Scenes from Old Ballard: Three women on train tracks
Thu, 12/06/2012
This image, which is from Ballard Historical Sociey's Peterson Collection. It appeared in their 2009 calendar, which is where the below caption is from.
The hectic late 19th century railroad construction period which ended with Seattle as the terminus of the Great Northern Railroad in 1893 opened the door to a record number of migrants flooding into Washington State. The sign for the former Ballard train station can still be seen at 58th Avenue on the tracks. These young women are dressed in bloomers, a shift away from long skirts or dresses for more daring and progressive women in the 1910-1920s. Bloomers were associated with the suffrage movement and the campaign for women’s voting rights. The state of Washington had a strong and active suffrage movement since its early pioneer days and in 1910 was the fifth state in the nation to give women the right to vote, a full decade before women were given the right to vote nationally through the 14th amendment to the federal constitution in 1920.
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