The Metal Trades Council Union alliance in Seattle shut down the shipyards on February 6, 1919, in hopes of forcing a promised pay increase following the strict price controls set during World War I. After the Metal Trades Council obtained the support of Seattle's Central Labor Alliance, more than 65,000 Seattle workers staged a sympathy walkout, creating what has come to be known as the first "general strike" in U.S. history, and laying the foundation for labor unrest in the nation's steel, coal, and meatpacking industries in the years that followed.

This website documents the history of this strike through a large collection of primary and secondary source materials.

A four-minute video introduction, containing original film footage from 1919, is a useful place to begin for those unfamiliar with Seattle's labor history.

The website also includes contemporary and more recent newspaper articles, including more than 180 articles from Seattle's major newspapers covering the February 1919 events; 15 oral histories; more than 30 photographs of labor activity in Seattle, prominent union members, and strike activities; as well as research reports on the strike by history students at the University of Washington.

This massive archive contains more than 84.5 million documents, more than 26 million of which are fully keyword searchable, from Washington State and local agencies. These documents include contracts, birth, marriage, military, naturalization, death, cemetery, and census records, land records and surveys, oaths of office, maps, photographs, power of attorney records, and date from the late 19th century to the present.

A detailed list of collections is available through the Collections section. Here, users will find detailed information on all record collections, including dates and counties available, and options to search by county or within sub-collections.

The casual user may want to begin with several browsable featured collections, which contain photographs from the Spokane city planning department, audio recordings of the Washington House of Representatives Committee Meetings, and 200 photographs of daily life in the Big Bend region of the Columbia Basin.

Useful for teachers and historical researchers interested in many aspects of life in the West, and those interested in genealogy with connections to Washington State.

History Link is an encyclopedia of the history of Seattle and King County, WA. A timeline of 180 "Milestones" connects visitors to 500-word historical essays on topics in Seattle-area history from before 1851 to 2000. "People's Histories" presents roughly 150 memoirs and oral histories (1000 to 16,000 words) of Seattle residents of diverse class and ethnic backgrounds, including Squamish and Nordic. There are 18 "Magic Lantern" photographic essays ranging from one image and 40 words to 50 images and 300 words. Special collections have been arranged in 17 folios, which cover topics such as Martin Luther King's 1961 visit to the city and the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in 1999. The WTO archive contains 19 articles of 100 to 2000 words on the history of radicalism in Seattle and the WTO protests of 1999 and 2000. This archive also contains 48 photographs of the protests taken by History Link staff.

Visitors may take four Cybertours of the city in which they click on sections of a map and connect to one or two images and 300-word descriptions of local history. "Then and Now" contains 49 before-and-after photographs of Seattle landmarks with 300-word essays on the history of each location. The site is easy to navigate and can be searched by subject. In March 2003, HistoryLink added a database for all of Washington state. It is an excellent resource for all levels of scholars interested in the history of the Northwest or oral history.

This website offers resources in Washington history through three main sections: historical records research, historical newspapers and classics in Washington history, and presentations. Historical records offers county census records, naturalization records, other miscellaneous records, and genealogical research resources, as well as searches of the state archive records and the state library catalog. The newspapers and classics feature allows visitors to search and view articles from four state newspapers dating back to 1852. Users can search the newspapers by keyword, topic, or personal name. This section also has 91 classic works on Washington history, searchable by keyword, grouped under topics of county and regional history, exploration and early travel, Native Americans, pioneer life, special collections, territorial government, and wagon trails and the Oregon Trail. Individual works can also be searched. (Newspaper articles and classics must be viewed using the DJVU plugin software, available for free download on the site.)

Additionally there is a Corps 33 bibliography of more than 35 works on the Lewis and Clark expedition. There are six presentations that allow visitors to explore Washington's territorial history through an interactive timeline featuring photographs and documents, view documents relating to World War I and profiles of Washington's soldiers, read the history and view historical photographs of cities, counties and corporations, browse a collection of historical maps of the state and the Pacific Northwest, view all 78 pages of the original Washington State Constitution and learn the history surrounding it, and explore the history of elections and voting in the state. The site also offers a collection of 96 images showing the construction and early history of the state's Legislative Building.

The long history of struggle for equal rights by various ethnic groups in Seattle, including Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native Americans; Jews; and Latinos is documented on this website. Primary and secondary sources integrate labor rights movements with struggles for political rights, as is evident in the "special sections," that highlight the Chicano/a movement, the Black Panther Party, Filipino Cannery Unionism, the United Construction Workers Association, Communism, and the United Farm Workers. Each section brings together oral histories, documents, newspapers, and photographs that are accompanied by written and video commentary to provide historical context. The collection of more than 70 oral histories of activists is especially useful for understanding the lived experience of racism and its especially subtle workings in the Pacific Northwest. Together, these resources provide important national context for the civil rights struggle, too often understood as a solely southern phenomenon.