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 (external link), 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.

Man and mallard

In the early 1960s, drainage and erosion issues along Standring Lane in Burien's Shorewood area presented challenges both for homeowners and for King County's engineers. Here, on a beach behind some waterfront houses, a county worker or contractor clearing damage from a spring 1965 storm takes time to engage with a friendly mallard duck. (Some years later, Surface Water Management personnel would also utilize some four-footed assistance at one Cedar River levee inspection, as this 1990 photograph demonstrates!)

Department of Transportation photograph and moving image files (Series 400), folder 482.