98 Fun Facts About Washington State

Washington was admitted to the Union in 1889 as which numbered state?

Washington became the 42nd state on 11 November 1889, three days after Montana (41st) and ahead of Idaho (43rd); it is the only state named for a US president.

Washington Territory was almost given what name before it honoured a president?

Congress was offered 'Columbia Territory' in 1853, but Kentucky's Richard Stanton argued it would be confused with the District of Columbia, so it was named for George Washington.

What is the capital of Washington state?

Olympia has been the capital since 1853, when it was named seat of Washington Territory; Seattle is the most populous city.

Washington's widely used nickname is what?

The Evergreen State, coined by Seattle realtor C.T. Conover in 1890 for the state's forests, appears on licence plates yet was never formally adopted by the legislature.

Washington is the largest U.S. producer of which fruit?

Washington grows more apples than any other state, well over half the US crop, and also leads the nation in hops, pears and sweet cherries.

The state vegetable of Washington is which sweet onion?

The Walla Walla sweet onion, grown around the southeastern city of that name, became the state vegetable in 2007; the state fruit is the apple.

The state tree of Washington is which conifer?

The western hemlock became Washington's state tree in 1947; the state flower is the coast rhododendron and the state fish the steelhead.

Washington's highest point, an active stratovolcano, is which mountain?

Mount Rainier, at 14,411 feet, is the state's highest point and the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states, with about 25 named glaciers.

The state's highest peak is also known by which Native American name?

Because it could erupt near a major city, it is listed among the world's Decade Volcanoes.

On 18 May 1980, which Washington volcano erupted after the largest landslide in recorded history?

Mount St. Helens erupted on 18 May 1980 after its north face collapsed in the largest landslide in recorded history; the blast killed 57 people and dropped ash on 11 states.

Which strait separates Washington's Olympic Peninsula from Canada's Vancouver Island?

The Strait of Juan de Fuca, named for a Greek pilot who sailed for Spain in 1592, runs about 95 miles between the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island.

The Space Needle was built for which event?

Built for the 1962 World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition), the Space Needle blends Edward Carlson's napkin sketch of a tethered balloon with architect John Graham's flying-saucer top.

The Space Needle stands how tall?

The Space Needle rises 605 feet; when it opened in 1962 it was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi, and it was engineered to withstand 200 mph winds.

Which company was founded in Seattle in 1916 by a lumber industrialist?

William Boeing's original firm was called the Pacific Aero Products Company.

Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond since 1986, was founded in 1975 in which city?

Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque in 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for MITS's Altair 8800, and moved the company to Bellevue, Washington, in 1979.

Jeff Bezos first named the company that became Amazon what?

Bezos incorporated the company as Cadabra, Inc. in July 1994, then dropped the name after a lawyer misheard it as 'cadaver' and registered Amazon.com that November.

Starbucks opened its first store in 1971 at which Seattle landmark?

Starbucks' first store opened in 1971 in Seattle's Pike Place Market district, at 2000 Western Avenue, moving to 1912 Pike Place in 1976; the name comes from Moby-Dick's first mate.

Seattle's historic public farmers' market, home to the first Starbucks, opened in which year?

Pike Place Market opened on 17 August 1907 so shoppers could 'meet the producer' and bypass the commission middlemen blamed for high food prices.

The Grand Coulee Dam holds what national distinction?

Grand Coulee Dam, completed on the Columbia River in 1942, is the largest US power station by capacity, at about 6,800 megawatts.

The Hanford Site in eastern Washington produced plutonium for which World War II bomb?

Hanford's B Reactor, the world's first full-scale plutonium production reactor, supplied the plutonium for the Trinity test and for Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.

The 1859 'Pig War' between the U.S. and Britain was a bloodless standoff over which archipelago?

The only casualty was a pig shot by an American farmer while eating his potatoes.

The Great Seattle Fire of 1889 was started by an overheated pot of what?

The fire began on 6 June 1889 when a glue pot boiled over in a carpentry shop and destroyed the business district; rebuilding the streets a storey higher created the Seattle Underground.

The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed in 1940, was nicknamed what?

Nicknamed Galloping Gertie for its rolling deck, the bridge opened on 1 July 1940 and tore apart in a 40 mph wind on 7 November, undone by aeroelastic flutter.

Which Seattle-born guitarist headlined the Woodstock festival in 1969?

Jimi Hendrix, born in Seattle on 27 November 1942, closed Woodstock on the morning of 18 August 1969 with his feedback-laden 'Star-Spangled Banner'.

The band Nirvana, pioneers of grunge, formed in 1987 in which Washington town?

Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic formed Nirvana in their hometown of Aberdeen in 1987 and released the debut album Bleach on Seattle's Sub Pop label in 1989.

Which Seattle prep academy did Bill Gates attend, meeting his future Microsoft co-founder there?

At Lakeside School, Gates met Paul Allen and learned to program on a teletype terminal in 1968; he later left Harvard to start Microsoft with Allen.

The Seattle Seahawks joined the NFL in which year?

The Seahawks entered the NFL as a 1976 expansion team alongside Tampa Bay; their fans, the 12s, twice set the Guinness record for crowd noise during the 2013 season.

Which Seattle Mariner entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2016 with 99.32% of the vote?

Ken Griffey Jr., the first overall pick of the 1987 draft, was elected in 2016 with 99.32 percent, then the highest share ever; Mariano Rivera's unanimous 2019 election later passed it.

David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks was shot in and around which Washington town?

The Salish Lodge above Snoqualmie Falls stood in for the Great Northern Hotel.

The 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle starred Tom Hanks and which actress?

Meg Ryan plays Annie Reed opposite Tom Hanks in Nora Ephron's 1993 film, in which a boy phones a radio show to find his widowed father a new wife.

The Twilight novels and films are set in which real, very rainy Washington town?

Forks, on the Olympic Peninsula and once billed as the Logging Capital of the World, reinvented itself as a tourist stop after Stephenie Meyer set Twilight there.

The Bavarian-themed village of Leavenworth remade its town centre starting in which decade?

Leavenworth adopted its Bavarian look in the 1960s after Seattle businessmen Ted Price and Bob Rodgers, owners of a struggling cafe nearby, proposed the alpine theme in 1962 to revive the town.

Puget Sound is part of which larger body of water, named in 2009?

The Salish Sea, a name adopted by the US and Canadian naming boards in 2009-10, takes in Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Peter Puget, for whom Puget Sound was named in 1792, then held what naval rank?

Peter Puget served as a lieutenant aboard HMS Discovery on Vancouver's 1792 expedition and led the boat survey of the sound's southern reaches, which Vancouver then named for him.

Washington State Ferries holds what distinction?

Washington State Ferries, which took over the Black Ball Line's routes in 1951, is the largest ferry system in the United States, serving 20 terminals around Puget Sound.

Washington's largest river begins its 1,243-mile journey in which country?

The Columbia rises at Columbia Lake in the Rocky Mountain Trench of British Columbia, Canada, and flows about 1,243 miles to the Pacific, forming much of Washington's border with Oregon.

The giant tunnel boring machine that dug Seattle's downtown highway tunnel was named what?

The name honours Bertha Knight Landes, Seattle's first female mayor, and was picked by schoolchildren.

Spokane, Washington's second-largest city, hosted which 1974 event?

The fair, Expo '74, left behind the city's Riverfront Park.

Walla Walla's name comes from a Native phrase meaning what?

Walla Walla comes from a Sahaptin word meaning 'place of many waters', a nod to the valley's creeks and springs; the Whitman Mission massacre took place nearby in 1847.

Olympic National Park protects rainforests, alpine meadows and what third landscape?

Theodore Roosevelt first protected the area as a national monument in 1909.

Washington shares an international border with which Canadian province?

British Columbia lies across Washington's northern border, mostly along the 49th parallel; Oregon is to the south and Idaho to the east.

Which dry, semi-arid part of the state became known for wheat grown with dry-farming techniques?

Eastern Washington's Columbia Basin and Palouse, in the Cascades' rain shadow, grew wheat by dry farming, and the Palouse became one of the most productive wheat regions in the country.

The ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man, found in Washington in 1996, is roughly how old?

Radiocarbon dating put the remains at 8,400 to 8,690 years old, among the oldest and most complete found in North America.

Which Spanish captain made the first recorded European landing on the Washington coast, in 1775?

Bruno de Heceta went ashore at Point Grenville on 14 July 1775 from the frigate Santiago and formally claimed the coast for Spain, the first recorded European landing in Washington.

Which president signed the law creating Washington Territory on March 2, 1853?

Millard Fillmore signed the act creating Washington Territory on 2 March 1853, two days before leaving office; the territory then reached east across the Idaho panhandle into western Montana.

What temperature did Hanford reach in June 2021 to set Washington's state record high?

Hanford hit 120 F on 29 June 2021 during the Pacific Northwest heat dome, a state record; the state low of -48 F was set at Winthrop and Mazama in 1968.

How many counties does Washington have?

Washington has 39 counties, from King (the most populous) to Garfield (the least); they contain 281 incorporated cities and towns.

Which Washington wine region became the state's first federally designated AVA in 1983?

The Yakima Valley AVA, approved in 1983, was Washington's first American Viticultural Area; Walla Walla Valley followed in early 1984 and the broad Columbia Valley later that year.

Which family holiday was first celebrated in Spokane, Washington in 1910, after a campaign by Sonora Smart Dodd?

Father's Day was Dodd's tribute to her own dad, a Civil War veteran who raised six children alone after his wife died. It took until 1972 for the day to become a permanent national holiday.

Which nickname for UFOs did newspapers coin after pilot Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting in Washington's Cascades?

Flying saucer appeared in headlines within two days of Arnold reporting nine shiny objects moving at an estimated 1,200 miles per hour. He had first taken them for a flock of geese.

Which ancient English monument has a full-size concrete replica at Maryhill, Washington, built as a war memorial?

Stonehenge was copied here by entrepreneur Sam Hill, a Quaker who believed the original was a place of sacrifice and wanted to show that war still claimed lives the same way.

Which sport, invented in 1965 as a children's backyard game on Bainbridge Island, became Washington's state sport?

Pickleball was cobbled together from a badminton court, paddleball paddles and a wiffle ball at the summer home of future congressman Joel Pritchard.

Costco's house brand takes its name from which Washington city, where the retailer once had its headquarters?

Kirkland was Costco's base from 1987 to 1996, and the Kirkland Signature label launched in 1995, a year before the company moved to Issaquah.

Starbucks, founded in Seattle in 1971, takes its name from the chief mate in which classic American novel?

Moby-Dick came to mind after the founders spotted a mining camp called Starbo on an old map of the Cascades, which reminded them of first mate Starbuck.

Which Japanese video game company runs its American operations from Redmond, Washington, the same city as Microsoft?

Nintendo named Mario after Mario Segale, the landlord of the Tukwila warehouse it rented before moving its American base to Redmond.

Which hijacker parachuted from an airliner over southwest Washington in 1971 with $200,000 and was never identified?

D. B. Cooper's leap is the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history. The FBI concluded that he probably jumped over the town of La Center.

Which NBA team did the Seattle SuperSonics become when the franchise left Washington after the 2007–08 season?

Oklahoma City Thunder took rookie star Kevin Durant with them after a $45 million settlement with the city of Seattle over the arena lease.

Which global delivery company began in Seattle as the American Messenger Company, founded with $100 of borrowed money?

UPS painted its vehicles brown because a partner argued yellow would be hard to keep clean, pointing out that Pullman railroad cars were brown for the same reason.

Washington flies the only U.S. state flag with a background of which colour, behind a portrait of the first president?

Green was championed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, whose 1915 design set the state seal on a flag of that colour. No other state flag shows a U.S. president either.

Which gold strike turned Seattle into a boomtown from 1897, as thousands of prospectors bought their supplies there?

The Klondike rush reached Seattle when the steamer Portland docked with gold aboard, and a publicity drive by newspaperman Erastus Brainerd made the city its main supply centre.

Which Cheers spin-off follows a psychiatrist who returns to his hometown of Seattle to host a radio call-in show?

Frasier won 37 Primetime Emmys, a record for a scripted series at the time, including Outstanding Comedy Series five years running.

Which long-running ABC medical drama is set at a fictional Seattle hospital but filmed mainly in Los Angeles?

Grey's Anatomy shoots most hospital exteriors at a veterans' clinic in California, and sharp-eyed viewers have spotted dry mountains through the walkway windows.

Which Seattle band's 1991 debut album Ten produced the hit singles Alive, Even Flow and Jeremy?

Pearl Jam first performed as Mookie Blaylock, after a professional basketball player, and titled the album Ten after his jersey number.

Which crooner and Oscar-winning actor was born in Tacoma and raised in Spokane, where a theatre bears his name?

Bing Crosby worked one summer as a property boy at Spokane's Auditorium, where watching Al Jolson ad-lib on stage left him spellbound.

Which martial arts film star attended the University of Washington and opened his first kung fu school in Seattle?

Bruce Lee met his wife, Linda Emery, while both were students there, and he is buried beside his son Brandon in Seattle's Lake View Cemetery.

Which marine mammal became a Washington state symbol in 2005 after a campaign by Oak Harbor elementary school students?

Orca pods travel through Puget Sound every year, and pupils at Crescent Harbor Elementary won the title by arguing the whales draw tourists and matter in Native culture.

Washington farms grow roughly three-quarters of America's supply of which key ingredient in brewing beer?

Hops put Washington ahead of every other state, and its farms also made it the leading U.S. producer of spearmint oil, pears and sweet cherries.

Which spring flower draws crowds every April to a month-long festival in the Skagit Valley, north of Seattle?

Tulips fill the valley because the Washington Bulb Company there became North America's leading grower of tulip, daffodil and iris bulbs. The festival claims more than a million visitors.

Seattle's State Route 520 bridge across Lake Washington holds the world record as the longest of which type?

Floating on 77 concrete pontoons, the span opened in 2016 and took the world record from the bridge it replaced on the same crossing, which was 130 feet shorter.

North Cascades National Park holds about 300 of which natural feature, the most in any U.S. park outside Alaska?

Glaciers here number roughly 312, a third of all those in the lower 48 states, and the rock they grind to powder turns some of the park's lakes turquoise.

Which giant burrowing clam, harvested from the mudflats of Puget Sound, can live for more than a century?

Geoduck is pronounced gooey-duck, a name taken from the Lushootseed language, and the clams can live at least 168 years.

Which mall snack chain opened its first bakery in 1985 at SeaTac Mall in Federal Way, Washington?

Cinnabon began with the lease: restaurateur Rich Komen had already secured the mall space before he and a colleague worked out the bakery concept to fill it.

Which Seattle billionaire bought the Seahawks in 1997 and founded the city's Museum of Pop Culture?

Paul Allen bought the team from an owner who had tried to move it to southern California, and he opened the museum in 2000 in a Gehry-designed building.

Which upscale department store chain began in Seattle in 1901 as a shoe shop co-founded by a Swedish immigrant?

Nordstrom sold nothing but shoes for six decades, adding clothing only in 1963 when it bought a Seattle fashion shop called Best's Apparel.

Which Japanese outfielder was named both Rookie of the Year and American League MVP with the 2001 Seattle Mariners?

Ichiro Suzuki went on to collect 262 hits in 2004, breaking a single-season record that had stood for 84 years.

The Boys in the Boat tells how a University of Washington rowing crew won gold at which city's 1936 Olympics?

Berlin saw the crew, nine students who had worked their way through college in the Depression, narrowly beat Italy and Germany to the gold medal.

Which single-panel newspaper cartoon did Tacoma-area native Gary Larson draw for fifteen years until 1995?

The Far Side coined thagomizer as a joke name for the spikes on a stegosaur's tail, and scientists gradually adopted the word as an informal term.

Which independent record label, founded in Seattle in 1986, released Nirvana's debut album Bleach?

Sub Pop got the album cheaply: the thirty hours of recording were billed at $606.17, and sales of the record helped keep the label going for years.

Which Tacoma-born author wrote the 1965 science fiction epic Dune, set on the desert planet Arrakis?

Frank Herbert found the idea while researching a magazine article on Oregon's coastal sand dunes, and nearly twenty publishers turned the finished novel down.

Seattle's first Major League Baseball team, the Pilots, lasted one season before moving in 1970 to become which club?

Milwaukee Brewers became the name only after a judge declared the Pilots bankrupt seven days before Opening Day, while the team's equipment sat in Utah awaiting a destination.

Which Seattle outfitter patented America's first quilted down jacket in 1940 after a bout of hypothermia?

Eddie Bauer sold the jacket in his Seattle shop as the Skyliner, and six years earlier he had patented something quite different: a standardised shuttlecock.

Which Tacoma-born artist has a permanent exhibition of his blown-glass sculptures beside Seattle's Space Needle?

Dale Chihuly lost the sight in one eye in a car crash and later injured a shoulder, so he hires a team of glassblowers instead of holding the pipe himself.

Which 1982 film introduced Vietnam veteran John Rambo, who drifts into the fictional town of Hope, Washington?

First Blood was shot with an ending in which Rambo dies, as in the novel, but a test audience reacted so angrily that the producers used backup footage in which he survives.

The elk of Olympic National Park, North America's largest subspecies, are named after which U.S. president?

Theodore Roosevelt returned the compliment in 1909, setting aside Mount Olympus National Monument largely to protect the herds that carried his name.

Which garage-rock classic did a Seattle TV comedian campaign in 1985 to make Washington's official state song?

Louie Louie never did replace Washington, My Home, but it has lore of its own: the FBI spent 31 months investigating the Kingsmen's recording and could not make out the words.

Which flowering shrub did Washington women choose as the state flower in an 1892 vote, before they had suffrage?

Rhododendron beat clover in the final count after six flowers were considered, because the state needed an entry for a floral exhibit at the 1893 Chicago exposition.

Which Olympic Peninsula town, sheltered by a mountain rain shadow, is nicknamed the Lavender Capital of North America?

Sequim receives less than 16 inches of rain a year, about the same as Los Angeles, which earned it the local nickname Sunny Sequim.

Ice Age floods from which vanished lake, held back by an ice dam, carved Washington's Channeled Scablands?

Lake Missoula's ice dam failed dozens of times, yet when geologist J Harlen Bretz argued in 1923 that a huge flood had carved the scablands, peers wedded to gradual change disregarded him.

Which narrow 50-mile lake in north-central Washington is the third deepest in the United States?

Lake Chelan trails only Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe, and it is so deep that its floor lies hundreds of feet below sea level.

Which cape on the Makah Reservation is the northwesternmost point of the contiguous United States?

Cape Flattery was described and named by James Cook in 1778, which makes it the oldest permanent non-Native place name in Washington.

Which Washington community, cut off by the 49th parallel, can be reached by road only through another country?

Point Roberts sits on the tip of a peninsula that dips just below the border agreed in 1846, leaving its residents a 25-mile drive across foreign soil from the rest of their state.

Which trophy did the Seattle Metropolitans win in 1917, making them the first American team ever to claim it?

Stanley Cup glory came with a win over the Montreal Canadiens, and Seattle reached the final again in 1919, a series abandoned with the teams level because of the flu pandemic.

Washington's unofficial motto, Alki, first seen on the territorial seal, is a Chinook Jargon word meaning what?

By and by was a promise: the settlers who landed at Seattle's Alki Point in 1851 called their six-block settlement New York Alki.

Pullman, home of Washington State University, hosts a national festival each year honouring which legume?

Lentils star in the festival's free bowls of chili, and the event has celebrated them since 1989 as a signature crop of the surrounding Palouse hills.

A world-record 95 feet of snow fell in the 1998–99 season at a ski area named after which Cascade volcano?

Mount Baker's ski area, about 50 miles east of Bellingham, logged 1,140 inches that winter and averages 641 inches a year, among the highest of any resort in the world.

Which 1914 Seattle skyscraper, built for a typewriter magnate, was long the tallest building west of the Mississippi?

Smith Tower was made far taller on the advice of the magnate's son, who wanted to take the regional height record away from a building in rival Tacoma.

Which London-based fur-trading firm built Fort Vancouver in 1824 as its headquarters in present-day Washington?

Hudson's Bay Company put John McLoughlin in charge for nearly 22 years, and he was later hailed as Oregon's founding figure for letting American settlers into the region.

Washington's official state ship, the Lady Washington, played HMS Interceptor in which 2003 seafaring film?

Pirates of the Caribbean was not the brig's only screen role: about a decade earlier it sailed as a namesake of the starship Enterprise in a Star Trek film.