In many ways, Puget Sound looks today as it did in the eighteenth
century, when its first explorers probed into the bays and inlets. The
Olympics flank the west and the Cascades rise to the east with Mount
Rainier looming to the south. The deep, cold water still laps against
the shore, but many of the beaches have yielded to homes and industries.
Instead of the dense forests, great cities, homes to millions, stretch
far back from the shore. Hundreds of salmon swim up the Sound into
rivers that once saw fish in the tens of millions.
Beginning a decade or two after the first American settlements,
photographers captured scenes of Puget Sound's people, ships, and
communities, kept alive in archives and history books. Teeming with
other photographs up to the 1970s, these striking black-and-white images
in Historic Photos of Puget Sound explore life of this unique
Washington region for its residents, visitors, and admirers to enjoy
even now.