At Home in King County: Images from the Collections

Health, safety, recreation and transportation are some of the topics that appear in these photographs. Please click on the thumbnails at the right for larger images and descriptive text. Links in the captions lead to other pages that are part of the King County Archives Web site. There, you'll find more photographs, maps, drawings and additional text information.

This online exhibit, prepared in honor of Washington State Archives Month 2008, is based on a display ("A Baker's Dozen: Images of King County from the Collections") originally created in 2003 by Assistant Archivist Helice Koffler.

All aboard the X-Ray Bus!

The Seattle Area Chest X-Ray Program was established in 1948 as one component of an ongoing public health effort to identify cases of tuberculosis and other related conditions among the general population. Administered by the newly merged Seattle-King County Department of Public Health, the program also was sponsored by the King County Medical Society and the Anti-Tuberculosis League of King County (operators of the first mobile x-ray unit in King County). By the mid-1950s, the county had been divided into thirty-six districts with mobile units assigned to each of these areas in rotation. This 1955 photograph shows one mobile unit screening Burien residents. The number of tuberculosis cases declined during the 1960s, causing the mobile screening program to be curtailed. The last mobile x-ray unit was retired in 1971. More information about historical Seattle-King County tuberculosis programs can be found in this online exhibit on the King County Archives Web site.

Seattle-King County Department of Public Health photograph files (Series 275), Box 2. (Photo ID 90.2.3169)