- Hi, I'm Knute Berger.

For five years and six seasons, my team and I have explored the rich history and fascinating mythologies of the northwest on the series "Mossback's Northwest."

It has been an absolute thrill to journey through the region's past and believe it or not, we are just getting started.

Today, I'm here in the KCTS 9 studio with my good friend and "Mossback's Northwest" producer, Stephen Hegg to look back at the history of the show and showcase some of our all-time favorite episodes.

Along the way, we'll peek behind the scenes and share some of the most memorable Mossback Moments.

Welcome to the very best of "Mossback's Northwest."

(whimsical music) The Pacific Northwest has played host to some of the most intriguing historical figures.

In our first block of episodes, we explore some of the most notable people in our region's past.

Take a look.

(whimsical music) (upbeat music) In the early days of settlement of the Oregon country, laws were passed that excluded Black Americans from the territory.

It was a terrible decision, but it had one unexpected result that was a boon for what became Washington state.

(whimsical music) (mellow, twangy music) George Bush was a mixed race, Black American.

He was born at the end of the 18th century.

He fought in the War of 1812 in the Battle of New Orleans, and he settled in Missouri and became a prosperous rancher.

But at that time, Missouri was a slave state and as a free Black, George Bush became uncomfortable and wanted to move someplace where he could be more free.

He packed up his family, his White wife, Isabell, who was of Irish descent and five children, and like thousands of others, they headed out on the Oregon Trail to the Pacific Northwest.

(hooves clop) (horses neigh) It wasn't cheap to go out on the Oregon Trail at that time.

You had to buy wagons and supplies, not only for your 2,000 mile journey to the Oregon country, but for maybe a year while you set up your homestead.

It was not for the poor and George had the means to do it.

His father and mother had been servants to a wealthy Philadelphia merchant and they had inherited some of his fortune and it had come down to George.

George and his family left Missouri in 1844 and when he arrived in the Oregon country, he learned that they had passed a lash law.

This was a law that excluded Blacks from the Oregon country and provided that they'd be lashed with a whip until they left.

George did not want to settle in an area that was as bad as the one he had left.

He decided to go north of the Columbia River where the lash law wouldn't be enforced, to the wilderness of what is now Southern Puget Sound.

When George crossed north of the Columbia River, he didn't come alone.

He came with a group called the Simmons Party, White settlers who traveled with him and they set up a new town near modern-day Olympia called New Market, where we know it today as Tumwater.

In 1845, George established his homestead at a place that is still called Bush Prairie.

Bush and his party quickly established a gristmill.

They staked out their farms.

They started a sawmill.

They began clearing the land and making settlement, and they attracted other people who came north of the Columbia, mostly Americans.

The thing George became known for was helping other settlers, people who would come at the end of the trail, sometimes dressed in rags or sick, tired with few resources.

George established good relations with just about everyone.

With the Indigenous people, including Chief Leschi.

He was esteemed by his White neighbors.

The homestead law prohibited George from owning the property that he had developed, but a special provision was passed that allowed George and his wife Isabell to own the land.

George Bush died in the early 1860s, but his family continued to have an impact from their homestead for years.

His son, Owen Bush, became a noted farmer who developed new strains of wheat and wheat growing in the region, and in fact, his wheat won awards at world's fairs and expositions all over the country.

He also was elected to the early Washington State Legislature, the first Black man to be elected.

He was a Republican in the House of Representatives.

And while there, he introduced legislation that created what is now Washington State University.

The Bush farm is no longer whole like it used to be.

In fact, part of the Bush Prairie is under the Olympia Airport, but there's still a farm at the homestead site called the Bush Prairie CSA and the people that live there, as well as students from the Evergreen State College that have done archeological digging on the site, have come up with artifacts that tell us interesting details about the Bush family.

Here's one really interesting one.

It's one half of the shoe of an oxen and we have photographs of teams of oxens clearing the land at Bush Prairie.

Here we have the bowl of a pipe.

We know that pipes were smoked there in part because Henry Sanford Bush, one of George Bush's sons lived there his entire life as a bachelor farmer and we have a great photograph showing him smoking a pipe just like this.

Another intriguing find were pieces of a plate.

This china was Staffordshire china, which helps tell the story of the fact that the Bush family was prosperous.

It was a commemorative plate celebrating the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt.

The history of George Bush and George Bush's family and their settlement here in Washington is a little known chapter in our state's history.

I think every Washingtonian should be grateful for the legacy of the Bush family.

(upbeat music) At a time when people fear voices being silenced, there's one man whose experience is a reminder of the damage that can be done when government suppresses the free speech of those who speak, and in this case, sing their beliefs.

One man regained his voice at the foot of the International Peace Arch in Blaine, Washington while under heavy sanctions from the US government.

But Paul Robeson was defiant and would not be silenced.

(whimsical music) Paul Robeson, son of an enslaved father, was an American phenomenon.

* There's an old man called the Mississippi * - One of the best known Black men of his time, he became an international celebrity.

In the 1920s, he was a football All-American and academic All-Star at Rutgers University.

He later played professional football for one of the foundational teams of the NFL, the Milwaukee Badgers.

He earned a law degree at Columbia University, but his commanding presence, charisma and gorgeous bass baritone voice brought him world fame in the theater, at concert halls and on Hollywood's silver screen.

* I get weary - He starred in plays like Shakespeare's "Othello" to rave reviews.

He sang "Ol' Man River" on stage and film in the musical "Showboat" and he made it a classic.

* But ol' man river * He just keeps rolling along (upbeat music) - While he performed, he was also a political activist fighting for civil rights.

He was the darling of progressives.

He traveled the world singing and speaking on behalf of Black rights and world peace.

He spoke out against the Korean War.

As the Cold War took hold in the 1940s, he went to Europe and spoke at a Soviet sponsored peace conference and the American press created a sensation saying that Robeson was a Russian propaganda tool, a Black Stalin.

The combination of his race and leftist politics became toxic.

Rich, charismatic and a critic of America on race and foreign policy, the US government seized his passport, so he could not travel abroad.

His international performances were popular.

He sang all over the world, but with the travel ban, Robeson's income from performing dropped from $150,000 per year in 1949 to a mere $3,000.

Right wing agitators attended some of his speaking events and attacked attendees.

This created the impression that it was Robeson's ideas that were unsafe.

He would not be silenced.

Robeson jumped at the chance to speak and sing in Vancouver, BC when invited to do so by Canada's International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers in January of 1952.

But even though not needing a passport to travel in Canada, he was turned back at the border.

The US and Canadian government had cooperated to keep him out.

He tried again in February, this time accompanied by International Longshore Union head Harry Bridges, a well-known labor activist.

Again, the party was turned back.

The Longshore Union protested saying, the United States had become "a prison for any of its citizens who possess ideas that do not meet the approval of the State Department."

Bridges' lawyer compared the US tactics to those used by Nazi Germany.

Robeson subsequently tried to book Seattle Civic Auditorium for a concert, but the city canceled, citing an ordinance that denied the use of public buildings for events that might incite "racial or religious antagonisms."

Undeterred, Robeson found the perfect venue.

In May, he headed to the border in Blaine with some 30 chartered buses.

He parked a flatbed truck on the US side of the Peace Arch from which to speak and give a concert.

The FBI and INS expected trouble.

Some other roasted events had attracted right wing hooligans, but none showed.

Who did show?

Some 30,000 people, the vast majority of them on the Canadian side.

They created a massive traffic jam, which closed the border for a time.

Robeson sang "Ol' Man River" and also lefty anthems like "The Folks on Joe Hill" about a wobbly union martyr.

* I never died, says he - The event was such a hit that Robeson came back on an annual basis for three more of his Peace Arch concerts, four in all, the last in 1955.

On the Canadian side, the Arch inscription reads, "Brethren dwelling together in unity," a message Robeson himself was preaching.

His troubles weren't over.

He was called before the House on American Activities Committee as a suspected communist during the witch hunt years.

He refused to say if he was by invoking the Fifth Amendment.

He also told the Committee, "Gentlemen, you are the un-patriots.

You are the un-Americans and ought to be ashamed."

Robeson eventually won the legal fight to have his passport restored.

The Supreme Court having decided that the right to travel was an essential liberty, but he continued to struggle against blacklisting and racial prejudice and his right as an American to enjoy equal rights.

His stand at the Peace Arch was a major statement for those causes.

Perhaps it's best to end with some of the words Robeson uttered before the crowd from that flatbed truck.

- [Robeson] But I want to just say a few words and to thank you again for your very great kindness in coming here today.

It means much to us in America, much to the Americans struggling for peace in the northwest.

Some of the finest people in the world under pressure today facing jail, facing hostile courts for the simple fact that they are struggling for peace, struggling for a decent America where all of us who have helped build that land can live in decency and in goodwill.

(gentle inspirational music) - [Announcer] Hear more about this episode on the Mossback podcast.

Just search Mossback wherever you listen.

- [Announcer] "Mossback's Northwest" is made possible by the generous support of Port of Seattle.

- From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more, forever.

- These words were a chief's pledge at the end of the so-called Nez Perce War in 1877.

The chief was Chief Joseph, whose native name was Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, translated as "thunder rolling in the mountains."

The words helped make Joseph famous and were seen as marking a closing chapter for Indigenous peoples in the United States as they were rounded up and forced to live how and where the government willed.

But Joseph was not done.

After surrender, he waged a 25-year campaign to win the hearts and minds of the American people, and that effort brought him to Seattle one November weekend in 1903 to plead his case.

(whimsical music) (upbeat music) Joseph's words mark the end of a bitter fight to capture the chief's Nez Perce band as they were fleeing to sanctuary in Canada.

They had been dispossessed of their traditional and seasonal homelands.

For Joseph, these were centered in the Wallowa Valley of Northeastern Oregon, a stunningly beautiful place.

A flawed treaty process rammed through by Washington's territorial governor Isaac Stevens in 1855 had used divide and conquer strategies to marginalize Native peoples.

Joseph's father, also called Joseph, refused to concede the Wallowas.

The government later promised them a place there but reneged.

After Joseph's band surrendered, they were banished to Kansas, then to Oklahoma's Indian territory where they suffered disease and deprivation.

The move violated the terms of their surrender.

Joseph demanded the government treat Indigenous people with the same rights and values enshrined in the Constitution.

Joseph's band was eventually moved to the Colville Reservation in northern Washington, but Joseph was not content to live in exile there.

He had an important card to play for justice.

The chief became a national figure.

Old foes respected him for his military prowess.

During their retreat, the Nez Perce had won nearly every engagement with the US Army.

Others say his real skill was as a leader and communicator.

He met with presidents at the White House.

He pushed Congress and bureaucrats to right wrongs against his people.

Newspapers spread his story far and wide.

He was respected, though often valued as an impressive relic of what Whites claimed was a vanishing race, but Joseph did not vanish.

One man who saw him as an important historical figure was Seattle professor Edmond Meany of the University of Washington.

Meany was determined to capture the state's early history, which was still within reach and living memory.

He had done his master's thesis on Joseph and first met him in Nespelem in 1901.

Two years later, he invited him to come to Seattle and speak.

Joseph arrived at the Great Northern Depot on November 19th, 1903.

He was accompanied by his nephew, Red Thunder.

Meany escorted them to their rooms at the luxurious Lincoln Hotel on 4th Avenue.

The chief had been to many cities but never Seattle.

His main purpose?

"Chief Joseph will ask again for the Nez Perce lands.

Will not give up his fight," the headline read.

Meany started by showing Joseph and Red Thunder a different kind of fight.

Football.

The day after their arrival, Meany took his visitors to watch the UW team play Nevada.

They arrived on a jammed streetcar at Athletic Park on 13th and Jefferson.

(crowd cheering) (bandstand music) The game was epic.

A hard fought mud bowl with some 4,000 cheering people in attendance said to be the largest UW football crowd to that point.

The UW was victorious.

The score, 2-0.

The team earned its first Pacific title with the win.

Joseph seemed baffled by the game, but enjoyed it while smoking a cigar he'd been offered.

He thought there would be more broken bones.

"I saw White men almost fight today," he said in Chinook jargon.

"I do not think this is good.

I feel pleased that Washington won the game."

The chief laughed a lot, especially when the ball, just like this one, was punted.

After a day in the damp and a Seattle hill hike to the hotel, the 60-something chief was exhausted.

That night, he was set to deliver his talk at the packed Seattle Theater.

He was late, his speech was short.

Through a translator, he said, "My heart is far away from here.

I would like to be back in my old home in the Wallowa country.

My father and children are buried there and I wanna go back there to die.

The White father promised me long ago that I could go back to my home, but the White men are big liars."

The following days were a whirlwind.

Photographer Edward Curtis took pictures of Joseph at his studio.

Meany took him on a tour of the city.

He met Mary Ann Boren Denny, one of the city's surviving founders and they conversed in Chinook, much to the chief's delight.

He briefly addressed students at the University of Washington's Denny Hall, where Meany also talked about the ill treatment of Joseph and the Nez Perce.

But even sympathetic men like Meany still saw Native peoples as a passing race, not agents of the present or the future.

(gentle guitar music) Joseph's meeting with Mrs. Denny is a reminder that Seattle itself, a major city named to honor a local chief friendly to White settlers is the site of unfulfilled promises.

The Duwamish people still seek recognition as a tribe and tribes have spent decades fighting for treaty rights, civil rights, human rights, and sovereignty.

After a four day visit, Joseph departed.

He never got his Wallowas back.

He died less than a year after his Seattle visit and is buried in Nespelem where Meany spoke at his grave.

Joseph's struggle for justice however lives on.

(gentle guitar music) - [Announcer] Hear more about this episode on the Mossback podcast.

Just search Mossback wherever you listen.

- [Announcer] "Mossback's Northwest" is made possible by the generous support of Port of Seattle.

(upbeat music) - Today, I'm not talking about history so much as vision.

All of us who live here are influenced and impacted by the remarkable landscapes and forests of the Pacific Northwest.

For some, it's a spiritual experience.

This place is alive.

It speaks.

It vibrates.

Artists have long sought to capture that from the Indigenous carvers of Salish and North Coast Peoples to the mid-century modernists of the so-called Northwest Mystic school like Mark Toby, Morris Graves, Paul Horiuchi, but there's one artist who captures it like no other.

She's well-known in Canada, but less well-known in the US.

Her work is unique, original, iconic.

Pause if you will, to appreciate the work of Emily Carr.

(whimsical music) Emily Carr was born and raised in Colonial Victoria, British Columbia.

She lived from 1871 to 1945 and spent most of her life there, although she studied art in San Francisco, London, and Paris.

Her work was heavily influenced by the art she encountered.

The poles and figures of First Nations People, the fauvists of Europe, French Impressionists and German expressionists.

Carr was eccentric, often worked in solitude.

She was a female artist in a profession that was male dominated.

For a time, she supported herself running a boarding house.

She walked around Victoria with a pet monkey and assorted other pets in a baby carriage.

She said her hometown folks were surprised that her years in London had not turned her into a proper English lady.

She had an artistic style that was unique.

Her work has been seen through the critical lenses of feminism, colonialism, Canadian nationalism, romanticism.

She became well-known in Canada for her paintings and for her writing, which had a very specific focus, the damp forests of Vancouver Island and late in life, from her 50s to her 70s, she entered a phase that was especially powerful.

No one has captured the Cascadian trees, forests and skies like Emily Carr.

As artist Georgia O'Keefe is to flowers, Carr is to our trees.

We now know, as science has shown us, that forests are vast connected communities that communicate, that cooperate, that can listen, smell and perhaps even think.

They have networks of fibers and fungi, a way of sharing resources like water and sunlight.

But before these discoveries, Carr intuited that web of life and captured it on paper and canvas in her own unique way.

She wrote, "I am always asking myself the question, what is it that you are struggling for?

What does that vital thing the woods contain, possess that you want?

Why do you go back and back to the woods unsatisfied, longing to express something that is there?"

(gentle music) Her red cedars undulate with life like living muscle.

Her skies and light are complex actors and have vibrancy like a painting by Van Gogh.

"The liveness in me loves to feel the liveness in growing things," she wrote.

She felt the connection of things.

A biographer, Dora Shadbolt, wrote that Carr had managed to "hang on to a vestige of primal spirit affinity with all the forms of creation."

She said Carr had created a Pacific mythos.

Maybe you or people you know also feel that connection when you walk through the rainforest, when you slog through a wetland skunk cabbage, when you watch the clouds shifting, cloaking and parting through the day.

Many of us feel it, but Carr painted it.

And not only can she link the viewer with nature's spirit, she wasn't limited to the idea of pristine nature.

She painted landscapes that were scarred by humans, logged, mined, abused.

She was not afraid to look at a clear cut.

She could find the beauty and energy where trees and sky met gravel pits and stumps.

She could connect where others might only feel sadness.

Mother Earth, she mused, will hide it away in her ample brown folds and purify and absorb its good, bringing it back to usefulness.

Carr takes you into the forest's dark places too.

Like moving through multiple drapes into an interior space at once a live, mysterious, inviting, oppressive.

My father worked on a logging camp survey crew deep in the old growth of the Olympic Peninsula in the 1930s at the time Carr was painting her forest pictures.

He described places that were silent, where sound was muffled.

When the forest went quiet, he said, you might spot an Indigenous tree burial in the canopy above.

If much of her work captures as one critic put it "the trembling luminosity of the sky," she also painted the intensity of the coastal forest that can seem like a living womb or tomb.

Great art is unique but speaks to a larger truth, often feelings that are hard to put into words or images.

Before science uncovered secrets of living forests, Emily Carr's paintings captured their essence and their knowing.

(gentle piano music) - [Announcer] Hear more about this episode on the Mossback podcast.

Just search Mossback wherever you listen.

- [Announcer] "Mossback's Northwest" is made possible by the generous support of Port of Seattle.

- Today in the Mossback's den, we're gonna go back to the era of the gold rush and we're gonna talk about Harry Allen.

Harry Allen was a cowboy.

He was a bartender.

He lived a rough and tumble life.

He concerted with outlaws.

He was arrested many times and the interesting thing about Harry Allen and why he became so famous is that when he was born, his name was Nell Pickerell.

(whimsical music) Today we would recognize Harry Allen as a transgendered man.

He was assigned female gender at birth in the 1880s and raised in the rough and tumble of the frontier of the Pacific Northwest.

The first time Harry Allen appears as Nell Pickerell is in a newspaper account in 1900 of a town called Tunnel City, which newspapers called the wickedest place on Earth.

It was a boom town that sprang up in the Cascade Mountains near Steven's Pass when they were building the great Cascade Tunnel.

But Harry Allen was dressing as a man and participating in woman-on-woman boxing matches.

It was a kind of fight club atmosphere in a town where anything went.

He took the name Harry Allen, sometimes called himself Harry Livingston, and moved to Seattle with his family.

He began to show up in newspaper accounts during that time.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, particularly in the frontier period, was not unusual for women to often dress as men, and this was done for a variety of reasons.

For some, it was self-protection.

Men outnumbered women about 14 to one.

In some cases, it was done because they could get men's jobs, which paid better.

Harry dressed as a man because he was a man and the papers were at first charmed by this apparently switch of gender identities.

And in fact, he became kind of a celebrity through arrests, shenanigans, scandals.

But people also recognize that Harry Allen was a very charming, funny, vibrant person.

At the turn of the century, Seattle was a magnet for different kinds of people.

In fact, one of the terms for Seattle, it was said it was a hobohemia full of alternative types of various kinds.

The antics of Harry Allen were considered at first kind of charming.

Harry Allen one time was arrested for riding down the streets of Seattle on a bicycle without using the handlebars.

Harry Allen was accused of being irresponsible in the area of love.

He had a number of girlfriends who were alleged to have killed themselves after falling out with Harry Allen.

The newspapers implied that this was when women discovered that he was biologically female.

More likely it had to do with simply a tragic ending to a love story.

But the papers feasted on the scandal.

If newspapers loved reporting Harry Allen's antics, they loved stories of fallen women even more.

Harry became a target for the police.

In 1907, Seattle was getting less and less tolerant as the city became more middle class.

The law was passed that outlawed women from wearing men's pants and redefined vagrancy to basically mean anything the police wanted it to mean.

Harry Allen was hassled more, began traveling more around the region, was arrested in Tacoma, Spokane, Ritzville, Yakima.

Eventually, Harry went to Portland and he took a woman he described as his wife.

He was arrested in Portland for violating the Man Act, which was bringing a woman across a state line for immoral purposes.

His wife was alleged to be a common prostitute.

The judge found him innocent because he was biologically female and a female couldn't commit a crime under the Man Act.

But he found him guilty of vagrancy because it was illegal for a woman to wear man's pants.

We would consider Harry Allen today an at-risk transgendered youth, somebody who needed social services, which at that time just didn't exist.

Sequence of problems piled up.

He was attacked by his father and stabbed, became addicted to opium.

His prohibition came along.

He earned money as a police informer, informing on people running speakeasys and illegal liquor.

And eventually, Harry Allen died of syphilis.

Today we know a great deal more about the range of gender identity.

These were issues that really didn't exist in the modern sense back at that time, and you can imagine the kind of courage it must have taken.

When I think about Harry Allen and look at his life, I see somebody who is very brave and very committed to living life on their terms.

I'm wearing what Harry Allen would've worn.

(chuckles) Hi, I'm Knute Berger here in the KCTS Studio with my friend and fellow "Mossback's Northwest" producer, Stephen Hegg.

Thanks for joining us today for the very best of "Mossback's Northwest."

A look back at some of our favorite episodes from all six seasons of the show.

- The thing I've loved about working with you on "Mossback's Northwest," Knute is, I was born in the northwest, as were you, I thought I knew a lot of history and you bring that extra dimension to these stories.

I've heard of these names before, but I didn't know the background.

Some of those interesting corners.

- Well, that's the interesting thing about our history, it's so deep, it's so rich.

There's a lot about it that's untold.

What I look for in these personality stories is people who spoke in the past that have something very relevant to say about today.

Paul Robeson's story is about free speech.

The story of Chief Joseph coming to Seattle to plea for his homeland - Right.

- And his people, incredibly relevant today.

So that's one of the things that we look for that we think will make a good story.

- And none of these things happen without the support of our viewers and your generosity, and we have a way for you to get more involved in "Mossback's Northwest."

If you'll just take a look here, this is a way for you to support "Mossback's Northwest" and get more involved.

- [Announcer] Thank you for joining us for the very best of "Mossback's Northwest."

Help support series like this and all your other favorites by contributing to KCTS 9 at the $60 level or $5 a month, or consider a donation of $7 or $8 a month to deepen your investment in this essential public service.

When you do, you'll receive the Mossback Den weekly newsletter from Mossback himself, Knute Berger.

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Thank you.

- Our next block of stories on "Mossback's Northwest" has to do with the amazing technology that we've witnessed here.

- A good example is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

It was a technological breakthrough when it was built- - [Stephen] Until it wasn't.

- Until it broke.

Yes, Galloping Gertie.

You and I both had Kingdome t-shirts that we used to wear and people would come up to us and say, what is that thing?

Well, it turned out the Kingdome was a really interesting story to tell.

We looked at why Washington cities burned in 1889 and how were they rebuilt.

So these are just some of the technology stories that we've done.

- Don't forget, all the things that we left on the moon, including moon buggies from Kent.

Stay tuned.

(whimsical music) - The most epic bridge failure in American history and perhaps world history was at the Tacoma Narrows in 1940 and not only did the bridge collapse, the collapse was caught on film and thus, immortalized.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge crossed the narrowest point in Puget Sound between the Olympic Peninsula and the mainland near Tacoma.

The bridge was built very narrow, just two lanes.

Solid steel girders, instead of the usual open trusses, were meant to secure the bridge against the wind.

Four months after the bridge opened, on November 7th, 1940, people noticed that the bridge was doing something peculiar.

People noticed that it began to move in opposite directions like a corkscrew.

Collapse of Galloping Gertie was recorded in spectacular footage.

Most people are familiar with the image of the bucking bridge from the Tacoma side, but recently some lost film has been found photographing the bridge collapse from the Gig Harbor side.

After the bridge collapsed, there was a lot of finger pointing.

Engineers pointed the finger at each other.

Designers pointed their fingers at the government.

Consultants pointed their finger at the bridge designers.

No one had thought to put a suspension bridge through wind-tunnel testing.

A bigger, heavier, stronger bridge was built in 1950 to replace Galloping Gertie.

It was called Sturdy Gertie.

(upbeat music) One of the most remarkable and most expensive cars ever built was built right here in Puget Sound in Kent, Washington and we sent them to the moon and they're still there.

- This is really a rock and roller ride, isn't it?

(upbeat classical music) - [Control Tower Operator] Commence liftoff, we have liftoff.

- As the Apollo missions progressed, NASA decided that the astronauts, instead of just walking on the moon, needed to go further in order to do good science.

They had to invent this new vehicle and this vehicle had to be able to operate in extraordinary conditions.

It had to operate in a vacuum.

It had to operate in temperatures that range down to 200 to 250 below.

There were no roads, obviously.

You've got billions of years of dust and rocks and craters, mountains.

They had to be able to fold it up and put it in the Lunar Module and then they had to be able to unfold it on the surface in about 15 minutes.

So one of the cool things we have here are what amount to the owner's manuals.

The chassis, let's take a look at that.

There's a description of the wheels and I don't think they had seat belts on this thing.

When they got in and drove around, they traveled pretty slowly.

You were traveling at maybe five miles an hour, depended on the terrain.

I think they could go up to about 11 miles an hour.

So it wasn't a fast moving vehicle.

There was one famous glitch.

In the process of the setting it up, they damaged a fender.

What did they use to fix the fender on the lunar rovers?

Duct tape.

It did look like it was, you know, on a beach with some guys joy riding in it.

But it was really appealing because I think people did know that there was actually a purpose for those up there, that they were extending our reach, extending exploration.

You felt like modern civilization had actually arrived.

You know, there were cars on the moon now.

For a long time, Seattle has seen itself as a launchpad to the Space Age and the interesting thing to me is that the launchpad more rightly belongs to Kent.

This is where rockets and the rovers were developed and things are still being developed there.

Boeing is still doing a lot of work for NASA.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Company, which is looking at ways to populate the moon and explore space is based in Kent.

People are gonna be running around up there.

It'd be interesting to see if one of those buggies can still drive.

So I've taken a look at the lunar rover manuals, I brought my Subaru Forester manual.

The security indicator light alarm system, like how do you turn it off?

Warning, battery fluid is sulfuric acid.

Do not let it come in contact with your eye.

Okay.

I'm not sure you really need to warn people about that, but maybe you do.

It was almost like a magic act.

Making a white elephant disappear.

Seattle skyline once featured a massive concrete structure.

It had a volume of 67 million cubic square feet.

It weighed 130,000 tons.

It was like a brutalist flying saucer had landed in the city and then, poof, it was gone.

What the heck happened?

(whimsical music) I'm talking about the dome, the Kingdome.

Seattle had always wanted to be a big league city, hosting major sports franchises, concerts, even a national political convention.

In 1968, King County voters went to the polls and they approved a bond issue for a multipurpose stadium.

Over a hundred locations were looked at.

Some people wanted it in the suburbs, some people wanted it further out.

It took four years from the time the vote was passed to the time they broke ground, and when they broke ground, they did it on a piece of property that was largely undeveloped between King Street and the Alaskan Way Viaduct in what we now call SoDo, which meant either South of Downtown or South of the Dome.

Dome stadiums were in vogue in the 60s and 70s.

It was decided a dome stadium in Seattle would be perfect for all weather activities.

The dome was the largest of its kind ever built, over 600 feet across.

The ribbed concrete hump on top looked like a giant orange juicer.

It was originally budgeted at around $40 million and guess what?

It ended up costing more than 70 million.

When it was built, the Kingdome worked as advertised.

Seattle was able to attract a new NFL franchise, the Seahawks, and the new Major League Baseball franchise, the Mariners.

But the first events held at the Kingdome were a little unusual.

One was a soccer match between the New York Cosmos featuring Pele, and the Seattle Sounders.

And the biggest event was the Billy Graham Crusade.

- As you can see, there are hundreds of people coming from every part of this great stadium here in Seattle to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

- For about a week, thousands, tens of thousands of people showed up every night to hear his preaching.

So what was it like on the inside?

Well, it was a huge interior space.

If you were sitting in the way outfield in the upper deck, you would be 600 feet away from home plate.

When there were small crowds, maybe only a few thousand people, the place seemed empty, but when it was full, it really rocked.

One of the main features inside was King Beer.

You could buy a King Beer for 2.50, a limit three per customer.

It was 32 ounces, which meant over a nine-inning game, you could drink 96 ounces of beer.

That made the place very loud.

It helped make a celebrity out of a beer vendor, Bill The Beer Man Scott.

He would lead cheers at every game and when he got the wave going, when the stadium was full of say 60,000 people, it was as if the entire population of the city had been put in a tumble dryer.

For many, the dome was a big concert venue.

It could pull in over 50,000 music fans.

Paul McCartney and Wings kicked things off with the first rock act.

They were followed by groups like Aerosmith, the Who, the Stones, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, Blondie, U2, Led Zeppelin to name just some of the acts that came through in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

By the mid 1990s, trouble was brewing.

Ceiling tiles on the inside of the dome began falling down.

They could kill people if they landed, which they almost did prior to a Mariner's game.

It turned out the roof was leaky and repairs cost some $50 million, but that also included some upgrades.

The big league franchises Seattle had attracted wanted more and more concessions, more and more customization, and soon, they wanted their own stadiums.

So even the dome wasn't enough.

In fact, it had become obsolete.

After less than five years, after all those expensive repairs, it was decided to get rid of it.

It had lasted 24 years and it was going to come down before we had even finished paying for it.

Taken down is not exactly accurate.

In March of 2000, the Kingdome was imploded and that event drew probably what was one of the Kingdome's largest crowds.

People were on the hills and rooftops of Seattle to watch the Kingdome fall in on itself in a colossal explosion.

(gentle classical music) (explosion booming) A dust cloud like a desert sandstorm consumed Pioneer Square.

It left a stack of debris six stories high.

In the end from above, it lay flattened as if somebody had stomped on a mushroom.

At that moment, a certain kind of nostalgia was born.

It divided two generations, one that remembered the Kingdome's 80s rec room atmosphere and those who had never heard of it.

Wear a Kingdome t-shirt in town and people are likely to say, oh, I remember that, or what is that?

Where is that?

Apparently in the new millennium, the Kingdome has slipped down the memory hole.

(gentle fantastical music) A warm spring, a hot summer.

Tinderbox conditions.

We worry about wildfires burning our forests in Washington.

But one summer, it was Washington cities that burned.

Who is to blame?

That's the hot topic today in the Mossback's Den.

(whimsical music) Actually, we're not in the den today.

We're in Eastern Washington in Ellensburg at the Kittitas County Historical Museum.

In 1889, this was one of the ground zeros for a series of fires that devastated Washington cities.

Washington territory was poised to become a state when this triple tragedy occurred.

Seattle, Ellensburg, Spokane, these three cities burned in quick sequence.

Boom, boom, boom.

First to go was Seattle, Washington's biggest city.

On June 6th, 1889, about two in the afternoon, a glue pot boiled over in a cabinet maker's shop at 1st and Madison.

When a young Swedish immigrant, John E. Black, attempted to douse the flames with water, it simply spread the fire to sawdust.

Soon the entire business district, which we know today as Pioneer Square, was aflame.

Firefighters attempted to put out the fire, but the tide was out, so they had trouble getting water pressure from Elliot Bay.

In 18 hours, 25 commercial blocks were completely destroyed, over a hundred acres, which included wharves and railroad terminals.

After the fire, the local militia was called in to prevent looting.

Overnight, Seattle had turned from a bustling port to a tent city full of displaced businesses and people.

Almost exactly a month later on July 4th, fire hit again in Ellensburg, Washington, which is directly east of Seattle.

Ellensburg was a relatively small city compared to Seattle of about 3,000 people, but it was a city of big ambitions.

The people of Ellensburg were lobbying to become the new state's capital.

Boosters had even built a castle-like building to act as the governor's mansion.

At about 10:30 that evening, amid gale force winds, a fire started near a local dry goods store.

What started the fire?

Was it fireworks?

A stove left on?

A still in the basement?

Was it arson?

Disgruntled miners?

Chinese workers?

No one knows for sure.

By early next morning, 10 downtown blocks and over 200 homes had been destroyed.

The fire burnt out because there was nothing left to burn.

There is a surviving witness.

This scorched and blistered mantle clock is said to have survived the fire, according to a note on the back.

It stopped at the time the fire reached it, 11:07 PM.

Last but not least, fire reached one of Washington's most important commercial and transportation hubs that summer, Spokane Falls, now known simply as Spokane.

On August 4th, at six in the afternoon, fire raged through the downtown area in a place called Railroad Alley.

It was near the railroad tracks where transients and other people could get cheap food, booze and lodging.

The ignition point was said to be a lunch counter called Wolf's Lodge.

The summer in Spokane had been uncommonly hot, up in the 90s for days on end.

Wildfire smoke lay heavily on the town from elsewhere in the region.

Fire was explosive, it raged through downtown.

Like Seattle, the firefighters had trouble with the hoses and getting water on the fire.

A decision was made to blow up some of the brick and stone buildings in the fire's path in order to create a fire line.

Unfortunately, it seemed to just have the effect of exposing the wooden timbers inside and feeding the flames even further.

The best firewall turned out to be the Spokane River.

The fire raged until it reached it.

But in the meantime, it had burned 32 blocks of downtown Spokane.

The people of Portland sent box cars full of food to the city of Spokane to help fire victims.

Spokane didn't really want the food, they wanted to recover on their own, but some members of the rather corrupt city council stole some of the food, ate some of the smoked ham, and later became known as the Ham Council.

Losses in each city were enormous.

In Spokane, Seattle and Ellensburg, the total was about a billion in today's dollars.

Fortunately, there was very little loss of human life.

The three cities rebuilt quickly and took the opportunity to improve themselves.

They built more with brick and stone, things that were less flammable.

They professionalized the fire departments and the equipment the fire departments used.

Seattle famously raised itself one story high.

So the original first story was underground.

All three cities took the phoenix rising from the ashes as their symbol.

And despite the triple disasters of the fires, Washington territory became a state, the 42nd state at the end of the year.

130 years later, wildfires still remain a threat to life and property.

So there was a little loss of human life, but historians say up to a million rats died in the Seattle fire.

- Hi, there, I'm Stephen Hegg, one of the producers on "Mossback's Northwest" and in the studio with writer and host Knute Berger talking about how we made the series and how important it is to support it.

So Knute, moon buggies, how did you ever find that story and how did you research it?

I had no idea that moon buggies were made in Kent, Washington.

- You know, I didn't either and I remember the moon buggies from the moon landings and the Apollo program.

I thought they were really cool at the time and the city of Kent was celebrating the 50th anniversary of their creation.

You know, they were built at a Boeing facility down there and you know, it was just to me, kind of a, I got to go down and meet some of the engineers who worked on the project.

That was just a really great experience of history that was made here locally.

- And not only moon buggies are just made here.

KCTS 9 remains the last locally owned and operated television station in Seattle and we're committed to delivering you compelling, regional journalism and insight you can't get anywhere else.

So we bring you programs like "Mossback's Northwest," "Out and Back," "Human Elements" and "Black Arts Legacies," just to name a few but it all depends on your support.

And when you support KCTS 9 and Crosscut, you're supporting your entire community.

So take a look right now and find out how you can get some extra benefits of "Mossback's Northwest" when you call right now.

- [Announcer] Thank you for joining us for the very best of "Mossback's Northwest."

Help support series like this and all your other favorites by contributing to KCTS 9 at the $60 level or $5 a month, or consider a donation of $7 or $8 a month to deepen your investment in this essential public service.

When you do, you'll receive the Mossback Den weekly newsletter from Mossback himself, Knute Berger.

You'll also be able to stream an extended library of PBS shows on demand with KCTS 9 Passport and receive special members only benefits for the annual Crosscut Festival.

Your membership also includes a subscription to our monthly KCTS 9 viewer guide.

Donate at the $120 level or $10 a month and you'll receive everything at the $60 level plus a special invitation to the annual "Mossback's Northwest" in-person event where you'll learn even more about the upcoming season of the series and get behind the scenes insights into the making of the show.

Give now to help support the great local programming and quality journalism you love here on KCTS 9.

Go online to kcts9.org or call us at 800-443-1999 to donate now.

Thank you.

- Knute, I wonder if you would tell folks, reveal where we shot the episode about the Great Northwest Fires.

- Well, you know, most episodes are shot in the den in the studio but we thought it would be fun to go to the site of one of the fires.

So we went to Ellensburg, which was one of the cities that burned down, and we went to the Kittitas County Museum, it was a- - [Stephen] Great museum.

- Great museum.

They had, you know, relics there, like a clock stopped at the time of the fire and you know, it was gave us, encouraged us to go out in the field more.

So we've been on locations to other parts of the state.

We've been to the Palouse, we've been to Idaho, we've been other parts of Washington, and you know, it's really great to kind of get out and about and you learn more when you do that.

- You sure do, and what's coming up in our next block of episodes?

What are we going to explore?

- Well, we're gonna look at sort of the weird side of the Pacific Northwest, which is not a small topic, right?

And we're gonna start with D.B.

Cooper, and we're gonna look at what we think makes that one of the weirdest stories, one of the weirdest aspects of that story.

And you, Stephen, had a particularly difficult assignment in finding locations for that story.

- That's right, and then we're gonna go to the northwest most notable hoaxes that were pulled on all of us and one person who's involved in all of that is Ivar Haglund, a name perhaps that some newcomers are not familiar with, but boy was he a trickster.

Stay tuned.

(whimsical music) (upbeat music) - One of the Northwest's greatest mysteries is about a skyjacker who called himself Dan Cooper, more widely known as D.B.

Cooper.

On November 24th, 1971, Thanksgiving Eve, Cooper threatened to blow up a Boeing 727 bound from Portland to Seattle unless he was paid $200,000 in $20 bills.

He sipped from a bourbon and soda, got the money and some parachutes, then jumped into history.

To my mind, his outrageous crime is not even the most odd thing about his story.

(whimsical music) To this day, no one knows who D.B.

Cooper was.

The name he gave for his airline ticket was Dan.

The name D.B.

was said to be a media mistake, but it stuck.

For the last 50 years, people have been trying to find Cooper, not unlike Bigfoot hunters.

People have fingered their relatives and neighbors.

Deathbed confessions have been made.

More than 800 suspects examined by the FBI.

There are many theories, but no definitive D.B.

Let's quickly retrace the crime.

Cooper, whoever he was, bought a single one-way ticket from Portland to Seattle for $20 on Northwest Orient Flight 305.

On the plane, he slipped a note to the stewardess saying he had a bomb in his briefcase.

This is back before airlines checked for such things.

Seeing what looked like a bomb, the flight attendant conveyed to the captain that the man in his mid 40s of medium height and build with brown eyes and a black suit wanted the airline to cough up 200K, refuel the plane and fly him to Mexico City.

He wanted two parachutes with two reserve chutes just in case.

Why?

It's thought that he wanted the authorities to think he might jump with a hostage, so they wouldn't sabotage the chutes.

The 727 landed in Seattle and the passengers and some of the crew were let off.

The money was brought on board, along with the parachutes and the plane took off with a refueling stop planned for Reno, Nevada.

Cooper insisted they fly no higher than 10,000 feet.

The remaining stewardess on board showed Cooper how to lower the aircraft's rear stairway.

Then she left the cabin for the safety of the cockpit, leaving Cooper alone.

When they landed in Reno, Cooper, a chute, its backup, the bomb and the money were gone.

The hijacker had jumped mid-flight somewhere between Seattle and Reno.

He left his clip-on tie behind.

A massive manhunt ensued with focus on southwestern Washington.

It was theorized that Cooper must have been a former paratrooper or military man, even an airline employee.

Searchers scoured the woods for his chute and loot or his body.

It was speculated that he went splat, jumping at night in high winds during a thunderstorm with cloud cover, so he couldn't see the ground.

He could have landed in the deep forest or the Columbia River.

After the jump, the rest of us were left looking for answers.

The FBI kept the case open, running down tips and leads.

In 1980, a boy digging a fire pit on the Columbia River Beach on the Washington side at a place called Tena Bar, dug up $5,800 in ratty deteriorating $20 bills whose serial numbers matched those on D.B's ransom money.

The money was still bound in rubber bands.

Cooper was a mainstay on the FBI's Most Wanted List, but in 2016, they announced that they were focusing their energies on other priorities.

But he's still a wanted man.

If Cooper landed safely, and if he's still alive, he'd be in his mid 90s by now.

If he came forward, he'd be flush in celebrity and facing his twilight years in Club Fed.

To me, the oddest thing about the D.B.

Cooper case is the public response to it.

After Cooper's, there were at least two dozen hijackings that featured copycat demands for ransom and parachutes.

So while some people wanted to catch D.B.

Cooper, many others dreamed of being D.B.

Cooper.

Back in 1971 when people first heard about him, he actually had a great deal of public sympathy.

Only four days after the hijacking, an article in the Seattle Times collected the thoughts of what the person on the street in Seattle thought about the crime.

A taxi driver told the paper's reporter, "You've gotta admit, he was clever.

The way I see it, anybody smart enough to take $200,000 just like that ought to make a clean getaway."

An Army private said, "I hope he isn't caught."

Such comments come with the context.

The early 1970s were still largely the 1960s.

Seattle was racked with a Boeing recession, anti-war protests and bombings.

Around the world, skyjackings had become somewhat commonplace.

More than 130 American planes were hijacked between 1968 and 1972.

President Richard Nixon was reelected, but the Watergate scandal was gestating.

Wars hot and cold raged.

Social tumult had become a norm.

Youth rebellion was still in full flower.

Hippies abounded.

And D.B.

Cooper, despite his dapper black suit and clip-on tie, cool shades and a taste for bourbon and soda, the guy who pulled off a spectacular heist without anyone else being killed by a bomb or an overzealous SWAT team somehow embodied for many a cool anti-establishment rebel that many ordinary folks could envy.

And like any great performer, D.B.

Cooper made a dramatic and memorable exit that we're still talking about half a century later.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Mossback's Northwest" is made possible by the generous support of Bedrooms & More.

(upbeat classical music) (Knute imitates dinosaur roaring) - Okay.

Hi, I'm Knute Berger.

I'm here to talk about Bigfoot.

Why Bigfoot?

Why am I talking about Bigfoot?

(laughs) Many people think that the question of whether Bigfoot exists is resolved and I can't blame them.

You see Bigfoot on advertising, National Enquirer and he's kind of this fuzzy "Harry and the Hendersons" meme.

What really intrigues me is there are some scientists in the Pacific Northwest who think Bigfoot might be real.

Pioneer studier of Bigfoot was Grover Krantz.

He knew a lot about the anatomy of human ancestors.

His theory was a giant primate lived in China, came across the bearing land bridge and populated remote parts of the Northwest.

- This is an example of one footprint.

This is a plaster cast.

- [Knute] And he collected casts of footprints.

- This cast, I've drawn in the approximate reconstructions of the bones.

This is what is evidently a crippled individual.

You just need one.

- [Interviewer] Meaning?

- One real one.

And then you know that the species is real.

- [Jeffrey] 300 plus footprint casts later is probably the most compelling body of data for the existence of an unrecognized species.

- [Knute] There's another anthropologist, Jeffrey Meldrum, incorporated Grover Krantz' collection into his own and he can see aspects that suggest they're not fake.

The pressure of the toe that's typical of an ape of some kind.

A flex point in the foot, not typical of a human.

When you actually look at it, there's a lot more evidence for Bigfoot than I think most of us thought.

- [Jeffrey] Hair, which cannot be attributed to other animals.

And I've heard vocalizations.

(creature howling) And photographic evidence, including the Patterson-Gimlim film.

I'm quite convinced of its authenticity.

- The Pacific Northwest, there's still places people don't go or don't go very often.

We project our imagination into these mysterious spaces.

I consider myself a Bigfoot agnostic, but I would like to know.

I would like people like Jeffrey Meldrum and other scientists to work the problem and give us a definitive answer.

Nobody's ever found a Bigfoot body and I think a lot of people think, they're not gonna believe in Bigfoot until one comes in strapped to the hood of, you know, somebody's SUV.

You know, bring me the corpse of Bigfoot, maybe I'll believe.

We hear a lot about fake news these days, but hoaxes have been around a long time, fooling a gullible public.

Today on the Mossback's Den, we're gonna look at some Seattle hoaxes that made fake news and real news in the northwest and beyond.

(fantastical music) Hoax number one is an April Fool's Day classic gone wrong.

On April 1st, 1989, the KING-TV comedy Show "Almost Live" ran a fake news bulletin that the Space Needle had fallen over.

Let's go to the videotape.

- [Announcer] We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for the following special report.

- Good evening.

Approximately seven minutes ago at 6:53 PM, The Space Needle collapsed.

Information at this point is incomplete.

We do know that injuries are minimal.

Fortunately, the needle was nearly empty when the accident occurred.

A maintenance man who was working on the lower level has apparently been taken to Harborview's Emergency Room for minor injuries.

Structural damage to the surrounding buildings is extensive.

- Despite April 1st being on screen, viewers took the news bulletin from "Almost Live's" comics seriously.

The 911 system was overwhelmed with worried callers.

The Space Needle alone received over 700 calls.

A group of doctors in eastern Washington volunteered to come out and help with the humanitarian crisis that surely followed.

Ever since the Space Needle was built, people had worried about its stability and fragility and this played right into that fear.

KING-TV later said, it was the most infamous prank in city history.

It was a humbling reminder of the power of the TV image.

John Keister, host of the show, apologized.

He later gave advice to future pranksters.

Make sure you do it in a way that doesn't hint that people may be dead.

Hoax number two.

In 1992, it was the height of the grunge scene.

Bands were breaking out, Seattle was on the music map.

Grunge had captured the attention of the New York Times style section, so they had a reporter call Seattle to find out if he could put together a lexicon of what grunge kids said.

Their secret counterculture language.

They happened to get a woman named Megan Jasper, who was a former receptionist for Sub Pop Records and on the spur of the moment, she decided to just make things up.

The Times published the lexicon.

They untoned that, "All subcultures speak in code" and they certainly do.

Ripped jeans were called wack slacks.

Heavy boots were kickers.

Hanging out, swingin' on the flippity flop.

A loser was a cob nobbler.

An uncool person was a lamestain.

Months later, it was revealed that the lexicon was a hoax made up on the spot, a prank on the lamestain media.

And Megan Jasper, the prankster, she's now Sub Pop's CEO.

Hoax number three, Ivar's Underwater Billboards.

Seafood entrepreneur, Ivar Haglund, was a local celebrity and he was famous for his promotions of his seafood restaurants.

He'd bought the Smith Tower and put a fish windsock on top.

One time when a train loaded with syrup overturned outside his restaurant, he was filmed dipping syrup onto flapjacks that he made on the spot.

He sponsored the 4th of July's fireworks displays.

He died 1985, but his reputation and his restaurants live on.

In 2009, the Seattle Times reported that Ivar Haglund in the 1950s had planted a series of underwater billboards in Elliot Bay, anticipating the time when we would all be traveling by personal submarine.

An expedition was launched to recover one of these signs, which was then hauled out of Elliot Bay and put on display.

Finding the billboard was the equivalent of finding the King Tut's tomb of tomfoolery, a kind of buried treasure that was both ridiculous and classically Ivar.

Much as many of us wanted to believe it, it turned out to be too good to be true.

It was part of a promotional ad campaign for the Ivar's restaurant chain.

Seattle Times columnist, Paul Dorpat, had been in on the scheme and fooled another Seattle Times columnist into writing about it.

Dorpat later explained that it was a good hearted hoax.

The hoax not only fooled people, it sold a lot of clam chowder.

Sales quadrupled that September to 83,000 cups.

Sometimes fake news pays.

Here is an authentic pair of wack slacks from the grunge era given to us by a colleague who says, she wore them to a Alice in Chains concert and stood next to Eddie Vedder.

(upbeat music) Seattle has a hockey team named after the Kraken, a legendary old Norse sea monster.

Do we in the northwest have a history of sea monsters?

Yeah, sure, you betcha.

We all know about Bigfoot lurking in our forest and the pages of the tabloids, but strange creatures have also been cited in our Salish Sea waters.

Move over Sasquatch, meat Cadborosaurus.

(whimsical music) The idea of sea serpents in the Salish Sea and nearby waters is an old one.

Indigenous artwork has featured a serpent-like creature in petroglyphs, dances, songs, masks and carvings.

It was a known critter long before Europeans came along with their own stories of seeing weird things at sea.

In 1880, a news item in the Vancouver Independent reported that a marvelous sea serpent had been seen again off Cape Flattery.

"He disported in the water for more than 15 minutes to invite inspection of its prodigious size and rare ugliness, throwing his long tapering body 90 feet out of the water and disclosing wings that put our main sail in the shade," reported one B. Stowe when he got to port.

The serpent snorting was said to be epic.

(creature snorting) That same year, a wonderful sea monster was said to have been caught near Victoria by local First Nations People.

It was brought to town and described as a genuine sea serpent six feet in length with the orthodox mane, a head shaped like a panther.

It was said to have been preserved in spirits and sent to Ottawa for identification as no locals knew what it was.

That wasn't the last time some odd carcass found on a northwest beach sparked the question, what the heck is it?

Strange sightings weren't confined just to saltwater.

Indigenous Peoples told stories of a creature in lakes, famously, a serpent like critter in BC's lake Okanagan named Ogopogo.

Since the late 19th century, hundreds of sightings of large serpent-like creatures have been reported off the coast of Washington and British Columbia.

Most in the Salish Sea from the strait of Juan de Fuca to Willapa Bay, from San Juan Islands to how sound.

The creatures weren't always flapping massive wings but were often described as having a long body or neck, sometimes serpentine in movement.

People had different impressions of its head though, saying it looked like a dog or a seal, a horse, a sheep, a cat, a cow.

I suppose it's a kind of Rorschach test for the observers.

As with UFOs, sea serpent sightings seem to come in bunches.

With more boat traffic, more reports came in.

The biggest bunch began in the 1930s in the waters off Vancouver Island.

In October of 1933, the Victoria Daily Times reported, on an admittedly slow news day, that sightings of a strange sea creature were made by witnesses deemed credible.

That story turned on the spigot of serpent sightings.

The sightings were by two different couples, roughly a year apart, both in the vicinity of Cadboro Bay near Victoria.

One witness, a Major Langley, a local barrister, was out on his yacht with his wife when they heard a snort and a hiss and saw a large creature with a dome-like back with serrations.

Langley had been whaling and he said, it was unlike any whale he'd ever seen.

It was near the same location where the previous summer, another couple named Kemp had cited something bizarre.

Mr. Kemp worked for the provincial archives and reported the sighting of a reptilian creature swimming towards shore where it raised its head out of water and rested it on a rock.

It had a serrated tail and moved a bit like a crocodile.

It had a mane that resembled a bed of kelp.

He calculated it was more than 60 feet long.

Like Loch Ness's Nessie in Scotland, it needed a name.

Suggestions ranged from the multi-syllabic Hyaschuckaluck, which means large water snake in Chinook jargon to Amy, but they settled on Cadborosaurus or just Caddy for short.

The sea serpent of old had hit the modern media.

Articles appeared and scores of new sightings were recorded.

Some believed that there was an entire Caddy family out there frolicking from Puget Sound to Campbell River.

Speculation was that it could be a survivor of the prehistoric era, perhaps a Jurassic Plesiosaur.

Still despite hundreds of sightings, high resolution photos and film have been elusive.

Strange remains on the beach have turned out to be decayed remnants of other sea species like oarfish or basking sharks.

Like Bigfoot, no one has been able to nail down just who or what Caddy is.

Maybe a better name for Caddy is Cagey.

The Salish Sea could be crowded with cryptids, the name for unknown species.

Researchers say Caddy sightings are not necessarily describing a single creature, but possibly two or three different critters.

Nor do sightings guarantee that anything truly new or unknown is really out there snorting and hissing and splashing about, except maybe the human imagination.

(gentle suspensive music) - [Announcer] "Mossback's Northwest" is made possible by the generous support of Bedrooms & More.

- Welcome back, everyone.

I'm Stephen Hegg, one of the producers that's lucky enough to work with Knute Berger on "Mossback's Northwest" and we're having our very best of "Mossback's Northwest" marathon today.

Knute, I have to tell you, when you first mentioned D.B.

Cooper as possibly being a subject for an episode, I thought what has not been done about D.B.

Cooper that we could do?

- Yeah, I thought the same thing when we were thinking about doing the episode, but you know, when you dig in a little bit, there's always something that comes out that maybe you didn't see the first time around and I felt that was true with D.B.

Cooper.

A lot of it had to do with public reaction - Yeah.

- To D.B.

Cooper.

We also, it was fun because we gave you a challenging assignment.

Maybe you could tell people what that was.

- Yeah, that's right.

I had to find not one but two Boeing 727s for location.

We wanted to make it, we wanted to explain the inner workings.

Found one at the Museum of Flight, they were great to work with.

And then the other at the Everett Community College, they have a full fledged aviation programming and they had one with a working stairway.

So that was really fun to work that stairway and explain how, you know, everything happened- - How he made his escape.

- How he made his dastardly escape.

But I also want to tell you that Knute and I could sit here and talk about history all day, and we often have done that but the reason we're here is to remind you how important you are to the telling of these stories.

Your support, your dollars makes the difference.

That's why we're here.

That's how "Mossback's Northwest" keeps coming to you, along with some of our other programs.

So please go to the phone right now, make a gift in any amount and when you do, you're going to enable "Mossback's Northwest," "Out and Back," "Human Elements" and "Black Arts Legacies" among some of the other programs we produce, and you're gonna avail yourself of special benefits from "Mossback's Northwest."

- [Announcer] Thank you for joining us for the very best of "Mossback's Northwest."

Help support series like this and all your other favorites by contributing to KCTS 9 at the $60 level or $5 a month, or consider a donation of $7 or $8 a month to deepen your investment in this essential public service.

When you do, you'll receive the Mossback Den weekly newsletter from Mossback himself, Knute Berger.

You'll also be able to stream an extended library of PBS shows on demand with KCTS 9 Passport and receive special members only benefits for the annual Crosscut Festival.

Your membership also includes a subscription to our monthly KCTS 9 viewer guide.

Donate at the $120 level or $10 a month and you'll receive everything at the $60 level plus a special invitation to the annual "Mossback's Northwest" in-person event where you'll learn even more about the upcoming season of the series and get behind the scenes insights into the making of the show.

Give now to help support the great local programming and quality journalism you love here on KCTS 9.

Go online to kcts9.org or call us at 800-443-1999 to donate now.

Thank you.

- Okay, Knute, what's coming up in our next block of segments?

- Well, we call it curio cabinet and I grew up in a house that had a curio cabinet, you've got fossils, coins, interesting objects.

You know, history, everything isn't categorized and you know, easily defined.

Some of my favorite stories are just the oddball stories that catch your imagination, so that runs the spectrum.

We have a story about a man who wanted to be the American Hitler and he started right here in Washington state.

We have another episode about Northwest's heroic dogs and I think that's one of my favorite episodes that we've done.

- And it was very fun to see you with some dogs.

- (laughs) Who doesn't love dogs?

And these dogs range from Indigenous dogs that were raised for wool, to the dog that accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition, to Lassie.

The Lassie movies were filmed partly here in Washington state.

- It was fun, that was fun filming them.

And I wanna remind you that "Mossback's Northwest" doesn't come to you just by sheer love and inspiration alone.

It comes to you because you have supported KCTS 9 and Crosscut and "Mossback's Northwest."

So please go to your phone before the next block starts.

Make that call, make a donation and a gift to KCTS 9 and Crosscut to make sure that "Mossback's Northwest" and all of the other programs that we provide come to you.

Thank you so much.

(whimsical music) (upbeat lively music) - Every region has its dog heroes and canine companions.

The Pacific Northwest is no exception.

We've had dogs that have captured the imagination, explored the continent, rounded the world.

Even native dogs used for making blankets.

Today, we'll walk with a few of these dogs in the Mossback Den.

(whimsical music) The Makah and Coast Salish Peoples kept two distinct types of dogs in their communities.

One was the so-called village dog with short brown hair and resembling a coyote.

The other was a smaller, long-haired pooch known as the wool or woolly dog, bred for its beautiful thick white hair.

The two types of dogs were kept apart to prevent interbreeding.

The woolly dog produced a prodigious coat that was annually sheared in the spring, just like sheep.

Their white hair was used to weave Salish blankets, high prestige items that were also made from the hair of rare mountain goats.

At the time of early European contact, explorers noted the thickness of the woolly dog's fleece.

George Vancouver wrote that they resembled Pomeranians but a bit larger.

The introduction of the Hudson's Bay Company Wool Trade Blankets apparently dented the necessity of the woolly dog's contribution to blanket art.

The dog wool seems to have been phased out by the mid 19th century and woolly dogs vanished as a distinct breed as they were interbred with dogs brought by settlers.

Some scholars poo-pooed the idea of dog blankets, but in 1859, pelt from one woolly dog is preserved in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Though it wasn't discovered in the collection until 2003.

And the Burke Museum has a verified Salish woolly dog blanket in their collection.

It wasn't confirmed as one until 2016.

Interestingly, a dog closely matching the description of woolly dogs was photographed on Vancouver Island Saanich Peninsula in the 1940s, so maybe they didn't disappear overnight.

A dog hero that arrived with the explorers was Seamen, a Newfoundland who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition from Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River and back in the early 1800s.

(dog wailing) Seamen belonged to Captain Meriwether Lewis and is the only animal expedition member to make the entire trip out and back.

(dog barking) The trip wasn't easy for dogs or humans.

Seamen was reportedly made miserable by clouds of mosquitoes.

He was bitten by a beaver and required surgery.

He was even briefly appropriated by some Native admirers and he survived being eaten.

The expedition members are said to have eaten over 200 dogs on their journey, taking protein wherever they could find it when game was scarce.

Only Explorer Clark abstained from that particular dish.

Another big traveler was Owney, the postal service mascot.

Owney was an adorable terrier mutt from Albany, New York, who was adopted by railway postal workers in 1888.

He thereafter gained fame by traveling on railroad mail cars all across the nation.

He wore a harness of tags and tokens detailing his journeys, so many that it looked like a loose suit of chain mail.

In August of 1895, Owney was put aboard a steamer in Tacoma bound for Asia and in the care of its crew.

He crossed the Pacific and arrived in Japan where he was permitted to land in Yokohama, his papers being found to be in order.

The dog tourist, as he was called, visited China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Iran, Suez, Algiers and the Azores.

And after quarantine, he was allowed to land in New York and was shortly put on a train to complete the around the world journey by returning to Puget Sound.

After coming back to the US, Owney continued his domestic travels more famous than ever, but he was put down after biting a postal clerk in Toledo, Ohio in 1897.

The beloved dog's journeys weren't quite at an end though.

The canine celebrity was stuffed and exhibited at Seattle's Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909 and he is still on display in the National Postal Museum in Washington D.C.

Which brings us to our final dog hero.

Lasdie was a sensation, a great movie star who debuted in the 1940s in an MGM picture, "Lassie Come Home" in 1943 starring young Roddy McDowell and Elizabeth Taylor.

Both were upstaged by a lovely rough collie named Lassie.

The action in that first film took place in Scotland, but parts were actually filmed here on Lake Chelan.

While the scenes were brief, they inspired MGM to return to feature more of the incredible Chelan landscape in technicolor.

A sequel, "Courage of Lassie," again starring Elizabeth Taylor was filmed near Stehekin during World War II in the fall of 1944.

Lassie grows up from a pup, so they needed a bunch of Lassies of different sizes for the different ages.

The wildlife Lassie encountered came from Hollywood and included a black bear, beavers, coyotes, skunks and chipmunks.

They were shipped in to play their parts.

Nothing was left to nature, save the gorgeous scenery.

In the "Courage of Lassie," she grows up in the happiness of the Cascade's wilderness after being separated from her dog family.

At one point, she's injured and goes missing and winds up being picked up and taken into training with an army combat unit.

She's injured in battle after a heroic act.

A damaged Lassie eventually returns home, she always finds a way, but her behavior has changed from wartime trauma and nursed back to health.

It was a poignant and timely story as the film was released in 1946 with this message about the damage war can do even to a dog's psyche.

As a movie and television star, Lassie's message of resilience proved incredibly enduring.

More movies followed, a TV series lasting from the 1950s into the 1970s, even a PlayStation game.

Lassie is more than a dog who pulled Timmy from a well.

She touched people with a message of love, loyalty, courage and endurance.

That never gets old.

The Northwest was part of the backdrop for her story and the stories of these amazing dogs have a place in our history as well.

(gentle inspirational music) (dog wailing) - [Announcer] "Mossback's Northwest" is made possible by the generous support of Bedrooms & More.

- William Dudley Pelley was a newspaper man and later a Hollywood script writer.

He had a near death experience and when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, his revelation was that he would be the American Hitler.

(upbeat classical music) In the mid 1930s, Washington state was just a bubbling fermenting political pot.

High unemployment, a lot of labor unrest, discontent just across the political spectrum.

You also had global events.

People here were connected to and reading about the rise of fascism in Europe and some people were appalled by these events, other people were inspired by them.

So Pelley created this group called the Silver Legion.

It was for White Christians and it was essentially an American homegrown fascist group.

If you look at the documentation that we have about who was a Silver Shirt, they were doctors, lawyers, heads of the Chamber of Commerce, school teachers.

Washington state, he had 1,500 to 2,000 hardcore followers.

He gave speeches around town that attracted maybe up to a thousand people.

So in 1936, William Dudley Pelley decided to run for president against Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Washington was a state where it was very easy to get on the presidential ballot and because this was the only state where he was able to get on the ballot, he made this his campaign headquarters.

Pelley's followers here wanted to do everything they could to promote the effort and some of those followers built a log cabin church, a kind of temple in Redmond and it was called the Silver Lodge.

In the Special Collections at the University of Washington, we have a Silver Shirt flag that flew over the lodge in Redmond.

Stood for liberty.

Other people could say it stood for liberation or it stood for the Silver Legion and this became kind of the clubhouse for Silver Shirts locally.

There was nothing like this built anywhere else in the country.

There was local backlash and national backlash to the Silver Shirts.

People were concerned about the kind of anti-Semitism that they were spreading around the country.

This lasted really right up until Pearl Harbor.

William Dudley Pelley was arrested and charged with sedition.

Pelley ended up going to jail for quite some time.

Former members of the Silver Shirts were involved in the founding of a number of far-right organizations that we know today, the John Birch Society, the posse comitatus.

Richard Butler of Aryan Nations had been a Silver Shirt.

There was a tangible legacy from people who were involved in that movement that continued really to the present day.

The family that built the Silver Lodge, they donated a big chunk of their farmland to the city of Redmond for a public park, and it's named after the man who was in charge of building the Silver Lodge, Arthur Johnson.

When gold was discovered in the Klondike in the late 1890s, it changed Seattle forever.

It set off a stampede, Seattle boomed.

People grew rich, but it had another effect.

The lust for gold spurred an interest in aerospace innovation.

What?

(whimsical music) It's true, gold powered the dreams of controlled flight innovation.

All eyes were on the skies as people fantasized about ways of getting people and material to the Klondike and getting gold back.

In the modern era of the 1890s though, flights seemed very possible and even necessary.

(dramatic piano music) In late 1896 and all throughout 1897, people began seeing cigar-shaped airships in the night sky.

Many of them were illuminated.

They speculated that inventors were working on airships or that they might even be from another planet.

Soon they were seen all over the west coast.

It started in California near San Francisco.

Then they were seen up in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia.

We saw them in Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane.

People thought that inventors were finally solving the problem of controlled flight, creating maneuverable airships or aircraft that could carry them where they wanted to go whenever they wanted to go there.

Prospectors by law had to carry hundreds of pounds of supplies all the way to Alaska and the Klondike just to get to the gold fields.

What a wonderful solution an airship would be carrying these heavy loads.

The New York Times egged on the idea of aviation innovation.

"Suppose an airship to be now perfected and practical.

The riches of the klon would like patent to mankind.

The difficulties of reaching that lonely valley would vanish at once."

Inventors leaped to the challenge.

Thomas Edison was interviewed talking about airships, wireless communication, even trips to Mars.

Hiram Stevens Maxim, the inventor of the machine gun opened a shop in San Francisco that he said would build an airship to the Klondike.

Inventors from all over the world announced that they were building airships, Germany, Canada, Ireland.

A woman named Iola Lee was said to be planning to sail an airship to the Klondike that was described as an immense aerial houseboat.

Alas, none of these fantastical ideas actually came to fruition.

The airship sightings ceased and no one came up with a workable airship for the Klondike.

In fact, a workable airship didn't appear until about 1900 when the first German Zeppelin flew.

The only successful airship launch for the Klondike was a musical farce called the Air Ship.

It was a play that circulated for about 10 years from 1897 on.

It told the story of an airship and its inventor heading to Dawson City to find a glittering lake of gold.

It was crewed by at least 15 beautiful women.

People in Seattle loved it for its combination of technological innovation, music and gold.

People are still energized by that combination today.

Seattle has ever since embraced tech, aviation and money.

(upbeat music) (upbeat band music) Washington state's unofficial theme song is "Louie Louie," the early 1960s rock hit made famous by many Northwest bands.

The lyrics they sang were almost unintelligible.

* Louie Louie hey - But something else is also hard to figure out.

Who invented the northwest seafood salad everyone loves?

Who invented crab Louie?

Or should it be crab Louie Louie?

(whimsical music) The origins of crab Louie turn out to be muddy and contested.

It is widely served all over the country.

It was very popular and considered a kind of cocktail era luxury for those who eschewed big steaks.

It was served in seafood diners and fancy hotels and some unlikely and elegant places have made claims to be Louie originators, like Spokane's elegant Davenport Hotel where I'm ensconced right now.

(upbeat classical music) The salad's origins appear to have been on the west coast and that makes sense because in the late 19th century, we had an abundance of fresh crab.

San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and Portland served crab on menus dating back to the 19th century.

The northwest had a secret weapon, Dungeness crab.

Captain George Vancouver named Dungeness Spit, a miles long curving sand spit that extends into the strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington because it reminded him of Dungeness back in England.

When his expedition landed in nearby Discovery Bay in 1792, they hauled in fish and crab for the crew.

What the Dungeness Spit area had was an abundance of sweet, tasty crab that was the best eating.

Dungeness crab thrive from northern California to Alaska.

It became a commercial hit, and as access to fresh crab expanded in the late 19th century with rail refrigeration and road systems to spread it around, more and more people could eat fresh crab without fear of food poisoning.

Bad crab could kill, a fact newspaper stories widely advertised.

Fresh produce became more widely available too, like lettuce.

In the 1800s, a crab salad might be crab, fresh or canned, mixed with mayonnaise.

But in the early 20th century, crab with lettuce and other veggies and ingredients was a splendid novelty for the swells.

Healthy too.

By the 1930s, crab Louie had become very popular in Seattle.

An article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer back then declared, "A trip to Seattle without a feast of crab a la Louie is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower.

Its first appearance in a northwest cookbook dates to 1912 in the Portland Council of Jewish Women's Neighborhood Cookbook.

It calls for lettuce, two hard boiled eggs and shredded crab meat.

But the key is the Louie dressing, not just plain mayo, but a zesty and often pink concoction.

Success has a thousand fathers and mothers, so the invention of Louie is disputed.

One version says that Italian tenor Enrico Caruso came to Seattle in 1904 and ate crab Louie at the Olympic Club or Olympic Hotel and became insatiable for it.

The only problem with that story is that the inimitable Caruso never performed in Seattle.

Though he was gonna be invited to open the Moore Theatre, which alas wasn't finished in time for him to accept.

He was in San Francisco, however, during the 1906 quake, which he fled unharmed.

San Francisco was an early adopter of Louie.

The old French Poodle Dog Restaurant in 1908 is said to have named Louie dressing after its chef, Louie Goutard.

The restaurant was also decorated in Louie the 14th style.

Perhaps that was a reference too.

The Goutard dressing lacks the familiar ketchup, but includes Dijon mustard, champagne vinegar, chives, olive oil, tarragon and shallots.

Another San Francisco restaurant, Solari's, also laid claim to inventing crab Louie.

Famed chef, James Beard, grew up eating crab Louie in his hometown of Portland, Oregon.

He said he first encountered it at a fine dining establishment called the Bohemian.

Portland, he believed, was the origin of Louie dressing.

In the 1920s, the Bohemian boasted of its famous crab Louie.

Beard recreated the Bohemian's recipe in the 1980s saying the dressing is what makes the dish.

His modernized version called for homemade mayo, an equal part yogurt, chili sauce, grated onion, a dash of Tabasco sauce and some whipped cream.

Oh, and as much crab as your generosity could afford.

Louie is still a signature dish for some establishments, even ones far removed from the coast.

At the historic Davenport Hotel in Spokane, for example.

It appeared on the menu the year it opened in 1914 and is there still, named it as said for the hotel's owner, Llewellyn Louie Davenport.

Their salad includes fresh Dungeness crab, ripe tomato and lemon wedges and hard boiled eggs.

Well, you know what I like about it?

It looks like a crab.

- [Tom] Exactly what we're looking for.

- I gotta ask you what's in the Louie dressing.

- Unfortunately that's a Davenport secret, so.

- Ugh.

Still you get the idea.

Put your own twist on Louie dressing, toss it, chill and serve.

In the northwest, for the last century at least, it's always Louie Louie time.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Mossback's Northwest" is made possible by the generous support of Bedrooms & More.

(upbeat music) - The San Juan Islands in Washington are a wooded paradise in the Salish Sea, popular with tourists, boaters, summer folk and orca pods.

(gentle inspirational music) But the peaceful beauty of these islands was once broken when two nations loudly rattled their sabers.

Over what you ask?

An argument over a dead pig.

(whimsical music) In the late 18th and early 19th century, European empires competed to claim and colonize the Pacific Northwest.

Among them, the Spanish, Russians, British and Americans.

They explored, mapped, and claimed the land and waters and they exploited the region's Indigenous people and their bounty of furs for trade.

And occasionally they clashed.

In 1859, the border between the US and what is now Canada had been mostly determined by treaty, but vague language made it unclear on paper where the border laid between Vancouver Island, then a British colony, and the San Juan Islands.

American settlers believed the islands belong to them, and squatters began to settle on San Juan Island.

The Hudson's Bay Company had a working sheep farm there and claimed it for Britain.

In June of 1859, things came to a boil when an American settler on San Juan shot a British owned pig that was raiding his garden.

An argument ensued, each claiming to be the violated party.

When they couldn't agree on a price for the dead hog, well, the dispute escalated.

The governor of Vancouver Island, Sir James Douglas, threatened to have all the Americans removed from San Juan.

The settlers pleaded for help from the US Army.

Ah, be careful what you wish for.

The Americans landed men in artillery under the command of the hotheaded Captain George Pickett, later known infamously as the leader of the feudal Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.

The aggressive military occupation on behalf of squatters rights enraged Governor Douglas and ships from the Royal Navy began to appear bristling with guns.

Discussions between the near waring camps ensued, but went nowhere.

It was escalating into a real possible shooting war over a deceased farm animal, a Berkshire boar, if you're interested.

Never had such high stakes hinged on such low stakes.

In a way, it was the 19th century equivalent of the Cuban missile crisis, but without the potential for global apocalypse.

But the timing was dicey.

The US was already steaming toward a higher stakes internal fight, the Civil War.

After weeks of confrontation, posturing and maneuvering, cooler heads prevail.

Was all out war over a slab of ham really worth it?

Both governments thought not.

When President James Buchanan learned about the crisis, he sent General Winfield Scott, hero of the Mexican War by ship to negotiate with the British.

And on their end, the Royal Navy received notice that war was to be avoided at all costs, despite American escalation.

Some shots were fired, probably in salutes or gunnery practice.

In 2002, some boys found a 32-pound cannonball like this one that likely came from the 30 gun British steam frigate HMS Tribune, a veteran of the Crimean War.

Oof, I can't even budge it.

An agreement was negotiated.

Both sides would militarily jointly occupy San Juan Island until the dispute over the border and whose country it was in was settled by arbitration.

About 100 American soldiers settled on a hill on the southern end of the island in what is called American Camp.

Here, they had great views of the surrounding territory from their readout.

(upbeat Patriotic music) (upbeat classical music) A like number of Royal Marines made their home at a place called English Camp at the opposite end of the island where they planted orchards, gardens and built a nice Victorian home for their commander.

It feels like a little bit of England.

There, the two warring sides sat for the next dozen years or so.

They got along quite well, celebrating holidays like the 4th of July and Queen Victoria's birthday together.

They built roads and tried to control a population of settlers, smugglers and whiskey sellers.

That cooperation did not eliminate territorial ambitions on either side.

Governor Douglas mused that with a civil war in the US, the British could dip below the 49th parallel border and retake their former holdings down to the Columbia River.

After the war, Secretary of State, William Seward, who purchased Alaska from the Russians, suggested that the British ought to give British Columbia to the US for war reparations for having built Confederate ships, one of which decimated US whalers in the Pacific.

The idea was rejected.

And here's another layer of conspiracy theory.

Granville Haller, an officer with Pickett during the pig war confrontation later claimed that Pickett wanted a war with England to distract the nation and make it easier for the South to secede from the union.

Was the pig war incited by a Southern sympathizer?

Haller, a former union officer, thought so, but there's no real evidence.

The entire ruckus was settled in 1872 when the final arbitrator, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany decided the American border claim was the right one.

Despite an American win, the spirit of mutual respect lives on.

The National Park Service is in charge of two historic pig war sites located at either end of the island.

Every day, the American and British flags are still raised over the respective old military camps where the war they were sent to fight was so wisely avoided.

(Knute grunts) That is really heavy.

- [Announcer] Hear more about this episode on the Mossback podcast.

Just search Mossback wherever you listen.

- [Announcer] "Mossback's Northwest" is made possible by the generous support of Port of Seattle.

- Hi there, I'm Stephen Hegg, a producer on "Mossback's Northwest."

This is the last break of our very best of "Mossback's Northwest" mini marathon.

I'm here in the studio with Knute Berger.

Knute, what's coming up on season seven of "Mossback's Northwest?"

- Well, I'm super excited about it.

We have a lot of new things.

One is Mossback is gone to two seasons a year instead of one season a year, and this is our first spring season.

So we'll have a season this spring, we'll have another one in the fall.

People wanted more, we're giving them more.

We're also introducing a new type of episode, which we'll be doing our usual stories, usual format, but we're gonna do a new one called Upon Further Review and this is where we will explore a previous episode where viewers raised questions and we're gonna answer those questions and therefore, I think provide people with a lot of additional information.

And so, it's just another way that the viewers help shape the content.

Anyway, so we're excited about that.

Then, I'm not gonna tip off all of the episodes that we're doing, but we have one that's about a major transformative event that changed Washington state forever.

Happened in the 1930s, we'll talk about that.

And we also have an episode about two very different guys who were both called Nature Man at the turn of the century and went off into the woods for different reasons, wearing loin cloths and Jack London will make an appearance, a cameo in this episode.

So it's a really fun thing that has to do with our sense of the wild.

- Very interesting.

And just to remind you that "Mossback's Northwest" started with a sporadic number of episodes.

It went to a full season, now it's two seasons.

Now it's a podcast and online and on broadcast.

You made that possible.

So this is our last break.

Please go to the phone, make a donation, make your gift of support of "Mossback's Northwest" and KCTS 9 right now and there's some benefits that go with that.

- [Announcer] Thank you for joining us for the very best of "Mossback's Northwest."

Help support series like this and all your other favorites by contributing to KCTS 9 at the $60 level or $5 a month, or consider a donation of $7 or $8 a month to deepen your investment in this essential public service.

When you do, you'll receive the Mossback Den weekly newsletter from Mossback himself, Knute Berger.

You'll also be able to stream an extended library of PBS shows on demand with KCTS 9 Passport and receive special members only benefits for the annual Crosscut Festival.

Your membership also includes a subscription to our monthly KCTS 9 viewer guide.

Donate at the $120 level or $10 a month and you'll receive everything at the $60 level plus a special invitation to the annual "Mossback's Northwest" in-person event where you'll learn even more about the upcoming season of the series and get behind the scenes insights into the making of the show.

Give now to help support the great local programming and quality journalism you love here on KCTS 9.

Go online to kcts9.org or call us at 800-443-1999 to donate now.

Thank you.

- We're so happy you've joined us for the very best of "Mossback's Northwest" here on KCTS 9.

Remember, this station belongs to you.

This powerful and valuable resource exists because of viewers like you.

Your contribution says so much about what you value and what's important to you.

Thank you.

And Knute, it's been so wonderful talking to you today.

Thank you for taking the time.

- Oh, it's been a pleasure, Stephen, thank you.

- I'm Stephen Hegg and thank you for joining us today for the very best of "Mossback's Northwest" and for supporting what you love.

(upbeat music)