Unique characters from PNW's Past

Our annual Mossback’s Northwest Special features a bunch of one-of-a-kind folks who exemplify our region’s quirky originality. It’s a fun anthology of Mossback episodes. Host Knute Berger and crew head to Seattle’s historic Smith Tower to film the show. The Smith Tower, with its pyramid top, is a true original on the city’s skyline and it fit our theme perfectly. We also get an inside look at the Smith Tower's Museum.

The amazing legacy of the Cayton-Revels family

A Victorian home in Seattle recently became a landmark due to the story it tells about a Black family’s quest for equality and respect and why their most treasured heirloom is a clock given by Jefferson Davis. The Cayton-Revels were newspaper publishers, influential in state politics and civic life, until they confronted a wave of racism in the early 1900s.

The Other Curtis Photographer

Photographer Edward Curtis became famous for his portraits of Indigenous peoples, but his younger brother Asahel also made indelible images that have literally shaped how we see the Pacific Northwest, from old growth forests to urban industry. Asahel's career started with documenting the Klondike gold rush, and spent the next forty years recording the rise of the industrial Pacific Northwest. Curtis' life began when the Northwest experienced the first in many industrial and technical expansions up to WWII, and he recorded nearly all of it.