HistoryLink–our state’s virtual encyclopedia

Have you heard about HistoryLink, Washington State’s free online encyclopedia that is regularly refreshed with new stories?

The non-profit, founded in 1997 by Walt Crowley, Marie McCaffrey and Paul Dorpat, “with the mission to pioneer innovative approaches to historical research, education and publishing,” now attracts nearly two million visitors a year. It is a go-to resource for teachers’ curriculum and student research, along with being a credible resource for journalists. Paul Dorpat just passed away in late May.

A search for Island County, for instance, yields 11 Feature and 26 Timeline entries written by professional writers whose research is vetted. There’s “thumbnail histories” for Island County’s cities and towns, along with more recent entries, some about infamous people.

HistoryLink’s “Barefoot Bandit,” story about Colton Harris-Moore, for instance, tells of a troubled teen burglar from Camano Island, who was arrested in 2007, escaped, stole and piloted a plane in 2008, and crashed the plane in the Yakima Nation. He escaped the authorities and went on to steal more than 100 planes, cars and speedboats.

He was finally arrested after escaping to the Bahamas in 2010. He served time in jail and was released on probation in 2016. His last public appearance was on a local radio show in 2019. He confessed his addiction to airplanes, telling his radio host: “It’s this uncontrollable obsession, that’s really what it is … It’s something that you have dreamt about and waited for your entire life. And out of all the possibilities of that moment, no matter what scenario or situation you could find yourself in, that one moment, you were exactly where you were supposed to be, and I wonder if I’ll ever feel that again. It’s one of those moments that I think you only get once or twice in your entire life.” Since then, there’s no known knowledge of his whereabouts or his life.

Jennifer Ott, who has served as HistoryLink’s executive director the past two years, hosted an inaugural HistoryLink Happy Hour at her sister’s home in Clinton May 27th. Served at the event along with spirits and charcuterie, were Ott’s mother Kim Fishback’s delicious cookies—chocolate chip with salt sprinkles, a favorite munchie at the gathering.

Ott wrote and co-authored a number of books connected with HistoryLink, where she has worked since 2007. Her most recent collaboration was with David Williams, and published last March: Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal: A History and Guide. She wrote Where the City Meets the Sound: The Story of Seattle’s Waterfront, published last year, and, with other HistoryLink staff: Olmsted in Seattle: Creating a Park System for a Modern City, published in 2019.

Wanting to expand HistoryLink’s reach beyond the Greater Seattle area,  Ott and her colleagues are looking at hosting more local happy hours.

“We are doing a multiyear effort to do more outreach, meet more people, and learn about more stories to tell,” said Ott in a recent phone call. “This is a chance to get to know people, help them be aware of what we do, and see if they are interested in connecting with us.”

Ott’s team is launching a companion website this August: TeachHistoryLink.org, which “provides easy, direct access to HistoryLink’s professionally researched and written articles that align with Washington state history curriculum, offering crucial context for teachers and place-based stories for students.”

Sylvie Kromer, HistoryLink administrative assistant, said that teachers and students comprise about a third of the non-profit’s audience.

“TeachHistoryLink.org. presents a number of inquiries that provide curriculum resources,” said Kromer at the Happy Hour gathering. “It also links to our HistoryLink articles that are related. Our data base is so big. They can use our site for creating lessons plans. We beta tested throughout the state and learned what works and what needs changing. The new site is geared toward late elementary/middle school and high school students who take state required curriculum in history and civics.”

What gives HistoryLink’s 8,500 or so stories credibility in part, are the 60 paid professional writers who contribute about 200 stories a year, updating HistoryLink’s catalogue of stories. Paid editors edit for style and fact check. “We’re all human created,” Ott added.

Research resources follow HistoryLink’s articles, adding to their integrity. “They’re a great jumping off place for further research,” said Ott. Corrections and updates are added to the digital stories to keep them relevant and true.

A long-time contributor to HistoryLink is John Caldbick, a retired attorney who lives on South Whidbey. He’s written/edited more than 200 articles for HistoryLink. Chatting on the deck the evening of the Happy Hour event, he said he worked “… for too many years. In late 2008 I got very ill with esophageal cancer, I took the opportunity to quit practicing law.”

Caldbick was friends with HistoryLink’s co-founders Walt Crowley and his wife Marie McCaffrey, the former executive director of HistoryLink, until she retired in 2024. After his illness, Caldbick wondered what to do next with his energy and time.

“I was always friends with Walt and Marie—we were social friends. I owned a Seattle tavern they hung out at,” said Caldbick. “Walt had recently died. Marie had been through a similar experience, like mine, only with Walt. She is a stalwart friend. We walked around Green Lake. I asked if I could volunteer at HistoryLink.”

The tavern mentioned by Caldbick is the infamous Blue Moon Tavern, which he once co-owned in partnership with the “Three Fools.” One of HistoryLink’s stories, written by its co-founder Walt Crowley in 1999 about the Blue Moon notes: “The tavern was rescued from certain eclipse in 1982 by “Three Fools, Inc.,” comprising partners Gustav Hellthaler, Robert Morrison Jr. (1948-2008), and John Caldbick. Two years later, in 1984, the Blue Moon was refurbished for its 50th anniversary and won a new generation of customers.”

Marie McCaffrey told him he could get paid. He then earned a degree in editing from the University of Washington and found he enjoyed doing research and editing.

“I like to write about people I don’t have to interview, meaning they’ve been dead a long time,” joked Caldbick.

Caldbick’s stories include a history of Freeland, several about our state’s indigenous history, and one about Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve. “…the only national historic reserve in the United States.”

Saying his work with HistoryLink is a fit with his life these days, Caldbick noted: “It’s perfect in my retirement. Only twice have I had a deadline. That’s when someone died. I can write articles on my own time. When I was doing legal research, there wasn’t enough hours in a day. I feel and say I started with HistoryLink, and have lived happily ever after.”

Besides providing a resilient online resource for Washington State, HistoryLink also hosts podcasts—“HistoryLink Field Notes.” It recently added a “Listen Tool” feature to the a site designed for the audience who prefers listening to stories about their state history. It’s for this feature that Ott said, HistoryLink engages four AI ‘voices’ to read stories written by real people.

“Thousands of people are listening to our articles,” reports Ott. “While I’m a written word person, a friend told me she was walking her dog, and listened to one of our stories about a 1962 windstorm.”

HistoryLink posts weekly “This Week Then” stories, and daily “Today in Washington” items on its home page.

Curating special projects such as “Wine Heritage Washington,” which notes the people who’ve contributed to our state’s wine economy, HistoryLink is engaged by municipalities and organizations to highlight an important anniversary.

One event was “History Lunch 2024,” which revisited the Boldt Decision in 1974, which finally guaranteed tribal fishing rights. Years of civil disobedience by the tribes attempted to force the courts to recognize rights that were promised in an 1855 treaty, yet ignored by authorities. It took years of collaboration to resolve the conflicts, resulting in state/tribal co-management of salmon and steelhead.

Elisa Law,  project manager with HistoryLink, shepherds such projects to completion. As part of the team of seven staff, she said a fundraising effort resulted in “catapulting HistoryLink into the next era. That allowed us to hire more staff, take on more projects, do more statewide outreach. We’re building capacity.”

Building capacity, Law explained, “…means we spend some amount of our energy getting out to the community and meeting people. For a long time HistoryLink was an institution in which people didn’t know who we were behind the website.”

Law attended the Happy Hour, radiant in her eighth month of pregnancy. She said it was fun rubbing elbows and getting to know some of Whidbey’s locals. “This is our first HistoryLink happy hour. It’s a good way to play test the idea. We have connections here through family and staff that know each other.”

The “Forest History Project,” is a “…multiyear effort to build public awareness of Washington’s relationship to its forest resources. Tales of logging, labor unions, politics, immigration, Indigenous forest management, wildfires, technological innovations, and mammoth battles over environmental issues.”

Phase one, published between 2024-2025, features articles and podcasts about wildfire and Douglas fir. The project includes a “fully sourced and cited annotated timeline of key moments in forestry over the last 200 years, and three downloadable lesson plans.”

Phase two articles in the Forest History project include stories published this year and next year, covering topics such as logging, forest wildlife, timer industry labor unions and forest product innovations.

HistoryLink is funded by government grants, sponsorships for fundraisers, and the rest by private donors. Special project funding such as the Forest History Project, funded by the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation and a grant from the Alan F. Black Foundation, will see a book on the subject published next year.

For more information, visit HistoryLink.