About King County Collects

The King County collects Project was intended to mark the successive sesquicentennials in 2001, 2002 and 2003 of the city of Seattle, King County and Washington Territory. The project itself documented and celebrated the remarkable breadth and depth of the shared collections held by the members of the Association of King County Historical Organizations. More than 60 collecting organizations and institutions participated in the project, nominating artifacts, documents, sites and structures, and photographs. This magnificent collection currently includes 35mm slides of artifacts, photographs, documents, costumes and structures shot during this project, photographed by Richard Nicol.

The AKCHO board of trustees approved this project in Fall 2000, and MOHAI historian Dr. Lorraine McConaghy was appointed as project director. The call for submissions went out to historical organizations throughout the Fall of 2000 and Spring of 2001. Thought the Fall and Winter of 2001-2002, McConaghy evaluated the submissions, and McConaghy and Nicol, with the help of Angela Smith, visited each historical organization to shoot photographs of the submitted collection items. By September 2002, Smith developed a rough Access database to the collection, and the project was stable.

In 2008, the University of Washington Libraries offered the opportunity to bring much of the collection before the public, folding King County collects into the searchable online database that you see before you.