industry. I'm really impressed with the new location, and what they've done with it. I don't think it's just the sparkle of something new; I think everything will last and hold up well. Plus, everything was planned well: there are lots of places to sit if you need a little break from all of the walking around, there are lots of touch screens and other interactive displays for both kids and adults to play with, and there's a cellphone audio tour for 13 items in the collection.

Even though we spent five hours at the museum, I KNOW we didn't see everything. The films that run on loops in various exhibits, every picture, every display in every nook and cranny, every word on every sign... I KNOW we didn't see everything. But I can't wait to see what they do when they rotate items in and out. So much to explore!

And one more news item:
Seattle Times photo gallery

Museum of History and Industry - 2nd Floor (part 2)

Ah, that was a nice rest, wasn't it? Let's continue on with the second floor now, focusing on the big display areas.

When you first go up the stairs from the main floor, if you take a hard left, rather than a slight left into the "True Northwest: The Seattle Journey" exhibit area, you end up in the Joshua Green Foundation Theater. I don't know if this is permanent, but inside was a pretty spiffy 8-minute film about Seattle, the history of the city and visions of the future. But it's not your normal "Indians lived here, white people came, built a city." It talks about history like the Native Americans who were here and Chief Sealth, but it also talks about the history of Seattle as a business city, with Starbucks, Microsoft, etc.; the history of the city on the world stage, especially as the site of the 1999 WTO; the history of Seattle as a music hub; the history of Seattle as a home to medical technology companies, and things like that. It was a nice little movie. Plus, it was shown over two side-by-side screens, so the screen on the left showed one thing, while the screen on the right showed another thing. The two were related, but it was cool the way it was like split-screen, especially because sometimes the two images juxtaposed each other (juxtaposed with each other? against each other?), or sometimes a quote would start on the left screen, and finish on the right screen. PLUS, the music. Oh, the music! Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie... and not only was there good local music during the film, but also during the break between showings. Scott McCaughey (solo? Young Fresh Fellows? Minus Five? I'm not sure), Damien Jurado... Whoever put the film together and whoever chose the music both were the winners of the day, in my view. And, according to the MOHAI gentleman at the door of the theater when we went in, the seats came from the Cinerama.

Another big part of the second floor is the Walker Gallery, which houses temporary exhibits. The first temporary exhibit at the new MOHAI is "Celluloid Seattle," a history of Seattle on film and theaters in the city. It's a local pop culture geek's heaven. Various places of the gallery are set up like mini-theaters, where themed montages play, like "The Sleepless City," which shows clips from Say Anything..., Georgia, Sleepless in Seattle, The Ring, Singles, and 10 Things I Hate About You, among others. There's also a mock drive-in theater, with a car as the seats, where I heard a mother explain to her son what a drive-in theater was! The gallery also has the living room set from Frasier, and clips of Seattle on TV shows (Here Come the Brides and The Simpsons, for example). The museum also displays various items from Seattle theaters, like light fixtures, ticket takers' stands, and restroom signs.

Hello, Seattle. I'm listening.

But the COOLEST part of the second floor is the Seattle's Great Fire exhibit. In 1889, a massive fire broke out in Seattle, destroying most of the wood-based business district. In 1952-3, Ruddy Zallinger, a local artist, painted a mural of the fire for MOHAI. The mural was used as the backdrop to the Great Fire exhibit at the old museum. In the new museum, though... whoa. Okay, I've mentioned many times now that the new MOHAI has lots of interactive exhibits, but this one is REALLY an interactive exhibit. That is, it interacts with itself. The Great Fire exhibit is now off in a little theater-type room, with artifacts from the fire lining the walls of the area. There are plates, marbles, and coins that were fused together in the fire, a couple of dolls, fire helmets, a wheel from the fire wagon (I think that's what it's from), and ... the glue pot that started the fire (Dunh dunh dunhhhh). Now, in the middle of the mural, there's also a screen... that shows a film about the fire... told in song. And who sings the song about the fire? The artifacts in the exhibit. There's a typewriter; it sings. There's a newspaper; it sings. There's a money bag; it sings. The fused plates sing. The dolls sing. The glue pot sings (It sings, "Don't blame me!"). As each item sings, a spotlight shines on it. Oh my God, it was AWESOME. So much fun! The words to the song are displayed on the screen, along with pictures from the fire, and as each word is sung, a little icon bounces over them, like a sing-along, and the icon corresponds to the item singing. When the typewriter sings, an "A" key guides you. When the newspaper sings, a rolled up newspaper icon bounces along. The glue pot? Represented by a glue pot. Plus, the mural and the film interact with each other, with the screen showing most of the mural, but the edges shown on the wall, so that the fire hoses are held by firefighters on the wall, but are spraying the buildings on the screen. It was all pretty cool.

Seattle's Great Fire film and mural. You can also see the doll and glue pot.

Of note back among the smaller displays are an interactive activity about how far you'd be willing to go for social change (which, at the beginning of the game, plays "Takin' It to the Streets," so wink-wink and a nod for that); the first Ultrasound machine made by ATL, based on technology from the University of Washington; and the one thing many, many Seattleites are glad MOHAI owns: the 1979 NBA Championship trophy the Seattle Supersonics won. (Harumph)

I hate Clay Bennett

Toward the end of the second-floor excursion is the World City area, which is another pop culture lover's dream. This area focuses on sports and music. The first display case you come across when you enter has jerseys from Edgar Martinez and Freddy Montero, a Gary Payton lunchbox, penants from all the professional teams of the past few decades, and other little pieces of pro sports memorabilia. Next to the display is a television that plays highlights from major Seattle sports moments, like Rosalynn Sumners at the 1984 Olympics, Apolo Ohno at the 2002 Olympics, Edgar Martinez's "The Double," the Storm winning the WNBA championship, the UW Huskies in 1992, and the Seattle Seahawks going to the 2006 Super Bowl.

Going through a little doorway after the sports area puts you in the music section. Everyone who's paid attention to almost anything in the world in the past 20 years has a pretty good idea what's in this area. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, just like you'd expect. But there's also Screaming Trees, SubPop Records, "Louie Louie," Modest Mouse, Fleet Foxes, and Heart (What? No Posies?!? No Harvey Danger??). A lot of the Nirvana-, Pearl Jam-, and Screaming Trees-related stuff are actual items on display (just a few, though), and the rest are featured in a video playing on one wall.

Now we're nearly at the end of the second floor. The whole floor is wonderful, but those are my personal favorites.

Tomorrow, we'll finish our little tour of the very large museum.

One more article about the new MOHAI:
King5, 12/29/12

Museum of History and Industry - 2nd Floor (part 1)

It certainly seems like I could have spent an entire day on the first floor, but that would have mostly just been standing in the middle of the atrium, looking around at all the things you can see from the floor, the high ceilings, the well-designed exhibit fronts... The second floor, though, I think you could *actually* spend a day going through everything. That's where we spent most of our time, and where I realized we'd already been there for three hours!

So now, let's venture upstairs. You saw in yesterday's post the cool staircase that goes up to the second, third, and fourth floors. There's also a glass elevator that I have a feeling would be extremely cool. You could look at all the exhibits as you approach or depart from them. I, though, wouldn't have the guts to ride in that thing. It's one thing when the walls are glass and you can see through them. That's no problem. It's a completely different thing when you can see through the floor, too. Instead, I admired it from a sturdy floor... even though that made me a little disoriented, too. But I did watch the gears as the elevator made its rounds, which was cool.

Okay, so let's go up to the second floor. This is where the main historical exhibits are. From Native Americans to the Denny expedition to a growing city, railroads, gold rush... Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition to World War I to Depression... Prohibition, WPA, World War II... suburbia, civil unrest, technology industry, the world stage... this floor is where everything about "history" is.

There are some pretty cool things on the second floor, and lots more interactive fun. There's a display about the different languages of place names around western Washington (Native American, Spanish, Russian, "American"); a game where kids can watch a video and help "build" a railroad (which is a VERY LOUD game... I recommend either having earplugs, or going quickly through that area); and a "game" about the Red Scare, among other interactive activities.

Another thing MOHAI totally got right was the interactive moments that will remain after the visitors leave. Sure, it's fun to make signs light up or to build a railroad, but the Shaping Our City exhibit on the first floor actually leaves something with the museum; in this case, the statistics of people's answers to the questionnaires. On the second floor, in the Seattle By Design area, there's a little nook with a sign that says "How would you redesign the city?" and Post-It notes and pencils so people can leave their thoughts. Even by 1 o'clock-ish on opening day, there were lots of notes already. I don't know what the museum's going to do with all these, but I hope they're saving them. Maybe pull them out in 50 years and put on display of "Here's what people in 2012 wanted the city to look like. What ideas really happened? Which sound ridiculous now? Which ones would you still like to see happen?"

The towers on the second floor are The Microsoft Story, Seattle's World's Fairs, Boeing Takes Off, and Personal Stories. The Seattle's World's Fairs tower is pretty cool because it puts the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and the 1962 World's Fair back-to-back. The only bad thing is that it's in a tower, which is sort of like a walk-in closet, so there's not a lot of room for stuff or room to move around. But I do like the idea of them being together.

The Personal Stories tower is the one above the Shaping Our City tower and features oral histories from notable people, or from local people about notable events. Again, the exhibit is interactive. There are three listening/watching stations, and at each one, you touch the screen to select the era you want to explore, then select the photo of the person whose interview you want to listen to. I kind of loved this tower, given my recent foray into transcribing (and attempting to plan) oral histories. It made me feel warm and fuzzy about the work I've been doing, and also reaffirmed some questions I've been having (For example, different oral history style guides approach dialect and slang like "cuz"/"'cause"/"because" differently. The two MOHAI interviews I saw transcribed the shortened version of "because" as "'cause," so that contradicts one style guide I read, but confirms the way I've been doing them. That made me happy -- if it's good enough for MOHAI, it's good enough for me!).

Paul Allen interview in Personal Stories tower

Whew! I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired. I think we need to take a little break. Oh, look! There are lots of places to sit! There are couches in the Getting Started area, the Visions area, the World City area, and an interactive display where you can sit in the Changes area, not to mention a theater with seats and a couple of sit-and-watch exhibits in the Walker Gallery. Plus, another set of bathrooms. Let's say we sit for a little while, and we'll reconvene tomorrow to continue with the second floor.

Museum of History and Industry - 1st Floor

I'm back, with more in-depth descriptions of the Museum of History and Industry's Grand Opening. Since there was so much to see, I'm going to do one floor per post.

So, Thursday, December 27, 2012, was a grey day, with a few sunbreaks off in the distant clouds, but still threatening to rain all morning. Getting to the museum could have been a challenge: not only has MOHAI moved to a new location we'd need to find, but the main street (Mercer) to the area has been getting a facelift all year, changing the street from one-way that veers immediately after exiting the freeway to a two-way six-lane road. It was our first time in that part of Seattle since the street was redone, so it would be all new to us. Luckily, we didn't go the wrong way at any point :) Whew! Okay, now we could find a parking spot and go in.

MOHAI at Lake Union (picture from KIRO TV)

The building's exterior is absolutely stunning. It used to be a naval armory, and now the bright white paint and blue accents make it look sharp. From the south side, it looks impressive; from the west side (the main entrance), it looks breathtaking.

When you first walk into the museum and pass the information desk, you're amazed by how expansive it seems. The first floor atrium is wide open, and as I mentioned yesterday, the upper floors don't go all the way across the building: the second floor lines the wall, and the third and fourth floors are only on the north side of the building.

Main staircase leading up to floors 2-4. Notice the original Boeing B-1 airplane overhead.

To the right, there's a picture box-like display of models and artifacts: the Rainier R; a model of Mt. St. Helens (I think. I don't remember seeing it say "Mt. St. Helens," so maybe it's a generic mountain/volcano); a model of a Boeing airplane; a model of the Hat & Boots from the Georgetown gas station; a "Greetings from Seattle" postcard; a model of the Kalakala ferry; a model of the cougar Eddie Bauer shot on his property; a sign from the Dog House restaurant; Black Bart, who welcomed visitors to the 1962 World's Fair; a Rainier Beer bottle and bottle opener from the commercials; and one of Ivar's clams. What's more, this is the first interactive exhibit you run across: turning various hand cranks lights up the R, makes the volcano spew lava, lights up the box for Hat & Boots, changes the Seattle postcard to another scene, lights up the Kalakala, hides Eddie Bauer's cougar behind bushes, moves plates at the Dog House, makes Black Bart draw his gun, makes the bottle opener approach the Rainier bottle, and makes Ivar's clam dance, respectively.

Hanging from the ceiling to the left is the Slo-mo-shun IV hydroplane, and hanging almost directly above you is the original Boeing B-1 airplane.

A nifty thing they have going on in the museum are the towers, most of which are highly interactive. There are four towers--three on the east side of the building, one in the southwest corner--and each tower spans (can you span vertically?) the first two floors. Each tower has its own theme, and since they rise up two floors, that comes out to eight themes, total. The first-floor towers are Building a Game (how video games go from concept to production), Building a City (a little playroom for kids where they can play with blocks to make a neighborhood), Starting a Business, and Shaping Our City.

Participant = exhibit

Shaping Our City is a damn cool interactive exhibit, if I may use such a naughty word in describing a piece of Culture. This portion of the tower, smartly, is a great companion to the upper-floor theme, Personal Stories. The Shaping Our City tower allows visitors to answer a series of questions, like "How do you deal with the rain?", "Why did you come to the museum today?", "What brought you to the Seattle area?" and "How do you take your coffee?" The profiles then created are amazing for two reasons: One, they become part of the exhibit. On the outside of the tower are pictures of famous local people, the type of pictures you'd see at a historical museum. The tower's wall, though, also includes three frames, which display pictures people took of themselves while answering the questionnaire inside. I LOVED that part! *We* become part of history! Here's this wall of newsmakers' pictures, and here's a picture of a visitor, right in the display, like she's a noteworthy person, too. Not only that, but inside the tower, visitors can then read others' profile on the display screens. Select a profile to view, and the screen will show you that person's answers to two of the questions.

I'm famous! "How do you handle the rain?"

The second really cool thing about the Shaping Our City exhibit is that the information gathered from the questionnaires is then collected to learn statistics about the museum's visitors. For example, I think one stat I read said that 2% of the visitors that morning came from Peru!
 
I think by the time my mom and I got to this point in our exploration, we'd already been at the museum for an hour, and had lost my dad twice. But it was fun! And thanks Mom, for having the genius idea of taking a picture of my UW sweatshirt as my profile pic. She's so smart! I could be in the exhibit without actually having to have *my face* be a part of it :) The one sad thing about this exhibit is that the computer only holds 32 profiles, so once 32 people have come in after you, your profile goes *poof*. The answers, though, are still part of the museum's statistics. So even though no one after about 1 pm on Thursday saw my picture or could view my profile, I still count as part of the small percentage of people who answered that they don't drink coffee, or the percentage who said they came to the museum because they're interested in local history :)

After we finished playing with that, my mom and I went back outside the tower and stood there, waiting to see if my picture would pop up on the wall display. We waited a few minutes, but it never did (and I later went back and watched for a few more minutes a few hours later :D ), so we finally moved on to the second floor, which I'll describe in my next post. Stay tuned!

(Oh, I'll also mention that the first floor has two bathrooms, the original Lincoln Toe Truck, the Compass Cafe, and the temporary gift shop.)


Some other articles about the new MOHAI:
The Kitsap Sun, 12/28/12
Seattle Times, 12/7/12
KOMO, 12/29/12

MOHAI Grand Opening

Hey, folks. Just a quick post today -- it's a very Seattle-flavored two days for me, so I don't have much time. I'm off to see Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker (the *only* Nutcracker, in my opinion) in about an hour, so I'm just writing a quick note, in preparation for some much longer posts coming later.

Yesterday I treated my family to Museum of History and Industry's grand opening preview and we LOVED it. The new, 50000-square-foot museum opens to the public Saturday, December 29th, and I think I want to live there.

When you first walk into the building, a former armory, you're absolutely struck by how BIG and spacious it is. The hardwood floor is amazingly friendly (How can a floor be friendly? I don't know, but I swear it said to me, "Come in! Visit! Stay a while. Play!"), and the main floor is wide open. In all, there are four floors, but floors 2-4 line the walls, rather than being full floors stacked on top of the first floor (That might make more sense once there are pictures involved... Just wait a couple of days, I'll get them up.).

Since this is supposed to be a quick post, I'm just going to briefly mention the highlights of each floor, and I'll go more in-depth on subsequent posts.
First floor: The Rainier beer R and bottle with bottle opener; an Ivar's clam; the Shaping Our City tower
Second floor: Getting Started (an exhibit about Seattle as a growing city); Seattle's Great Fire; the Personal Stories tower (oral histories! Yay! Awesome); a film about Seattle's past and future in the Joshua Green Foundation Theater (I must remember to gush about the awesome music in that film and between showings). Also, the current special exhibit on the second floor is "Celluloid Seattle," an exhibit about movies and films based in Seattle, as well as theaters in Seattle
Third floor: the current special exhibit "Punctum/Poetry," with poems written by Seattle high school students, many inspired by photos from MOHAI's collection, and an oral histories wall, with videos of students interviewing each other
Fourth floor: Waterways to the World/the Maritime museum. Best part: the periscope.

I highly recommend that anyone who's interested in Seattle history (or the history of a growing city, or how a city grows from wilderness and Native Americans) go to the new MOHAI at some point. If you go, plan to spend the day. Seriously, the day. It took me nearly five hours to go through everything at a leisurely pace, watching all the films, playing with most of the interactive exhibits.

And as a bonus, as my family was wrapping up our visit for the day, a beautiful rainbow emerged, above the lake and boats, visible from the gift shop at the back of the museum. (You can see a great picture of it here.)

How does one historian enjoy a winter day?

How does this particular historian enjoy a lightly snowy, wintery day?

Make some peppermint hot chocolate, sit near a window where I can see the snow dusting the ground, get comfortable, and transcribe an oral history. Enjoy the cocoa, the snow, and the stories :)

Do you ever stop to wonder... ?

Do you ever read books about the pioneer days, and really stop to wonder what it would be like to be a pioneer, to be one of the first people to view an uninhabited land?

I've been re-reading Edmonds: The First Century, which talks a lot about when George Brackett, as well as his predecessors, first arrived in Edmonds, in the Puget Sound region of Washington, in the mid- to late-1800s.

As it is now, most of Edmonds (the portion that I think most people think about when they think of Edmonds) is beautiful, with the dazzling Puget Sound--and the ferries, smaller boats, seals, and other images that accompany waterfronts--on its western side, islands and mountains in the distance to the west, railroad tracks on the waterfront, and lots of very tall trees. When I think of Edmonds, the vision I have in my head always has sparkling blue and lush green.

But, of course, the city has roads and houses. And even though it has tall trees, they're probably nothing like the trees were when the first people were in the area, whether the Native Americans who trekked through the area on their journey to fish and dig for clams, or the white settlers who came and made Edmonds (or Port Edmund) their permanent homes.

Edmonds: The First Century opens with the paragraph "In 1870 the forest formed a solid wall that began just behind the beaches of Puget Sound. Predominantly red cedar, the forest was often too thick to walk through because the floor was littered with remains of the trees that had fallen over the centuries. ... This mass of timber covered millions and millions of acres..." It continues later: "The trees had stood along the Sound since the last Ice Age, growing for decades and centuries, falling back to the earth to rot and nourish the next generation of trees."

Too thick to walk through? That's a lot of trees. Centuries-old trees? That's old.

There's a road in Edmonds that takes you from Edmonds' northeast border to the bowl region of the city. It's a very winding road, hence the nickname "Snake Road." The road is often dark and almost gloomy because there are so many tall trees that they block out the light. But it's beautiful, and seems so peaceful, and the wall of trees kind of makes you forget that there's a world outside. On sunny days, the leaves project shadows onto the road and sidewalk, and on rainy days, you feel like you're in a forest in a fairy tale (or maybe that's just me). The west (and I have to use loose directions, since it's so winding it's hard to tell if you're facing north or east, etc.) side of the road drops into a gulch, with plenty of very tall trees, and a view of Puget Sound between tree trunks; the south/east side of the road has even more tall trees, standing closer together, and has the Southwest County Park. Along this road, whether you look to the right or left, you see a thicket of trees. Nothing but tall trees, a gulch with a creek down below, and a few houses. I can't even properly describe how many trees there are. Okay, think about that -- words can barely describe how many trees there are. Got that picture in your head?

Now, as I was going to Edmonds for some Christmas shopping the other day, I thought about this: Those thickets are nothing compared to what George Brackett and the others saw when they first came to Edmonds. As that paragraph from Edmonds says, there was so much debris on the floor of the forest that one would hardly be able to walk. Now, of course, there are trunks and leaves and ferns and whatnot that it's probably difficult to walk through the park, but not impossible. And even though it seems like there are a lot of trees, they by no means form "a solid wall." There's a road and houses in the thickest "forest" left in Edmonds, and the seeming isolation of the road is an anomaly compared to the development in the rest of the city. And "millions and millions of acres" of trees? Not hardly!

As I read the book, I kept coming back to that vivid image from the first page, and the times when the author talks about the number of timber mills that eventually lined the waterfront. I mean, there were enough trees, and thick enough trees, that the waterfront had mill after mill (14 in all) there to process the wood from the forest. Enough to keep *14* mills in business, all at the same time? Wow.

What would it have looked like to Brackett, the Native Americans, and the others as they looked at the vast forest? Literally more trees than you could count. Nothing but thick, centuries-old trees everywhere. Tree trunk after tree trunk at eye level. I look at the trees now and think they're so tall, and I look at places like Southwest County Park and think there are so many trees, but those are nothing compared to what was here just 150 years ago (I know, we're the baby of the country). What was that "solid wall" of trees like? What did it look like? How amazing and awesome was it?

The next time you're out, running through your day, do the historical version of stop-and-smell-the-roses: stop and imagine what it looked like to the first person who ever walked on that land. Think of what it looked like five minutes before the first tree was cut down in the name of "progress." Think of what it would be like to be the first person to see a new countryside.


George Brackett on HistoryLink
Edmonds city website
Edmonds: The First Century
Southwest County Park