Seattle+Side+Trips



toc
 * Seattle Side Trips **
 * Places In and Around Seattle to Visit During Your Free Time at Midwinter 2013 **

[[image:mountaineers.jpg width="211" height="143" align="left"]]Mary "May" Banks & the Mountaineers
According to the Seattle Municipal Archives, several women worked for the Seattle Public Library in its early years. In 1895, Miss Mary Banks was employed as Superintendent of Circulation, at a salary of $45 per month. Banks began working for the Library in 1893 and quickly moved from the Circulation Department to Reference, becoming Chief Reference Librarian. Known as "May," her reports "bubble with energy and ideas". Not only was Banks active in her profession, she was a charter member of The Mountaineers, and the first woman to reach the top of Mount Queets in the Olympic Mountains; she chronicled the 1907 climbing trip for //Mountaineer// magazine.
 * Visit the Mountaineers Bookstore, 7700 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, (206) 521-6002 **
 * More information:** Seattle Municipal Archives

Ruby Chow Park[[image:chow.jpg width="106" height="148" align="right"]]
Considered the matriarch of Seattle’s Chinese community, Ruby Chow was forced to drop out of high school to help her impoverished family during the Great Depression. She worked as a waitress in both New York and Seattle until she opened her own restaurant at Broadway and Jefferson in Seattle in 1948. Chow and her husband became ambassadors for the local Chinese American community, promoting culture and cuisine. When Chow approached the Chong Wa Benevolent Association about the Chinese community’s need for a public relations committee, they agreed, making her chairwoman of the board. She was the world’s first female board member, and eventually, president, of a Chong Wa Benevolent Society chapter. After a decade spent helping other candidates get elected to public office, Chow decided in 1973 to make a run herself for the vacant 5th District seat on the King County Council. The first Asian American member of the King County Council, Chow served three terms before retiring in 1985. “She was an incredible trailblazer and advocate on behalf of Asian Americans, the Asian America community in politics, and a trailblazer for women,” said former Gov. Gary Locke, the nation’s first Chinese-American Governor. “She helped shatter the glass ceiling on so many different fronts.” More information: [|Evergreen Washelli web page] Asianweek Metropolitan King County Council
 * 13th Ave S and S Hardy Street, at the north end of Boeing Field-King County International Airport, Seattle**

Grave of Bertha Knight Landes
In the early 20th century, the campaign for women's suffrage and prohibition issues brought women into the public sphere. With the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 giving women the right to vote, the idea of women in the political arena was no longer unacceptable. Seattle was the first major U.S. city to have a woman mayor. In 1926, Bertha Knight Landes became the Seattle's first, and to date only, woman mayor. She served a single two-year term.
 * Visit Landes's grave at the Evergreen Washelli (Oak Lake) Cemetery, 11111 Aurora Ave. N., Seattle, Section MHS, Lot 0196**
 * More information:** Evergreen Washelli web page Find A Grave Seattle Municipal Archives

EMP Museum
EMP is a "leading-edge, nonprofit museum, dedicated to the ideas and risk-taking that fuel contemporary popular culture". The Science Fiction Hall of Fame was founded in 1996 at the University of Kansas and moved to EMP in 2004. Nominations are submitted by EMP members and final inductees are chosen by a panel of award-winning science fiction authors, artists, editors, publishers, and film professionals. Women inductees include ** James Tiptree, Jr. **, pen name of Alice Sheldon, best known for stories that explore sex, gender identity, and male/female relations; Bantam and Ballentine Books founder ** Betty Ballentine ** ; Hugo and Nebula award-winner **Octavia E. Butler**; and English novelist **Mary Shelley**.
 * Visit the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, 325 5th Avenue N. at Seattle Center[[image:Science_Fiction_Hall_of_Fame.jpg width="160" height="109" align="right"]] **
 * More information: ** Science Fiction Hall of Fame

Birthplace of Seattle Monument

 * View the plaque honoring Seattle's women pioneers, Alki Beach Park, Alki Avenue SW and 62nd Avenue SW, Seattle **
 * Mary Ann Denny **, **L** ** ouisa Denny Boren ** , ** Mary Boren ** , ** Lydia Low ** , and ** Sarah Ann Bell ** were full partners in the bold venture that resulted in the founding of the city of Seattle. The small band that became known as the Denny party included five women, seven men, and 12 children. They landed on 13 November 1851 from the small schooner // Exact // on the beach that was later named "Alki". Emily Inez Denny writes of her mother Louisa Boren Denny in // Blazing the Way: True Stories, Songs, and Sketches of Puget Sound // : "She possessed dauntless courage and in the face of danger was cool and collected ... It transpired that the first attempt at building on the site of Seattle, so far as known to the writer, is to be credited to Louisa Boren and another white woman, who crossed Elliott Bay in a canoe with Indian paddlers and a large dog to protect them from wild animals. They made their way through an untouched forest, and the two women cut and laid logs for the foundation of a cabin." (p.275)
 * More information:** Pioneer Women of Seattle