Aerial.America.S02E06.Washington
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00:00It's home to some of America's wildest spaces.
00:05More glaciers than any other state in the lower 48.
00:10High, icy reaches attempted by only the heartiest souls.
00:15Pristine, high-altitude lakes and lush forests that march right down to the sea.
00:23Washington State is also home to one of the greatest cities in the West
00:29and the thriving cultures of some of America's oldest tribes.
00:35It was here where one man's passion for flight led to the largest aerospace company in the world.
00:42Where the biggest name in software got its humble start.
00:47And where the remnant of a forced evacuation during World War II still stands.
00:53Ariel Washington tells the story of the deadliest volcanic eruption in American history
01:00and journeys into the crater's still-fiery core to discover why life is returning.
01:09From its earliest beginnings right up to today, even in the hardest of times, Washington rebounds.
01:18It's why this is the Evergreen State.
01:39Music.
01:59The story of Washington State begins with a remarkable feature of our planet.
02:05Archaeologists call it the Ring of Fire.
02:09A highly active zone of volcanoes and earthquakes that stretches around the Pacific Ocean.
02:16In a deep ocean fault off the coast of Washington, two tectonic plates are in the midst of a slow-motion mashup.
02:26As these plates collide, they're uplifting mountains and volcanoes throughout the Pacific Northwest.
02:33Over millions of years, these primal forces have created a stunning range of peaks called the Cascades.
02:42They stretch from British Columbia in Canada in the north, through Washington and Oregon, all the way to California.
02:50More than 20 of these peaks are volcanic, and five of those lie in Washington State alone.
02:58But the biggest and most hazardous of them all is Mount Rainier.
03:03Rising 14,410 feet above sea level, it's the tallest in the chain, the king of the Cascades.
03:12There's as much snow and ice on its surface as all the other Cascade Mountains combined.
03:19And that's why Rainier poses such a threat.
03:22Scientists believe it could be the most dangerous volcano in the U.S. today.
03:28If it erupts, a wall of volcanic mud could flow dozens of miles beyond Rainier, reaching Seattle's suburbs.
03:37For many thousands of years, the mountain has been stirring to life.
03:42Huge landslides have crashed down its flanks on average every 500 years.
03:47In one fog-shrouded valley below, archaeologists found buried intact trees submerged in 20 feet of mud.
03:57This valley was once the tribal territory of many Native American tribes, including the Nisqually.
04:05They called the peak looming above them Tacoma, meaning the big mountain where the waters begin.
04:13For centuries, the Nisqually have known about the power and danger of the volcano.
04:18For them, its summit, higher than the clouds, has been a place where powerful spirits dwell.
04:26In 1870, two white men asked a member of the tribe to guide them to the top.
04:32But he refused to go any higher than the treeline,
04:35convinced that the permanent ice, sudden storms, and belching fire of its highest reaches were no place for humans.
04:44But today, adventure seekers flock to Rainier.
04:48More than 9,000 climbers attempt the summit each year,
04:52taking their measure against the thin air, bitter cold, and treacherous gaps in the ice.
04:59Conditions are so challenging, the first Americans to summit Mount Everest practiced here on Rainier.
05:07At 2.7 miles above sea level, just breathing is painful.
05:13Climbers keep to a slow, steady pace, making the ascent in small groups, tied together by ropes.
05:21If any of these climbers falls into a crevasse, the rope line might be their only chance for survival.
05:28Shadowing them is a grim statistic.
05:32Two to three climbers die each year on Rainier.
05:36In 1981, 11 climbers perished all at once in a single avalanche.
05:44In 1888, the naturalist John Muir scaled these slopes and discovered a sheltered area at 10,000 feet.
05:53It's now known as Camp Muir, the primary base camp today for those attempting the summit.
06:00From here, just climb another 4,330 feet and you've reached the top.
06:08That's less than 20 blocks in Manhattan, but this last leg typically takes climbers between 6 and 10 hours, depending on conditions.
06:18Despite all the difficulty Rainier presents, roughly half of those who try actually make it to the summit.
06:26And for those who do, it's an experience they'll never forget.
06:32When John Muir looked back upon the mountains he had climbed, he singled out Rainier as the grandest excursion of all for those seeking adventures and opportunities.
06:45That adventuresome spirit has been a key part of Washington State from its beginnings.
06:51At the start of the 1800s, when President Jefferson sent explorers to map the region, they weren't trying to climb its highest peaks.
07:00Their challenge was to reach the Pacific.
07:04In 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition finally reached Washington.
07:10After a year of trekking across North America, they journeyed here, down the Columbia River.
07:17But their goal of reaching the coast was slowed by Washington's unending forests.
07:23Finally, on November 6th, 1805, the horizon parted enough for them to realize the Pacific was just ahead.
07:33William Clark wrote in his diary, Ocean in view, oh the joy.
07:40The Columbia River, Washington's southern border with Oregon, brought Lewis and Clark to their journey's end at the Pacific.
07:50Both men were born in Virginia. The eastern shore was the only one they had ever known.
07:56So, arriving on this wild coast must have been beyond anything they'd imagined.
08:04As the author Annie Dillard has written, it was the rough edge of the world, where the trees came smack down to the stones, as if the corner of the continent had got torn off right here.
08:17And the dark trees kept on growing like nothing happened.
08:31A sense of what most of western Washington looked like in the early 1800s can still be found in tracts of protected old growth forests, like these, along the Elwha River.
08:43Here, one can find Douglas fir and hemlock trees, hundreds of years old, rising 300 feet in the air.
08:52In the 1800s, as the era of exploration turned to settlement, Washington's breathtaking trees came to be seen as useful lumber.
09:03And soon, entire tracts of forest were cut.
09:08Still, more than 21 million acres, half the state's total land area, is covered in trees.
09:16But about half of that is open to logging.
09:20Timber harvesting remains an economic driver for Washington.
09:25It's the state's second largest manufacturing industry, but over the past 150 years, a lot has changed.
09:35This single piece of equipment, called a boom delimer, is cutting trees, stripping branches, and stacking logs, doing the work that an entire logging camp once did.
09:48A logging truck like this is typically carrying some 4,000 board feet of lumber.
09:56To imagine how much timber was harvested back in the late 1800s, with not much more than axes and saws and wagons to haul them, multiply this one truck by 40,000.
10:10In 1880, 160 million board feet of timber were cut, feeding the demands of West Coast boom towns like San Francisco.
10:21Today, when a load of logs arrives at a mill, they're meticulously sorted by species, size, and likely use.
10:31The lumber business is a highly mechanized trade, turning out a complicated array of wood products.
10:38Washington could not have become the sawdust empire without its great forest reserves, but the success of this industry owes a lot to just one man.
10:51He came to America as a penniless German immigrant, but Frederick Weyerhaeuser would build the largest timber operation in the state.
11:01More than 100 years later, logs are still piling up at Weyerhaeuser mills.
11:07By the late 1920s, the world's largest sawmill was operating here, in Longview.
11:13Today, most of the lumber is bound for Japan.
11:17The trees are a select type of Douglas fir with fewer knots, tighter grain, and straighter lengths.
11:24They're prized in Japan for making furniture.
11:27Wood pulp and chips are important timber products, key ingredients for making paper and particle board.
11:34These chips will be processed into miles of newsprint for major U.S. newspapers, including USA Today and the Washington Post.
11:43In the 19th century, most of the state's wood products headed north to this port and helped fuel the fortunes that built Washington's signature city, Seattle.
11:58By the 1870s, Seattle, Washington was a bustling mill town.
12:03Its deepwater port on Puget Sound made it ideal for shipping lumber south to San Francisco.
12:09But a port wasn't Seattle's only advantage.
12:13Since the city was built on hills, mill owners could skid their logs right down to the waterfront.
12:20That's how the term skid row was born.
12:23In the 1890s, there wasn't a single building taller than six floors.
12:29Today, its downtown skyline competes with any on the West Coast.
12:35More than ten rise above 500 feet.
12:39At 937 feet, the Columbia Center is the tallest building in the state and has helped identify Seattle as one of America's most modern cities.
12:53Over the past decade, Washington's overall growth has been steady.
12:58Seattle is now home to more than 600,000 people.
13:04But not all of them live on land.
13:08The shores of Lake Union are home to 500 houseboats.
13:13Some of them are so chic, they were featured in the film Sleepless in Seattle.
13:19The history of these houseboats goes back to the 1880s, when they weren't much more than floating shacks built to house timber workers.
13:28With its stunning waterfront, hills, and inland waterways, Seattle has evolved into an uncommonly beautiful city.
13:37But its latest prosperity resides less with lumber than with the success that arrived with the computer revolution.
13:45That economic miracle built a company called Microsoft and a personal fortune that was used to build this $53 million mansion for one of the world's richest men.
13:58Ironically, when Bill Gates built his dream house on the banks of Lake Washington, the exterior design was not overtly high-tech or modern.
14:09He chose the most traditional of Washington's resources, wood.
14:14More than half a million board feet.
14:17Support beams were salvaged from an old lumber mill.
14:21But inside, the seven-bedroom, ten-bath, six-kitchen mansion does have some electronic toys.
14:28Miles of fiber-optic cable, a reception room with a 22-foot wide video display, and a computer control system that can keep tabs on visitors wherever they are on the five-acre estate.
14:42But the road to Washington's success has never been straight or easy.
14:48Behind its sophisticated veneer, there's a history of hard work and struggle, cycles of success and collapse, and through it all, a persistent spirit of innovation.
15:00One of the city's earliest challenges was to devise ways to move heavy freight from inland Lake Washington to the ports on Puget Sound.
15:10The solution was the Chittenden Locks, part of an eight-mile-long ship canal that helped speed the movement of logs and milled lumber through the city and carried salmon fishing boats to canneries.
15:24The locks are a critical link in the canal.
15:28One of their tasks is keeping the salt water of the Sound from reaching the freshwater lake.
15:34Washington's ports were strengthened in January 1893 with the arrival of the Great Northern Railway and the Transcontinental Line.
15:45Roughly 45 years after tribal leader Chief Seattle had relinquished the region to just a few hundred American settlers, the city of Seattle was now the economic hub of the Pacific Northwest, with a population of more than 80,000.
16:05Flying over the heart of downtown Seattle, there are few reminders of the 1800s when it first came to economic prominence.
16:13But one remains, on the campus of the University of Washington.
16:19Today, 41,000 students attend classes here, and Go Huskies is the cheer.
16:25Among its graduates are martial artist and actor Bruce Lee and world-renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly.
16:33The university is also the number one supplier of graduates headed to high-tech companies in the Northwest.
16:40And in the center of campus, a keepsake of Seattle's economic past, the Drumheller Fountain.
16:47It's all that's left of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon Pacific Exposition, a World's Fair to celebrate Seattle's role as the gateway to the Alaska Gold Rush.
16:59Back in 1897, a strange fever was blowing from Alaska, inflaming the dreams of men with visions of gold.
17:08Seattle's docks were the embarkation point for nearly two-thirds of the more than 100,000 prospectors headed to the Klondike Goldfields in Alaska and the Yukon.
17:21Where cruise ships dock in Elliott Bay today, steamships and schooners departed for Alaska more than a hundred years ago.
17:29When these vessels and their men returned, they brought with them Klondike gold, worth millions of dollars, that passed through banks in Seattle.
17:38Klondike miners spent vast sums at Seattle businesses for supplies.
17:43The result was a huge expansion of the city, doubling its population again.
17:49Seattle may be Washington's largest city and its economic driver, but the state's political center actually resides 45 miles south.
18:02In 1889, when Washington became the 42nd state, the city of Olympia was made the official capital city.
18:12Given Washington's frontier sensibility, the extravagant design of its statehouse has been controversial.
18:20A 278-foot-high dome towers above a neoclassical facade.
18:26At its completion in 1924, it was the fourth-largest dome in the world.
18:32A five-ton Tiffany chandelier sparkles inside.
18:39By the early 20th century, Washington had arrived.
18:43A regional powerhouse built upon the pillars of logging and gold.
18:49But by the early 1900s, that foundation began to splinter, made worse through decades of labor strikes, World War I, and the Depression.
18:59Little noticed within all the gloom, Washington had a savior, literally emerging from the clouds.
19:08He took his first flight in 1915, sitting out on the wing of a small seaplane as it took off into the sky over Puget Sound.
19:17William Boeing had been running a successful timber company, but within a year of that first flight, he had launched an airplane building business.
19:26Soon, the Boeing Airplane Company was on a glide path to greatness.
19:33It expanded with the growing federal airmail business and retooled again to build the heavy bombers that helped win World War II.
19:43It made rockets for NASA and more passenger aircraft than any other firm.
19:5125 miles north of Seattle, near Everett, is Boeing's Mammoth 747 division plant, the largest building in the world when measured by volume.
20:03472 million cubic feet, the equivalent of 75 football fields.
20:10It's also where the company's latest model, the 787, or Dreamliner, is built.
20:17It's the most fuel-efficient plane the company has ever made, though its production has been plagued with years of delays.
20:24A 787's wingspan, more than 160 feet, is longer than the entire distance the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
20:34Everything at the Boeing plant is big.
20:38The six bay doors on the south side of the plant are decorated with the largest single digital image ever created, as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.
20:50During assembly, some of the unfinished planes remain covered in a green mylar coating that protects the skin of the aircraft from damage or corrosion.
21:01Building the planes is only part of the job.
21:04Every new aircraft model that Boeing produces is tested hundreds of times, on the ground and in the air.
21:14What William Boeing began in the 1910s had, by the 1960s, transported the state into the jet age.
21:23And nothing says it better than the Space Needle.
21:27This was the tallest building west of the Mississippi when it was completed for the 1962 World's Fair.
21:35For an America caught up in a space race with the Soviets, the Needle seemed to symbolize the spirit of the future.
21:43Even the elevators were a marvel, traveling at 14 feet per second, as fast as raindrops falling to Earth.
21:52From its observation deck, visitors get a stunning 360-degree view across Seattle, the Puget Sound, and on clear days, the snow-capped peaks of the Cascades.
22:04But what they can't see from here is the hidden side of Washington, where lush forests give way to a surprising landscape that was once home to one of the largest and most secretive military sites in America.
22:22In so many ways, eastern Washington is the mirror opposite of its western half.
22:28Unlike the very wet, mountainous, tree-covered west, this is dry, flat, open country, robbed of rain by the high Cascades.
22:39Washington's other half is so naturally parched, in 1906, the federal government embarked on a massive irrigation effort along the Yakima River.
22:50It was known as the Yakima Project.
22:54Over the succeeding decades, dams and irrigation canals were built to harness the power of the river.
23:01Soon, more than a half-million acres of sagebrush were transformed into an agricultural Eden.
23:09Welcome to Washington's breadbasket, one of America's most productive agricultural regions.
23:17Today, the state ranks first in the production of a whole host of crops—red raspberries, peas, hops, sweet cherries, pears, and Concord grapes.
23:30But no other state comes close to Washington's output of one signature American fruit—apples.
23:40Washington has been America's apple king since the early 1900s.
23:45And when you think apple, think Yakima Valley.
23:51Most of the state's apples come from orchards like this one.
23:55A single tree might yield nearly 2,500 apples in a season.
24:00That's 300 apple pies.
24:03Add up all the apples harvested from all the trees in Washington in a year, and you've got a big number.
24:09Nearly 5 billion was the estimate for a recent year.
24:13That's 60% of the nation's total apple crop.
24:17Besides irrigation, there is another critical component to Yakima's success.
24:23Where there are farms, there are farm workers.
24:28And for the past half century, migrant labor has been key to the Yakima story.
24:34Nearly half of the region's population is Hispanic, a legacy of the U.S. government's Bracero Program,
24:41which brought Mexican workers here during World War II when farm labor was scarce.
24:47Yet overall, population in this half of the state continues to be sparse.
24:53It's home to just one quarter of Washington's entire population.
24:59During World War II, the region's low population density caught the attention of the Pentagon.
25:06This vast stretch of land used to be the small farming town of Hanford.
25:12The main classroom of Hanford High School is all that remains.
25:17It's the remnant of a sudden, forced evacuation.
25:22In 1943, the sounds of students playing in the halls of this high school disappeared.
25:28So, too, did almost all traces of the town itself.
25:32That's because the U.S. government hastily relocated the area's 1,500 residents
25:38and assumed control of 500 acres of land along the Columbia River.
25:43For the next 40 years, this was a secret facility
25:48that produced enough plutonium to build 60,000 atomic weapons for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
25:55The Hanford site required an enormous supply of power.
25:59Until the reactors started generating their own electricity, hydroelectric power from the river was crucial.
26:06So was its water, which was used to cool the reactors' fuel rods.
26:11But yesterday's war effort has left deep and dangerous scars on this landscape.
26:17Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States today.
26:24Now, the work here is largely confined to cleaning up some 50 million gallons of underground radioactive waste left behind.
26:35Irrigation and the arms race may have transformed Washington's eastern desert,
26:42but much of the state still remains out of time, wild and untamed.
26:49From miles of dry land that line the banks of the Columbia River in the east
26:54to the stunning high-altitude ponds and craggy peaks of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area in the center of the state.
27:02Here, more wildlife than people run the trails.
27:07It's estimated that more than 25,000 black bears still reside in Washington.
27:13They are busy in the fall, foraging up to 20 hours each day, increasing their body weight for the long winter ahead.
27:22Today, nearly 40% of the state remains undeveloped.
27:27But the wildest and most remote place in all of Washington lies in the northwest corner of the state.
27:34This is the Olympic Peninsula.
27:37Its string of peaks and forests covers more than 3,000 square miles.
27:43It's so remote, it was one of the last places in the continental U.S. to be explored by white pioneers.
27:50In 1788, a British mariner passed by these jagged, snow-covered mountains.
27:56They seemed a perfect dwelling place for Greek gods, so he named them the Olympic Mountains.
28:02Mount Olympus, the highest peak in the range, is covered with glaciers.
28:08The most spectacular is the Blue Glacier.
28:12Starting at nearly 8,000 feet, this river of ice twists and turns down to an elevation of just over 4,000 feet,
28:21making it the lowest-altitude glacier in the U.S.
28:25With terrain like this, explorers didn't penetrate this rugged land until as late as 1885.
28:32It took them six months to cross the peninsula and survey and map the area.
28:38Their leader, Lieutenant Joseph O'Neill, later called it,
28:41useless for all practicable purposes.
28:45But in 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the value of this territory
28:51and designated it the Mount Olympus National Monument.
28:55Thirty years later, FDR created the Olympic National Park.
29:00Now, more than a million and a half acres of land here are protected.
29:05Ninety-five percent of it remains wild.
29:11It's home to the last of the giants.
29:14These are some of the tallest coniferous trees in the world.
29:18Douglas fir, spruce, cedar, and hemlock.
29:23Enormous evergreen trees over 30 stories high.
29:27Their downward-drooping limbs are well-adapted for living in a temperate rainforest,
29:32perfectly designed for shedding water and snow.
29:36Scientists believe that this environment may hold as much biomass per unit area as any tropical forest.
29:45There's something about this part of Washington that conjures up a sense of mystery.
29:51Perhaps that accounts for the dozens of supposed sightings of the strange and unexplained Bigfoot,
29:58or Sasquatch, stalking these damp and dusky forests.
30:03The term Sasquatch may derive from a Pacific Northwest Indian word,
30:08sesquac, meaning wild man.
30:11But despite miles of dark and seemingly endless forests,
30:15a Native American tribe called the Quileute has lived here for millennia,
30:20fishing along the coast and hunting in the river valleys that rise up to the Olympic Mountains.
30:26The Quileute believe their ancestors were wolves, an animal that once roamed freely in these forests.
30:34This region's isolation has helped its Native American tribes preserve their traditions and beliefs,
30:41which have also inspired new ones.
30:44Recently, in the nearby town of Forks, wolves and vampires have been haunting its streets.
30:51Now that Forks has become famous as the setting of the Twilight vampire movies,
30:56the town's 3,000 residents must contend with some 90,000 visitors a year.
31:02Real wolves haven't howled on the Olympic Peninsula for more than a century,
31:07but the area all around Forks is still rough country wilderness.
31:13At the furthest point north along the Pacific coast is the rocky tip of the peninsula.
31:19It's a harsh environment where one faces the cold northern Pacific square on.
31:26In 1778, British explorer Captain James Cook came upon these dangerous waters on his way to Puget Sound,
31:34making note in his diary, overhanging cliffs, ragged reefs, jutting rocks.
31:43But Cook managed to find a way through the straits,
31:47finding what he called a small opening which flattered us with the hopes of finding a harbor.
31:55Today, that passage is known as Cape Flattery.
32:00A half mile off the cape, on Tatoosh Island, a 65-foot lighthouse still stands.
32:07It first displayed its light on December 28, 1857,
32:12guiding ships as they made the treacherous passage into Puget Sound.
32:18No keepers remain on the island, nor is it open to the public.
32:23Since 1977, an automated set of optics operates the lighthouse.
32:38The peninsula is also home to the Makah,
32:41a Native American tribe renowned for their canoe making and for their skill in hunting whales.
32:48An intrepid crew of six paddlers and one harpooner,
32:52armed with wooden, iron-tipped spears, could wound and eventually exhaust a whale.
32:58At the 87th Makah Day celebration, the annual canoe competition is underway.
33:04Teams of men and women must cover grueling ocean courses, ranging from three to seven miles.
33:12It's easy to see why the Makah call themselves the people who live near the rocks and the seabirds.
33:19For these ancient mariners, the Pacific was their prime hunting ground,
33:24and fishing continues to figure prominently for the tribe.
33:28In addition to pursuing whales, Makah hunted seals for food, oil, and skins.
33:36The Makah and American flags fly alongside one another.
33:40This nation within a nation has sent soldiers to every major conflict America has fought since World War I,
33:47and every single one came home alive.
33:51With their young people now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,
33:55the Makah hope this unbroken streak will hold true.
34:02The Makah Reservation covers the northwestern tip of the continental United States.
34:07It's also the head of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
34:11This waterway is the only route for giant freighters heading to Seattle.
34:16At the center of the strait lies America's international border with Canada.
34:21Follow this border east, and then, as it heads north, hugging Vancouver Island,
34:27you arrive at a small archipelago still in U.S. territory.
34:33It's as if a tiny part of the continental U.S. had tried to escape to Alaska.
34:40These islands are known as the San Juans.
34:4420,000 years ago, this entire area was covered a mile deep in glacial ice.
34:50In some places, the ice sheet is estimated to have been more than 3,400 feet high.
34:56As the glaciers advanced and retreated over many ice ages,
35:00they carved out this entire archipelago.
35:04How many islands are there in the San Juans?
35:07No one seems to agree.
35:09At least 200, but the number can reach as high as 800
35:14if one includes every rock and reef poking above the waterline.
35:21The question might seem academic,
35:24but it actually brought the U.S. and Britain to within a hair's breadth of war in 1859.
35:30It was known as the Pig War.
35:33When an American farmer shot a pig on an island that both nations claimed,
35:38it turned into an international incident.
35:42Both U.S. troops and the British Navy arrived on the scene,
35:45and a standoff ensued for 12 years.
35:49An international commission, headed by German Kaiser Wilhelm I,
35:54ultimately awarded jurisdiction over all the islands to the United States.
36:00British forces left the San Juan Islands in November of 1872.
36:05Nearly a hundred years after the American Revolution,
36:08Great Britain was still making a grab for land in the U.S.
36:12But the Pig War marked the last time the two nations would spar over American soil.
36:22One of the first explorers of the archipelago was Captain George Vancouver,
36:27a legendary British sea dog.
36:30As he navigated this nautical maze in 1792,
36:34he mistook this narrow passage for a shallow bay.
36:39He continued on, unaware that the channel was actually a gateway to Puget Sound,
36:44and what's now Seattle.
36:47Realizing his mistake, he gave it the name Deception Pass.
36:53Today, the Deception Pass Bridge crosses this waterway.
36:58The steel cantilever bridge was financed by President Roosevelt's New Deal
37:03and built for $482,000.
37:0828 feet wide, with two lanes of traffic and two sidewalks,
37:12700 cars crossed the bridge on its inauguration in 1935.
37:17Now, over 20,000 cross daily.
37:21The bridge lies in the Deception Pass State Park.
37:24It's the most visited state park in Washington today.
37:28But once, this area was home to a vast network of smugglers trafficking in people and goods.
37:35This small island is named for the notorious bandit Ben-Urr.
37:40Legend has it that smugglers would tie their boats at the island's dock
37:44and spend long nights at Urr's rowdy saloon.
37:48Today, Ben-Urr Island remains a monument to the seedy side of Washington's past.
37:54On the south side of Deception Pass lies Whidbey Island,
37:59home to Puget Sound's largest artist colony.
38:03Whidbey is dotted with organic farms, B&Bs and inns,
38:07catering to tourists and the studios of working artists.
38:13From the southern end of Whidbey, Mount Rainier rises in the distance.
38:18This island, like many in Puget Sound, serves as a bedroom community for Seattle, just 20 miles away.
38:26Travelling from here to Seattle would be difficult if not for the Washington State Ferries.
38:33These distinctive green and white boats make up the largest fleet of auto passenger ferries in the U.S.
38:40The inland waterway between British Columbia and the Port of Seattle
38:45covers nearly 2,500 square miles of land and water.
38:49So it takes a fleet of 23 ferries, and in the course of a year,
38:54can carry over 23 million passengers to 20 different ports of call.
39:01For anyone arriving in the city at nightfall, Seattle's skyline is a jewel box of lights.
39:08Its greatest icon, the Space Needle, was once a symbol of the city's prosperity.
39:14But within just a few years of its completion, Seattle's prospects were looking dim.
39:21It was the 1970s. The aerospace industry began to shed jobs.
39:26The city's population plummeted, and Seattle's economy started to crash.
39:32And then came another extraordinary blow.
39:36Mother Nature delivered a punch that riveted the entire world.
39:44Throughout its history as a state, Washington has persevered,
39:48remaining evergreen despite periods of hard times.
39:52But on the morning of May 18, 1980, the challenge that nature delivered was a singular shock.
40:00The eruption of Mount St. Helens.
40:04This is all that's left of what once was a majestic mountaintop.
40:09The decapitated summit still smolders,
40:12an active reminder of one of the greatest natural disasters in American history.
40:19Below, thousands of uprooted trees still float on nearby Spirit Lake,
40:24stunning evidence of how powerful these kinds of geological events can be.
40:30On the morning of the eruption, a young volcanologist named David Johnston
40:35was monitoring the volcano for the U.S. Geological Survey.
40:40Johnston was on a ridge six miles away, a perfect vantage point.
40:45He understood the risks, but it was his chance to study a volcano
40:50that hadn't been active for 123 years.
40:54At 8.32 a.m., as Johnston looked on,
40:58the volcano was suddenly jolted by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake.
41:04The initial eruption caused a massive collapse of the mountain's northern slope.
41:09Johnston was the first to report the eruption,
41:12sending USGS headquarters in Vancouver the message,
41:16Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it.
41:20Within minutes, a superheated cloud of gas and debris
41:24blasted down the mountain at supersonic speed,
41:27devastating nearly 250 square miles of forest.
41:31Johnston's remains have never been found.
41:36Today, this observatory, named for Johnston,
41:40sits on the very ridge where he last stood
41:43before being hit by a lateral blast from the volcano.
41:47Mount St. Helens delivered the deadliest
41:50and most economically destructive volcanic event in U.S. history.
41:55250 homes, 47 bridges, 185 miles of highway, 57 lives,
42:04all destroyed in just hours.
42:08Today, the volcano is relatively quiet.
42:11Hikers can even peek right into the crater.
42:15The surrounding slopes provide an unusual natural laboratory
42:19to assess if and when the landscape might recover.
42:25Some places have yet to heal.
42:28The superheated blast of gases, mud, and debris that came off the volcano
42:33that scorched the ground to such a degree,
42:35it created a sterile moonscape, allowing little to grow.
42:40Yet, in other ways, the rebirth has been remarkable.
42:45Wild mountain goats have returned
42:47and are picking their way across St. Helens' blackened slopes.
42:52Herds of elk are flourishing again, too,
42:55as nutritious plants are surprisingly plentiful.
42:59In areas that were once barren, trees have returned in great abundance.
43:05The ash that spread across the region has worked well as mulch for regrowing forests.
43:11After the eruption, the Weyerhaeuser company salvaged miles of flattened forest,
43:16enough wood to build 85,000 homes.
43:21But they immediately began replanting.
43:2418 million trees all started in the ground by hand.
43:29It's hard to find a bigger example than Mount St. Helens
43:32to express the evergreen capacity of Washington State,
43:36its ability to recover from natural and economic disasters alike,
43:41enduring the booms and the busts to rise again.
43:45But in the history of Washington,
43:47nothing has ever risen as high and as fast as the once tiny software company, Microsoft.
43:54Just two months after Mount St. Helens erupted,
43:57Seattle-born Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen
44:01received a surprise phone call from the biggest computer maker at the time, IBM.
44:06Soon, Microsoft's operating system was running most of the world's personal computers.
44:13Six years later, the company moved to this campus in Redmond,
44:17along with 10,000 employee millionaires and four billionaires.
44:23Today, it's one of the largest corporate headquarters in the world.
44:28And it's built to keep their programmers happy.
44:31A soccer field, a baseball diamond, 28,000 works of art, and 25 high-end cafeterias.
44:41And Microsoft isn't the only company in Washington's digital neighborhood.
44:47Nintendo of America is also based in Redmond.
44:51In North Bend, they use this massive distribution center,
44:54larger than eight football fields, to process some 20,000 orders a day.
45:01It's hard to calculate the ripple effects of the computer gold rush on Washington State,
45:06but one statistic is telling.
45:08Microsoft started its high-tech business with 30 employees.
45:13Today, the company employs 40,000 people,
45:17more than the number of workers in the state's signature businesses, forestry and lumber.
45:24Given the success of so many of Washington's upstarts and visionaries,
45:28one might be tempted to think of the state as all business.
45:32Not so.
45:36The Pacific Northwest is a haven for fun.
45:41With rivers and lakes and the ocean so close, water sports are everywhere,
45:46and in some cases, extreme.
45:50On windy Lake Washington, the high-flying and sometimes dangerous sport of kite surfing
45:56took off in the late 90s.
45:59Outdoor recreation has a devoted following in the state,
46:03a pursuit whose roots go back to the early 1900s.
46:08Haystack Rock, at the summit of Mount Si, is one of Washington's most popular climbs.
46:15In the 1930s, mountaineer Lloyd Anderson had trouble finding a local vendor for a reliable ice axe,
46:22so he imported one from Switzerland,
46:25which led him and his friends to start the famous outfitting co-op REI.
46:31Another outdoor enthusiast, Washington-born Eddie Bauer,
46:36made a goose-down jacket for his winter hunting trips.
46:39He patented the design in 1940.
46:43From Bauer's small sporting goods company in Seattle,
46:46revenues have grown to nearly $2 billion, with over 500 stores across the country.
46:53A passion for the outdoors and a belief in caring for the planet
46:57are two sentiments that are very much in evidence in this state.
47:03An entirely different form of fun, also quintessentially Washington,
47:08can be found in the region's famous café culture,
47:11popularized by the coffeehouse colossus, Starbucks.
47:17In 1997, the company took over a Sears distribution center,
47:21which was once Seattle's largest building.
47:24Gazing out from atop its tower is the company's trademark mermaid.
47:31Inside, they have an atrium where they grow coffee trees.
47:36As legend has it, Starbucks was named for a character in Moby Dick,
47:41and like the great white whale itself, no other coffee business compares.
47:47Over 15,000 stores in 50 countries.
47:52And to think it all took off from a single shop in Seattle, selling coffee beans.
47:58It's just that fascinating combination of free thinking and thinking big
48:03that has come to define Washington State.
48:09One of its latest incarnations is the Experience Music Project.
48:14Just steps from the foot of that older icon, the Space Needle,
48:18the EMP as it's known, is first and foremost a museum honoring rock and roll.
48:2421,000 aluminum shingles cover the exterior,
48:28painted to reflect the finish on electric guitars.
48:32From above, the Frank Gehry design seems more like a burst of abstract rock and roll energy than a building.
48:40And that's in keeping with the aim of one of its founders, Microsoft's Paul Allen.
48:46Rather than simply house rock memorabilia, the EMP is about appreciating music
48:52and inspiring musicians of the future.
48:55There's also a focus on local music that includes artifacts
48:59from the lives of Washington natives like Jimi Hendrix
49:03and grunge icon Kurt Cobain and his band Nirvana.
49:07It somehow seems fitting that a museum here puts its most artistic face on the outside.
49:15The idea reaches its most amazing expression in an unusual environmental project in downtown Seattle.
49:23Just a year after it was opened, the Olympic Sculpture Park was awarded the 2008 World Architecture Award.
49:31It was honored for transforming a drab highway interchange along the waterfront.
49:36Today, it's a Z-shaped park that leads visitors on a 2,200-foot path
49:42through the four main ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest.
49:47An evergreen forest.
49:49A meadow filled with grasses.
49:52An aspen grove.
49:54And a saltwater shore.
49:56All in one nine-acre site, visitors can explore a sampling of the microclimates
50:01that give Washington its extraordinary diversity.
50:06A place of inspired urban renewal for a state that's continually being reborn.
50:14Top it all off with Alexander Calder's 39-foot sculpture, The Eagle,
50:19and you have something to symbolize that spark of innovation
50:23that's always been such a part of the Washington story.
50:36♪♪♪