About Washington

Washington stands at the meeting point of ancient wilderness and 21st-century economic power. The western half of the state is defined by rain, old growth, volcanoes, and Puget Sound, a vast inland sea that made Seattle one of the great port cities of the Pacific. The eastern half is a different world: sun-drenched, agricultural, conservative, and producing more apples than anywhere else on earth.

The state's Indigenous nations, dozens of distinct peoples who built complex civilizations around the Pacific salmon, have shaped Washington's identity from its earliest days to the present. The 1974 Boldt Decision affirmed tribal fishing rights in a ruling that transformed Pacific Northwest fisheries management and remains one of the most significant federal court rulings in U.S. environmental law.

Modern Washington is the wealthiest state per capita in the nation, driven by the tech empires of Amazon and Microsoft, a world-class aerospace industry built by Boeing, and a knowledge economy that has attracted talent from every corner of the globe. It has no state income tax, votes reliably Democratic in federal elections, and has long been a laboratory for progressive policy, from universal vote-by-mail to early legalization of recreational marijuana and same-sex marriage.