Washington

The Pacific corner, made by timber, a canal on the other side of the continent, and then aircraft. The Oregon Country was jointly held with Britain until 1846, and Washington Territory was split off in 1853. The treaties Governor Stevens negotiated in 1854 and 1855 reserved fishing rights at usual and accustomed places, a phrase whose meaning was fought over for a century until the Boldt decision of 1974 awarded tribes half the salmon catch. Statehood came in 1889. Seattle's growth was driven first by timber, then by the Klondike gold rush of 1897, for which it made itself the outfitting port, and it was transformed again by the Panama Canal, which cut the distance to eastern markets. The general strike of February 1919, the first citywide strike in the country, shut Seattle for five days. Boeing made the state an aerospace economy, and Grand Coulee, the largest power station in the country, made the aluminium that fed it - at the cost of blocking the upper Columbia salmon runs entirely. Hanford produced the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb and is the most contaminated site in the hemisphere. Olympia is the capital. Seattle is the largest city and the state is named for the first president, the only one so named. Mount Rainier is an active volcano beside a metropolitan area, and Mount St Helens erupted in 1980. The Cascades divide a wet west from a dry east that grows most of the country's apples. The state has no personal income tax. Microsoft and Amazon are both headquartered there.

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