Cassandra Tate, "Mandatory Busing in Seattle: Memories of a Bumpy Ride" Archived October 31, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, History Link, August 7, 2002.

In 1778, British explorer Captain James Cook sighted Cape Flattery, at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but Cook did not realize the strait existed. S. Armed Forces employed and recruited tens of thousands of African Americans from the Southeastern United States. The straits were further explored by Spanish explorers Manuel Quimper in 1790 and Francisco de Eliza in 1791, [33] [34] and British explorer George Vancouver in 1792. In 2019 the legislature passed the Clean Energy Transformation Act, which requires all electricity sales to be from zero-carbon sources by 2045 and net-zero by 2030.

By 2006, the state had over 31,000 acres (130km 2) of vineyards, a harvest of 120,000 short tons (109,000t) of grapes, and exports going to more than forty countries around the world from the state's 600 wineries. Fort Nisqually, a farm and trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company and the first European settlement in the Puget Sound area, was founded in 1833. In November 2016, voters approved Initiative 1433, which among other things requires employers to guarantee paid sick leave to most workers. The Washington State Office of Financial Management reported the state population at 7,951,150 as of April 1, 2023.

Although the nickname is widely used by the state, appearing on vehicle license plates for instance, it has not been officially adopted. Accompanying Quimper was first-pilot Gonzalo Lopez de Haro who drew detailed charts during the six-week expedition. Vancouver is also home to the Washington School for the Deaf and Washington School for the Blind, and (through Evergreen School District) Home Choice Academy, for home-schoolers. The GTE Northwest Classic was part of the Senior PGA Tour from 1986 to 1995, and the Boeing Classic since 2005. The Okanogan National Forest is the largest national forest on the West Coast, encompassing 1,499,023 acres (606,633ha).In addition, health insurance companies were required to sell policies to all individuals, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and cover basic benefits. The most numerous (ethnic, not racial, group) are Latinos at 11%, as Mexican Americans formed a large ethnic group in the Chehalis Valley, Skagit Valley, farming areas of Yakima Valley, and Eastern Washington. It also has six middle schools: Alki Middle School, Discovery Middle School, Gaiser Middle School, Jason Lee Middle School, Thomas Jefferson Middle School, and McLoughlin Middle School. Vancouver is the seat of government of Clark County and forms part of the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area, the 25th-largest metropolitan area in the United States.

Despite the limited amount of rainfall, agriculture is an extremely important business throughout much of Eastern Washington, as the soil is highly productive and irrigation, aided by dams along the Columbia River, is fairly widespread. The state is the largest producer of apples, hops, pears, blueberries, spearmint oil, and sweet cherries in the U. There are extensive waterways around Washington's largest cities, including Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, and Olympia. Separated from Oregon until 1917, when the new Interstate Bridge began to replace ferries, Vancouver had three shipyards just downstream which produced ships for World War I before World War II brought an enormous economic boom. Resolution of the territorial and treaty issues west to the Pacific was deferred until a later time.The Sounder commuter rail service operates in Seattle and its surrounding cities, between Everett and Lakewood. The Chinookan and Klickitat names for the area were reportedly Skit-so-to-ho and Ala-si-kas, respectively, meaning "land of the mud-turtles". Mount Rainier—the tallest mountain in the state— [72] is 50 miles (80km) south of the city of Seattle, from which it is prominently visible.

The missionaries Marcus Whitman, a doctor, and Narcissa Whitman, his wife, and twelve other members of the Waiilatpu Mission were murdered in November 1847 by a small contingent of the Cayuse Indians in the Oregon Territory. With the Interstate Bridge and Bonneville Dam Vancouver saw an industrial boom in the 1940s, including the Kaiser shipyard and Alcoa, as well as a Boise Cascade paper mill, just west of the Interstate Bridge. From that time on, the area was settled by both the US and Britain under a "joint occupation" agreement. The Fort Vancouver Regional Library District opened a new library on C Street at Evergreen Boulevard in 2011.Around 15,000 people were in attendance for the official grand opening, in 2018, of the project and associated public space including Grant Street Pier, a cable-stayed viewing deck that extends out over the Columbia River.