Everett Archives: 5 Everett History Books That Will Take You Into the Past
Why read about the history of Everett, Washington? If you’re a resident, it provides a rich context for the city and neighborhoods that surround you: houses hewn from local timber and built by mill workers and craftspeople. There is much to be discovered in the archives of our city, and thankfully there have been a number of scholarly guides and passionate documenters of Everett history over the years. As a result, we have a pretty solid record of the first 125 years of Everett, ripe for exploring.
So where to start? The easy answer is the Northwest History Room in the Everett Public Library. It’s an archive dedicated to preserving local history for the public. In addition to a quality searchable digital archive, the library has a huge selection of books (both circulating and non-circulating) that will take you in the way back machine, to an era when bootleggers drove casks of illicit booze from Granite Falls to downtown Everett speakeasies.
Here’s our top recommendations with a brief synopsis of what you can expect. All of these titles are available at the Everett Public Library. Thanks, tax dollars!
1. “Voices From Everett’s First Century” by The Snohomish County Museum and Historical Association
Before the Everett Museum of History, there was the Snohomish County Museum. In the early 1990s, the museum’s staff gathered this sizeable volume of oral accounts, as told by early residents of Everett.
What moves me most about these anthologized stories and accompanying photos is that they include the autobiographical narratives of regular folk: an usherette at a movie theater, a woman who worked in a fitting room at a downtown department store, a simple boatbuilder. For my money, this is the single best book if you want to get the actual feel of what life was like in Everett in the early twentieth century.
2. “Mill Town Boy” by Gene Fosheim
In “Mill Town Boy,” Everett native and author Gene Fosheim carefully catalogs his memories of growing up in Everett in the mid-twentieth century. Moreso, though, this is the story of his family’s putting down roots in Everett, and it’s mostly a tale of his father, a motorcycle-riding young man in the early days of a burgeoning mill town. Interspersed with this narrative are plenty of anecdotes and photos showing and telling Everett’s history.
3. “Mill Town Footlights” by David Dilgard
David Dilgard and Margaret Riddle were the founders of the Northwest History Room. Dilgard is still a legend among local history buffs for his exhaustive research into Everett at a critical time when records of the early days were disappearing (Riddle is alive and active in the historical community).
Dilgard’s book about Everett theatres takes readers back to an era before television, movies, or even radio. Civic life truly revolved around the downtown theatres, many of which still line the streets today.
Fun fact: when it was built, the Historic Everett Theatre was the largest theatre west of the Mississippi and could fit a third of the population of Everett in its seating areas.
4. “Margaret” by assorted authors, including Jason Webley
It’s a book, it’s an album of music... it’s a collaborative art project. “Margaret” is a series of songs, essays, and scrapbook excerpts about the life of Margaret Rucker. If you’ve lived in Everett for any period of time you know the Rucker name from the street, and the iconic pyramid.
Margaret was a poetess who had a tragic life (and, spoiler alert, death). Improbable but true, a scrapbook about her was discovered in a dumpster in San Fransisco. It included her poetry and newspaper articles about her life. This scrapbook was the impetus for the Margaret project, which tells her tragic tale in song, essays, and never-before-published photographs.
Seriously, check it out (literally) -- it will give you chills.
5. “Smokestackers!” By Richard Porter, illustrations by Sierra Rozario
Maybe the most accessible book about Everett’s history is Porter’s book. It’s a breezy read and can be polished off in one sitting. It’s an episodic series of tales, pulled from history books and retold in a vivid way, with active verbs, strong characters, and comic-book style illustrations. This is like training wheels before getting into the deeper footnotes of concentrated archive work. A “gateway drug” of sorts to the intoxicating world of mill town history.
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