Washington Territory in the context of "Olympia, Washington"

Idaho (/ˈaɪdəhoʊ/ ) is a landlocked state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington and Oregon to the west; the state shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border to the north with the Canadian province of British Columbia. Idaho's state capital and largest city is Boise. With an area of 83,569 square miles (216,440 km), Idaho is the 14th-largest state by land area. The state has a population of approximately two million people; it ranks as the 13th-least populous and the seventh-least densely populated of the 50 U.S. states.

For thousands of years, and prior to European colonization, Idaho had been inhabited by natives. In the early 19th century, Idaho was considered part of the Oregon Country, an area which was disputed between the U.S. and the British Empire. Idaho officially became a U.S. territory with the signing of the Oregon Treaty of 1846, but a separate Idaho Territory was not organized until 1863, instead being included for periods in Oregon Territory and Washington Territory. The state was eventually admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, becoming the 43rd state.

The Great Seattle Fire was a fire that destroyed the entire central business district of Seattle, Washington, on June 6, 1889. The conflagration lasted for less than a day, burning through the afternoon and into the night, during the same summer as the Great Spokane Fire and the Great Ellensburg Fire. Seattle quickly rebuilt using brick buildings that sat 20 feet (6.1 m) above the original street level. Its population swelled during reconstruction, becoming the largest city in the newly admitted state of Washington.

The Pacific Slope describes geographic regions in North American, Central American, and South American countries that are west of the continental divide and slope down to the Pacific Ocean. In North America, the Rocky Mountains mark the eastern border of the Pacific Slope. In Central and South America, the region is much narrower, confined by the Sierra Madre Occidental in Central America, and by the Andes in South America. The phrase is still used today mostly for scientific purposes to refer to regions inhabited by specific species.

It was and is still occasionally used to describe the region in North America during the 19th century and the expansion of the Old West. It includes the states and territories west of the continental divide that runs down the Rocky Mountains in North America. This included the territories and the states that emerged from them, including California, Oregon Territory, Washington Territory, Nevada Territory, Idaho Territory, Colorado Territory, and Utah Territory. The region is drained by the Columbia, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Colorado River systems. In the United States, the Pacific-slope flycatcher takes its name from the region it inhabits.

Fort Victoria began as a fur trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company and was the headquarters of HBC operations in the Columbia District, a large fur trading area now part of the province of British Columbia, Canada and the U.S. state of Washington. Construction of Fort Victoria in 1843 highlighted the beginning of a permanent British settlement now known as Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia. The fort itself was demolished in November 1864 as the town continued to grow as a commercial centre serving the local area as well as trading with California, Washington Territory, the United Kingdom, and others.

The location of Fort Victoria was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1924.

The Provisional Government of the Territory of Jefferson was an extralegal and unrecognized United States territory that existed in the Pike's Peak mining region from October 24, 1859, until it yielded to the new Territory of Colorado on June 6, 1861. The Jefferson Territory, named for Founding Father and third United States president Thomas Jefferson, included land officially part of the Kansas Territory, the Nebraska Territory, the New Mexico Territory, the Utah Territory, and the Washington Territory, but the region was remote from the governments of those five territories.

The government of the Jefferson Territory, while democratically elected, was never legally recognized by the United States government, although it managed the territory with relatively free rein for 19 months. Many of the laws enacted by the General Assembly of the Territory of Jefferson were reenacted and given official sanction by the new Colorado General Assembly in 1861.

Jefferson County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 32,977. The county seat and only incorporated city is Port Townsend. The county is named for Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson County was formed out of Thurston County on December 22, 1852, by the legislature of Oregon Territory, and included the northern 4,854-square-mile (12,571.8 km) portion of the Olympic Peninsula. On April 26, 1854, the legislature of Washington Territory created Clallam County from the northwestern 2,670-square-mile (6,915.3 km) portion of this original area.

Lake Washington (Lushootseed: x̌ačuʔ) is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It borders the cities of Seattle on the west, Bellevue and Kirkland on the east, Renton on the south, and Kenmore on the north, and encloses Mercer Island. The lake is fed by the Sammamish River at its north end and the Cedar River at its south.

Lake Washington has been known to the Duwamish and other Indigenous peoples living on the lake for millennia as x̌ačuʔ (lit. "lake" in Lushootseed). At the time of European settlement, it was recorded as At-sar-kal in a map sketched by engineer Abiel W. Tinkham; and the Chinook Jargon name, Hyas Chuck ("great/large water"), was also used. Other English names historically used for the lake include Lake Geneva by Isaac N. Ebey; and Lake Duwamish in railroad surveys under Governor Isaac Stevens. Lake Washington received its present name in 1854 after Thomas Mercer suggested it be named after George Washington, as the new Washington Territory had been named the year before.

Missoula (/mɪˈzuːlə/ miz-OO-lə) is a city in and the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, United States. It is located along the Clark Fork River near its confluence with the Bitterroot and Blackfoot rivers in western Montana and at the convergence of five mountain ranges, and thus it is often described as the "hub of five valleys". It is the second-most populous city in Montana with a population of 73,489 at the 2020 census and estimated at 78,204 in 2024, while the Missoula metropolitan area has an estimated 128,000 residents. Missoula is home to the University of Montana, a public research university.

The Missoula area was settled by people of European descent from 1858, including William T. Hamilton, who set up a trading post along the Rattlesnake Creek; Captain Richard Grant, who settled near Grant Creek; and David Pattee, who settled near Pattee Canyon. Missoula was founded in 1860 as Hellgate Trading Post while still part of Washington Territory. By 1866, the settlement had moved east, 5 miles (8 km) upstream, and had been renamed "Missoula Mills", later shortened to Missoula. The mills provided supplies to western settlers traveling along the Mullan Road. The establishment of Fort Missoula in 1877 to protect settlers further stabilized the economy. The arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883 brought rapid growth and the maturation of the local lumber industry. In 1893, the Montana Legislature chose Missoula as the site for the state's first university. Along with the U.S. Forest Service headquarters founded in 1908, lumber and the university remained the basis of the local economy for the next 100 years.