Historylink

Seattle lost Walt Crowley this week.

In four decades spanning student revolution and the information revolution, Mr. Crowley went from campus radical to the city's most prominent citizen historian, co-founding and running HistoryLink.org, an online encyclopedia of Washington state history.

Walt Crowley, historian, part of city history, dies at 60, Seattle Times, Sept. 22, 2007.

Although we've lost Mr. Crowley, we have not lost the wonderful resource he created. (Indeed, Crowley penned a plan for HistoryLink's future, Seattle Times, Sept. 23, 2007.)

Among the thousands of articles on our state's history that are on HistoryLink, there are many on our legal history, e.g.:

• David Wilma, First criminal trial in future Washington Territory convenes on October 2, 1849, HistoryLink.org Essay 5684 (2004) (trial of six Snoqualmie Indians for murder).
• Carl P. Schlicke, The Robinson Affair: a Spokane Doctor's Ordeal (1929), HistoryLink.org Essay 7354 (1983, edited by David Wilma and posted in 2005) (doctor who testified against another in a medical malpractice case).
• David Wilma, Gary Leon Ridgway pleads guilty to murdering 48 Green River Killer victims on November 5, 2003, HistoryLink.org Essay 4262 (2003).
• David Wilma, Dwyer, William L. (1929-2002), HistoryLink.org Essay 5338 (2003) (prominent litigator, federal district judge, and author).

If you're curious about the backstory in a case or issue or you'd like a quick biography of a judge or other prominent figure, give HistoryLink a try.

(I didn't set out to find only articles by David Wilma, but these all happen to be. He was the Deputy Director of HistoryLink -- which has a large roster of board members, volunteers, and staff -- from 2003 to 2007.)