Washington State
This is a region of impressive mountains and immense active volcanoes, with rainforests on the coast, and dry grasslands in the interior. Icelandic settlement principally occurred on the ocean near what is now the major city of Seattle, as well as the communities of Bellingham, Marietta, Point Roberts, and Blaine, in the northwestern corner of the state, near the Canadian border. H. Thorleifson.
Washington state is in the northwestern corner of the United States with the Pacific Ocean to the west. The province of British Columbia is to the north, with the states of Idaho to the east and Oregon to the south. The capital is Olympia, but Seattle is the largest city. The region became part of the U.S. in 1846 and was named after the first president of the United States, George Washington. The state is the 18th largest in the United States at almost 185,000 square kilometers (71,362 square miles). As of 2021, over 7.7 million people live there, making Washington the 13th most populous state in the United States. Most live in and around Seattle, which is a center of freight, commerce and industry. Puget Sound plays an important role in shipping to and from the United States. The landscape is diverse, widely forested, high in the west, north-east, center and south-east. Mount Rainier is the highest mountain, 4,400 meters high. In many places, there are agricultural regions, arable land and desirable pasture-land where livestock farming is extensive.
Employment: Agriculture is large and varied. Cattle farming is practiced on a large scale in many places, there is much logging and timber production, then there is much growing of fruit. There is also considerable fishing, especially for salmon and halibut. Finally, it can be noted that winemaking is abundant, only California produces more. Industry is large and diverse. Ship and aircraft construction quite robust as is metal smelting. Electricity use in industry is high with numerous dams built to meet all the demand.
Natives-Explorers:The oldest human remains found in North America are believed to be 9,300 years old and were found in Washington around 1990. Various tribes of indigenous people lived across the state, some by the ocean, others on the plains, and finally some at the foot of the mountains. Ways of life were primarily based on what nature provided. By the sea, fish and whaling were practiced, salmon fishing in rivers, animal hunting in the lowlands and mountain peaks, berry picking in many places and gardening in some. From the 1870s, a smallpox epidemic raged, which decimated many tribes. The Spanish were the first Europeans to explore the area. In 1775, two of their ships sailed north along the coast, all the way to Prince William Sound in Alaska. When land was seen, the captain of one of the ships went ashore with a few men and they surveyed the area. After the survey, the captain declared that the sea was Spanish and all the countries lying on the sea now belonged to the Spanish Empire. The British were traveling there shortly after, James Cook was the expedition leader. He saw the land at the Strait of Juan de Fuca but did not examine it. Charles William Barkley did for the country in 1787. The Spanish were on the move again, first Manuel Quimper in 1790 and a year later Francisco de Eliza. George Vancouver led an expedition in 1792.
Settlement: At a meeting between the British and the Spanish in 1790, Spanish control was discussed, and it was agreed to open the northwest region of the Pacific Ocean to non-Spanish explorers. This was mostly for the British, but also Russians and Americans. In the early 19th century, the British began to use the large Columbia and Snake rivers, e.g., David Thompson sailed down the Columbia River and, where it joins the Snake River, he landed on July 9, 1811, erecting a large pillar declaring the whole district British territory. In the following decades, there were disputes between Britain and the United States about the territory, but with the Oregon Treaty on June 15, 1846, the British agreed that the border between British Columbia and the United States was to be at the 49th parallel, the area south of it became American. The first to settle were missionaries and fur traders, but it did not go without conflict because the natives were dissatisfied. In 1836, missionaries traveled through the area, setting up mission stations and settlements. One such person was Marcus Whitman who traveled a long distance, setting up missionary stations across the indigenous territories. Along with them, he organized a transport route from east to west to the Pacific Ocean. The Oregon Trail became a kind of highway and after 1843 thousands of settlers followed it from across the eastern states of the United States and Europe. Marcus tried his best to befriend the natives, offering them medicine but they had little or no defense against European diseases. Most of them died, but the settlers did not. The natives blamed Marcus, attacked his station and executed him, killing twelve others. This ended in great hostilities between the settlers and the natives, which did not end until 1872.
Icelandic settlement: The so-called Western Emigration began in Iceland in 1870 and lasted until 1914. It should be noted that the first Icelanders to move to America did so in 1854, they had embraced the Mormon faith and went to Utah. Some people moved there throughout the 19th century and in the early 20th century. The flow from Iceland west had the greatest benefit to Canada in the last decades of the 19th century, with most of them going west to the plains, settling in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Minnesota and N. Dakota were the U.S. states that Icelandic settlers preferred most during the period. It is at the turn of the 20th century that Western Icelanders in Canada and in the Midwest of the United States began to settle in the state of Washington. Places such as Point Roberts, Blaine, Bellingham, Marietta, Birch Bay and of course Seattle fascinated the Icelanders and their settlement there is mentioned in separate articles on the website.