Seattle's Museum of History and Industry - MOHAI

 

    Seattle's Museum of History and Industry, or MOHAI, had its beginnings in 1911, and it has since grown into a collection of some six million artifacts, documents, and photos.  The collection is so large that roughly only 2% of it is on display at any given time.  The museum is located in a very beautiful setting, the historic Naval Reserve Armory at Lake Union Park, an area known as both an urban oasis and as an industrial and technological hub.  ( Museum Website )

    The museum offers an overview of Seattle and Puget Sound history from its indigenous beginnings all the way through to the rise of the corporations that Seattle that has become known for, like Starbucks, Microsoft, and Amazon.  The musical video and light show about the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 is almost worth the price of admission alone.  It's campy and fun, very tongue-in-cheek.  (Sure, the city center was totally destroyed, but no deaths were attributed to the fire, so it's OK.)  If you have a couple of hours to kill in Seattle, add MOHAI to your itinerary.

In Search of "Six Women" in Seattle

     Our first tour in Seattle was "Six Women" by Tours by Carter (Website ).  Carter Churchfield has been a tour operator and guide for over a decade and has created a phenomenal tour of Seattle focusing on women's history in the city.  She started with some 30 or more possible women to research and narrowed the field down to 6 (well, a bonus story makes 7) whose lives and stories unfolded within a few short blocks of Pioneer Square, the historic origin point of the city.  Modern Seattle started as a timber town.  Sawmills were built in order to process the vast timber resources, and a port developed to from which to export the lumber.  The city grew from there, predominantly male.  After the wooden city center burned down in 1889, and a new city was rebuilt of bricks, more and more women arrived, and the city boomed.  The women that Carter selected for her tour represent a great cross-section of those women, each with stories that deserve to be told.

    Who were these women?  I don't want to say much because you have to take the tour if you go to Seattle (and/or one of the other tours that she is currently developing), but the include Angeline Seattle, the daughter of Chief Seattle, leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples and namesake of the city, a former burlesque dancer and gay ally who became an icon in the city's gay community in the 1970s, a missionary who ministered to the down and out along the original "Skid Row" (The trees surrounding Seattle were cut down and slid or "skidded' down a hill to the sawmills.  That path became known as Skid Row.), a quack snake-oil saleswoman who claimed to be a Chinese princess, a brothel owner who built her brothel across the street from city hall (smart lady), and a suffragette who became a government reformer, member of the city council, and eventually mayor.  Each story is interesting and well-told, and the tour gives participants a great overview of Seattle history.  The hour and a half tour is an easy and enjoyable walk, and one sees a lot of interesting post-1889 architecture.  If you're in Seattle, book a Tour by Carter!