Greetings from Washington

This 1988 collection of historical tinted postcards, assembled by a renowned local author and historian, was timed just right for the Washington State Centennial in 1989. It's now a collector's item for both Pacific Northwest history buffs and postcard collectors.The sections, with only captions and brief comments by Lane Morgan, are named: "From Sea to Inland Sea," "Seattle," "West of the Mountains," "Cascades," "Inland Empire," "Farm and Forest," and "Celebrations."Since the elementary school where I am a librarian is located in a community originally established for the logging industry, students are always fascinated to see size of the logs, and even the lumber cut from those logs, as well as log cabins, oxen on a skid road, and log jams in the rivers. They are amazed to see a family's home built out of a single tree stump around 1910!Other fascinating postcards include the native people, both the coastal and the inland tribes. Granted, this is a nostalgic look at Washington State, with early camping and skiing on Mount Rainier, irrigated orchards in Wenatchee Valley, the beloved "Kalakala" ferry boat on Puget Sound, and historic buildings, including the "highest and finest and best known office building on the Pacific Coast," the Smith Tower in Seattle.While it may not seem like "history" to me, I remember as a 12 year-old in 1962 collecting the postcards shown here from the Century 21 Exposition, better known as the Seattle World's Fair, with painted views of the Space Needle and the Monorail.This is a fun book to have for lovers of local history and nostalgia. This is one of those books that proves the old proverb, "A picture is worth a thousand words." It would be nice to see it back in print, but I imagine someone will come out with a new, updated version...perhaps in time for our bi-centennial in 2089!