The first European record of a landing on the future Washington state coast was in 1774 by Spaniard mariner Juan José Pérez Hernández (c.1725-1775), sailing for the Kingdom of Spain / Spanish Empire.

One year later, another Spanish-Basque Captain Don Bruna de Heceta (1747-1807), on board the Santiago, part of a two-ship flotilla with the accompanying Sonora, landed near the mouth of the Quinault River and claimed the coastal lands for Spain as far north up to the already present colonists of the Russian Empire possessions, originally discovered / claimed by Captain Vitus Bering (1681-1741), (a Danish mariner sailing the coasts of the northern Pacific for Russia and its rapidly expanding Russian Empire across the Bering Strait and Bering Sea (named for him) coming from eastern Siberia and Asia) further up the Pacific coast in Russian America since the 1740s (modern Alaska, purchased by the United States in 1867).

In 1778, the British Royal Navy explorer Captain James Cook (1728-1779), sighted Cape Flattery, at the entrance of the Puget Sound at the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The Spanish-British treaties of the Nootka Conventions of the 1790s ended Spanish exclusivity and opened the Northwest North America Coast to explorers and traders from other nations, most important being the future British, Russians, and Americans of the United States.

[6]Captain Robert Gray (1755-1806) (for whom Grays Harbor County in Washington was named), a civilian sea captain of a merchantman cargo vessel, discovered the mouth of the Columbia River along the West Coast of the North America continent in the Pacific Northwest region in 1792, naming the river after his ship "Columbia" and later establishing a trade in sea otter, seal and walrus fur pelts in the surrounding Pacific Northwest region.

By the Treaty of 1818, following from the War of 1812 (1812-1815), Great Britain and the United States established the 49th parallel as the international border stretching west to the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains; but agreed to temporary joint control and occupancy of the Oregon Country / Columbia District for the next few years.

international border, resulting in the amicable splitting of the Oregon/Columbia territory along the 49th parallel line, extending it westward from the Great Lakes through the Rocky Mountains chain all the way to the west coast at the Pacific Ocean (with the exception of the off-shore Vancouver Island, assigned to Britain) between the two nations, in the negotiated Oregon Treaty of 1846.

The Fraser Gold Rush in what would, as a result, become the Colony of British Columbia saw a flurry of settlement and merchant activity in northern Puget Sound which gave birth to Port Townsend (in 1851) and Whatcom (founded in 1858, later becoming Bellingham) as commercial centres, at first attempting to rival Victoria on Vancouver Island as a disembarkation point of the goldfields until the governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island ordered that all traffic to the Fraser River go via Victoria.

While Governor Stevens generally avoided some of the more genocidal rhetoric that was popular among some settlers, historian David M. Buerge charges that Stevens' "timetable [was] reckless; [that] the whole enterprise was organized in profound ignorance of native society, culture, and history,” and that “[t]he twenty-thousand-odd aboriginal inhabitants who were assumed to be in rapid decline, were given a brutal choice: they would adapt to white society or they could disappear.”[10] A treaty was presented to Chief Leschi of the Nisqually (along with other tribes), and while it provided concessions such as fishing rights, the main crux of the so-called Treaty of Medicine Creek was that it required: "The said tribes and bands of Indians hereby cede, relinquish and convey to the United States, all their right, title, and interest in and to the lands and country occupied by them."

The initial trial ended in a hung jury after the judge told jurors that if they believed the killing of the militiaman was an act of war, they could not find Leschi guilty of murder.

In addition, raids by Haida, Tlingit and other northern tribes from British and Russian territory terrorized Native Americans and settlers alike in Puget Sound in the 1850s (note the events associated with Port Gamble in 1856–1857).

Miners bound for the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in British Columbia in 1858 using the Okanagan Trail traveled under arms, and many instances of violence occurred along the route.Throughout the existence of Washington Territory, Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens proved the defining character of the political landscape.

This opposition would not grow any smaller when Stevens famously declared martial law: Whereas in the prosecution of the Indian war circumstances have existed affording such grave cause of suspicion, such that certain evil disposed persons of Pierce county have given aid and comfort to the enemy.

At this point, Chief Territorial Justice Francis Chenoweth, who was in the midst of recovering from an illness, left his home in Whidbey Island and travelled by canoe to Pierce County.

While some pushed for his removal, President Pierce refused to take action against him (though he denounced the declaration of martial law), and many white settlers in Washington thought that the Anti-Stevens agitators were too sympathetic to the Natives.

[13] Despite this, the party's actual members, ideology, goals, achievements, and even the date of its foundation is somewhat difficult to place due to conflicting primary sources and a lack of secondary analysis.

Notably, this party platform also displayed intense nationalist, anti-foreigner, and anti-Asian sentiments, calling for the end of the importation of “hordes of heathen slaves” from the “Mongolian Empire” into America by business owners, the restriction of their right to own property, and the deportation of existing Chinese peoples.

They also protected communications routes between the western and eastern United States in Oregon and Idaho from the Indians and against the threat of foreign intervention on the Pacific coast by Britain and France that never materialized.

He also said the Royal Navy and Marines were powerful and could easily do the job, ending with a statement that "with Puget Sound, and the line of the Columbia River in our hands, we should hold the only navigable outlets of the country—command its trade, and soon compel it to submit to Her Majesty’s Rule."

Asian people were seen as universally backwards and inferior, slave-like creatures who were being flooded into the country by wealthy business owners to put real Americans out of their jobs, despite the fact that many had arrived in the region at the same time or earlier than many of the White settlers.

During this period, roughly from the mid-1880s to the late 19th century, anti-Asian hate crimes would dramatically increase, ultimately leading to the mass deportation of established Asian American communities.

In 1885 labor tensions led to a calculated Anti-Chinese riot in Tacoma wherein vigilante groups hundreds strong forcefully broke into the homes of any Asians who had not fled the city and brutally assaulted them.

This militia was led by future state governor and at that time current Seattle Sheriff John McGraw, who was sympathetic to the Knights of Labor but opposed the violent deportation of the Chinese, leading to his relatively centrist position on the affair.

A few days later president Grover Cleveland ordered Governor Squire to lift Martial Law, as most of the riots had ended, though illegal efforts to deport the Chinese continued (with some success).

Proposals to regulate the railroads and an “Anti-Pinkerton” bill banning the employment of private union busters both were vetoed by temporary acting Governor Laughton, leading to increased support for Populist ideas.

Upon his return to the capital Governor Elisha P Ferry essentially ignored the entire issue, leaving Laughton to be the scapegoat.In 1890, while nationally Democrats won in a landslide, in Washington their gains were only meager, and they remained the minority.

The heavy rainfall to the west of the Cascade Range produced dense forests and the ports along Puget Sound prospered from the manufacturing and shipping of lumber products, particularly the Douglas fir.

During the 1895 session, Rogers successfully passed the "Barefoot School-boy" act despite heavy resistance from urban liberals, and unsuccessfully opposed the creation of a state capitol as he believed it was a waste of money.

[35] With these victories McBride was generally very popular, but his own Republican Party which was heavily supported by, and as many claimed controlled by the railroad companies, began to conspire in order to prevent his re-election.

These collective efforts led to a major victory in the landmark 1974 Boldt Decision by the US Supreme Court, which reaffirmed the Native's right to fish in the areas designated by the treaties.