Mossback's Northwest

In 1919, during an Armistice Day parade, a gun battle between Wobblies (IWW) and the American Legion left five men dead, and scars in the Northwest psyche. It was a violent clash between two ideologies -- the anti Bolshevik American Legion and the radical socialists known as the Industrial Workers of the World.

The Olympia oyster is the Pacific Coast's only indigenous oyster. Tiny compared to other oysters, the Olympia was for decades raked out of Washington's beds by the ton, to feeding hungry gold diggers in California and Northwestern lumbermen. Invasive Japanese oysters took over its habitat, but the might Olympia might be making a comeback, thanks to interested shellfish farmers.