Digital Collections

Select resources for educators and students interested in Bellingham history, produced in conjunction with the City's centennial celebrations of 2003-2004. This site provides access to K-12 lesson frameworks and digitized primary sources regarding the towns that became Bellingham, early industries on Bellingham Bay, individuals who helped shape Bellingham history, and historic schools.

Contains searchable documents from 1920 to 2010.

From 1899, until closure in 1967, the Campus School at Western provided unique educational and life experiences for students and student-educators alike.

One soundless color film showing commercial fishing operations in Clam Gulch, Alaska, with use of set nets and a fish trap. Fish traps were outlawed in 1959 with Alaskan statehood. Digitized from original 16mm footage shot by Rubin R. Tikka.

Images from Bellingham photographer and pharmacist H.C. Engberg, including striking scenes of Mt. Baker and surrounding area.

Select images from the larger archival collection of Wallie V. Funk, photographer, journalist and former co-owner and editor of the Anacortes American, Whidbey News-Times and the South Whidbey Record. The digital selection includes images of U.S. politicians and presidents, the Penn Cove Whale Capture of 1970, the Mt. St. Helens eruption, and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles in concert. A complete guide to the Wallie V. Funk Photographs and Papers at CPNWS is available here.

This collection contains over 1400 photographic prints documenting the construction of the Lower Baker River Dam at Concrete, Washington. The photographs were taken by George P. Jessup, superintendent of the project. The images document almost daily the progress of the construction from August, 1924 and ending in December, 1925. They feature various views of the railroads, the river and rock walls around the dam, and the dam itself as well as some of the workers.

Digitized content from the larger collection of M.L. Stangroom (1832-1913). Stangroom's career included work as a gold prospector, miner and railroad surveyor in California and the Sierra Nevadas, and as an engineer for the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia Railroad. Digital content includes copies and transcripts of letters documenting Stangroom’s early career and experiences in California and the Sierra-Nevada region (circa 1855-1873), a hand-written reminiscence, and a fifteen-page report about the construction of the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia Railroad.

A complete guide to the M.L. Stangroom papers is available here online.

The Mathes Reading Figurines Collection contains over 200 figurines, small sculptures, carvings, and figure groups depicting the act of reading. Created from a wide range of materials, including wood, sandstone, ivory, bronze, paper mache, porcelain, bone china, stone, and glass, the pieces in the collection vary in size from under one-inch to over two-feet high.

Digital copies of publications related to life in Whatcom, Skagit, and Island Counties.

The first annual WWU Graduate Research Conference is the manifestation of the collaborative efforts between STEMGRO and Huxley Graduate Research Working Group (GRWG), and is the realization of STEMGRO's goal to broaden awareness of graduate research and provide an opportunity for graduate research presentation at WWU. This conference is generously sponsored by the Biology Department, WWU Graduate School, and Huxley College of the Environment.

Since 1959, the Viking Union has been the center of student life at Western.

Digitized copies of a collection of fifty-five photographs documenting off-campus housing at the Washington State Normal School (now Western Washington University) in the 1920s and 1930s. The majority of the residences were on High, Garden, 21st, Maple, Forest, Liberty, and Myrtle streets. Original images are available at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies.

A selection of transcripts from interviews conducted in 2006 with employees of the Georgia-Pacific Corporation pulp mill in Bellingham, Washington, formerly owned and operated by Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Company. A guide to the larger collection of Waterfront Front Oral History Project records archived at CPNWS is available here.

Since its beginnings in 1899 as a "Normal School," there has been a student newspaper at Western. From Normal Messenger to Northwest Viking to WWCollegian to Western Front (and other title variants in between), the student paper has chronicled the social, athletic, academic, and creative life of the institution throughout its trajectory from teacher-training college to comprehensive regional university.

Work in progress

Images and descriptions of more than 200 Chinese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese ceramics donated to Western by Floyd and Carol Whittington.