Mossback

When Holllywood Came to Seattle

When a film is shot in a city, it is often a big deal. There are lots of trucks, lots of crew and lots of traffic disruption. It’s big business, and for the latter decades of the 20th century it was business that was often done in Seattle.
Tugboat Annie, the first Hollywood film shot in the Emerald City, came to town in the 1930s. But it wasn’t until the early ’60s that Seattle really became a destination for directors and actors. It started with the Elvis Presley vehicle It Happened at the World’s Fair and continued with The Parallax View and Scorchy in the ’70s up to Singles and Sleepless in Seattle in the ’90s.
Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger reviewed this filmography in a recent episode of his Mossback's Northwest video series, but there is much more to explore. 
For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger and co-host Stephen Hegg talk about the movies made in and about Seattle, why Hollywood came to the city to make them and what these films tell us about how people outside of Western Washington see the city. 
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about movies made in Seattle here.
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Credits
Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger
Producer: Seth Halleran
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

The Tree Stump Craze That Swept the Northwest

During the timber boom, opportunists turned the remains of old-growth trees into homes and postcard spectacles.
The timber boom of the early 20th century reshaped both the places and the population of the Pacific Northwest. At one point, 63 percent of wage earners in Washington were drawing a paycheck from the industry that was felling the old-growth forests to produce lumber and profits.
The remains of those trees – their massive, imposing stumps – served as a kind of cultural signifier for the people and an inspiration for their creativity and ingenuity. Images of stumps as homes, dance floors and stages for feats of derring-do proliferated. 
Crosscut's resident historian told the story of these gargantuan stumps in a recent episode of his Mossback's Northwest video series, but there is much more to explore. 
For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger and co-host Stephen Hegg talk about the outsized influence of these stumps on the region’s early settlers. They discuss the reasons the stumps were so high, the photographers who made them famous and the long-term effects of the destruction that created them.
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about the stumps here.
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Credits
Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger
Producer: Seth Halleran
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

When the Confederacy Came to Seattle

Decades after the Civil War, southern sympathizers sought to rewrite history. Knute Berger explains how those efforts were received in the Northwest.
When Gone With the Wind premiered in Seattle in 1940, it was an event. Moviegoers who ventured Downtown to attend a showing of the Civil War drama were met with fanfare. The street outside The 5th Avenue Theatre, where the film was playing, was decorated as if for a Fourth of July parade, with one notable exception: the presence of Confederate flags. 
These flags could be seen in brief footage of Downtown that was featured in an earlier episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series about the Seattle Freeze. And while the production team didn't notice, viewers did. 
In a recent episode of Mossback’s Northwest, Knute Berger and producer Stephen Hegg discuss the feedback and the historical investigation that followed. But there is still more to the story.
For this episode of the Mossback podcast, both Berger and Hegg discuss changing attitudes toward the Confederacy and toward race in Seattle as our city’s Southern sympathizers attempted to rewrite the narrative of the Civil War.
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about the Confederacy in the Northwest here.
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Credits
Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger
Producer: Seth Halleran
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

The Case of the Pickled Orca

Long before an industry was built around capturing orcas, a tragic encounter between a wayward whale and humanity foretold decades of exploitation.
There are few animals that capture the imagination of human beings the way that orcas have. For decades people have paid money to see them, scientists have studied them intently and, in the Seattle area, concerned news consumers have tracked their every move.
At the start of the 1930s, though, there wasn’t yet a market for whale watching. Enter Ethelbert, a young 11-foot-long female orca who appeared in a place she was not expected: The Columbia River, 100 miles upstream from the Pacific Ocean near Portland, Oregon.
In a recent episode of the Mossback’s Northwest video series, Knute Berger tells the story of Ethelbert, from the carnival-like atmosphere that grew up around her unlikely appearance to her tragic end, pickled in a steel tank on the side of a Washington mountain.
But there is more to the story. For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to discuss Ethelbert’s brief fame and how her fate foreshadowed the curiosity and industrial-level exploitation that humanity would inflict on her species.
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about Ethelbert here.
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Credits
Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger
Producer: Seth Halleran
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

The New Deal and the Northwest

From cheap power to rugged hiking trails, Franklin D. Roosevelt's government transformed the region.
When President Roosevelt launched the New Deal in 1933, he set off a decade-long mobilization that would help move America out of the Great Depression.
It was a massive program that not only provided jobs, but also modernized infrastructure throughout the country. In the Pacific Northwest, where the resource economy was hit hard by the Depression, it reshaped society and even remade the land.
Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger told the tale of the New Deal and its impact on the Pacific Northwest in a recent episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but the New Deal is bigger than any single video could contain. 
For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger joins former Mossback's Northwest producer, and new Mossback co-host, Stephen Hegg about the ways that the program transformed the Northwest and how the region's most massive project helped set the course for the next century.
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about the New Deal here.
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Credits
Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger
Producer: Seth Halleran
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

Frank Waldron and the Jackson Street Jazz Scene

Before there was Ernestine Anderson, Ray Charles and Quincy Jones, there was Frank Waldron.
The unfortunate irony of Seattle’s storied jazz scene of the early 20th century is that there are many stories but not much jazz to account for it. While recording technology existed at the time, it wasn’t being used to capture much of the music being created in those early years of the Jackson Street music scene.
The music has instead spread its influence through compositions and the living tradition of musicians passing the music down through generations. On both counts, Frank Waldron was an original. As a composer, performer and teacher, Waldron helped shape music in the city and across the country for decades.
Crosscut’s resident historian Knute Berger told the tale of Waldron and the Jackson Street music scene in a recent episode of his Mossback’s Northwest video series, but there is more to the story.
For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger and co-host Sara Bernard explore Waldron’s music and discuss the origins of a scene that broke both the rules and racial barriers and gave rise to stars including Ernestine Anderson, Ray Charles and Quincy Jones.
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about Jackson Street jazz scene here.
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Credits
Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger
Producer: Jonah Cohen
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

Emily Carr’s Mysterious and Majestic Forests

The Canadian artist created landscapes unlike her contemporaries’, intuiting the web of life beneath the canopy and putting it on canvas.
As a painter in early 20th-century British Columbia, Emily Carr approached her subject matter through a colonial lens and expressed what she saw with a modernist style developed in the studios of London and Paris. She earned renown for her early depictions of Indigenous cultures, work that would later be criticized as appropriative. 
It was later in her career, though, that she focused more intently on the forests themselves, intuiting a web of life beneath the canopy that would eventually be proven by science. Her paintings from this era are unlike those of her contemporaries, capturing the mystery and majesty of these natural landscapes in vivid form.
Crosscut’s resident historian Knute Berger explored this part of Carr's career in a recent episode of his Mossback’s Northwest video series, but there is more to the story.
For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger and co-host Sara Bernard discuss how Carr's living landscapes came to be and how the power of the Pacific Northwest's forests have long inspired powerful artwork, personal reverie and even a kind of evangelism.
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about Emily Carr here.
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Credits
Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger
Producer: Jonah Cohen
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

Chief Joseph’s Seattle Sojourn

He was invited to the city to talk about his storied past, but the Nez Perce chief had his eye on the future of his people.
When Chief Joseph arrived in Seattle in 1903, he had a message to deliver and a public interested in hearing it. He had become a kind of celebrity, though the nature of his renown was complicated.
A leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce Tribe, Joseph had joined his people as they were pushed out of their ancestral home in northeast Oregon by the U.S. Army. And he had put up a storied fight against those forces as they attempted to, and eventually did, stop the tribe’s retreat to Canada.
Crosscut’s resident historian Knute Berger told the tale of Joseph’s visit to Seattle in a recent episode of his Mossback’s Northwest video series, but there is more to the story.
For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger and co-host Sara Bernard discuss the history of harassment, attempted erasure and resistance that defined Joseph’s life, as well as the forces that brought him to Seattle and how the message he came to deliver still resonates today.
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about Chief Joseph here.
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Credits
Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger
Producer: Jonah Cohen
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

The Pig War That Almost Was

A border conflict between the U.S. and Britain, combined with the ambitions of a future Confederate general, almost turned the Salish Sea into a war zone.
The so-called Pig War of 1859 may have been initiated by the killing of a boar, but other forces were at play that nearly elevated a neighborly conflict into an international conflagration. 
The conflict took place on San Juan Island, a disputed territory that was home to both American and British colonists. And on the American side was a future Confederate general eager for conflict.
Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger told the tale of the conflict in a recent episode of his Mossback's Northwest video series, but there is more to the story.
For this episode of the Mossback Podcast, Berger and co-host Sara Bernard talk about the conflict’s roots, how close the countries came to all-out war and how cooler heads prevailed.
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about the Pig War here.
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Credits
Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger
Producer: Jonah Cohen
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

When Wyatt Earp Came to Seattle

There was money to be had during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. And the infamous lawman knew how to get it.
Wyatt Earp was a man often on the move. In the two decades after his and Doc Holliday’s storied shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, he spent time in San Francisco, Utah and Alaska, shading his reputation with turns as a sportsman, gambler and entrepreneur. 
The gold rushes of the late 19th century charted the course for Earp and his common-law wife, Josephine, as they moved from boomtown to boomtown, which landed them, naturally, in turn-of-the-century Seattle. The young city was a launching point for tens of thousands of people looking for riches in the Klondike and a good place for an entrepreneur like Earp to “mine the miners.”
Crosscut’s resident historian Knute Berger told the tale of Earp’s time in Seattle in a recent episode of his Mossback’s Northwest video series, but there is more to the story.
For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger and co-host Sara Bernard discuss how the Gold Rush shaped Seattle, what Earp had hoped to find when he came to town and the possible reasons he left a short time after. 
Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about Wyatt Earp here.
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Credits
Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger
Producer: Jonah Cohen
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten