"The Washington Almanac"

Original title: "Are You a Fact Person?"

Copyright © 2005 by Jim Mahood. All rights reserved.

In the 6th grade I developed the irritating habit of spouting facts drawn from almanacs, atlases, dictionaries, directories, encyclopedias, glossaries, handbooks, indexes, manuals, registers, thesauri, and other reference materials. When fact persons become journalists, or even book reviewers, regrets are few.

One of the most attractive features of fact books is the option they provide of reading them anyway you please. Instead of starting at the beginning and plodding relentlessly on to pages 2, 3, and 4, you can dive directly into page 2601 of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, now in its 86th edition, with as much gusto and as little comprehension as you’d have by starting on page 1.

Reference books have come a long way since my addiction to them 55 years ago. Nowadays you need not rely on the Periodic Table of the Elements, geologic time charts, and National Geographic maps of Mongolia for a fact fix. Nowadays you can find much more colorful troves.

A lively one is The Washington Almanac: Facts about Washington by Andrea Jarvela. Published by WestWinds Press out of Portland, Oregon, the 240-page paperback discusses the state’s “regional history, nature, geography, economy, and peoples.” If the facts hyped on the book’s back cover don’t lure you into the text, you’re just not a bona fide fact person. Facts like the following:

Beacon Rock “is the biggest single rock in the world next to Gibraltar . . . Lake Washington Floating Bridge is the longest and heaviest floating structure in the world. . . . The full-scale replica of Stonehenge, not to mention the Teapot Gas Station in Zillah, [and] the statue of Lenin in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. . . .”

Although rodeos can be found throughout the state, “the majority are held in eastern Washington,” the almanac says. “The two best known are the Ellensburg Rodeo, held each Labor Day weekend, and the Omak Stampede, with its famous and controversial . . . suicide race. The race consists of 20 riders going hell-bent for leather down a steep embankment, fording the river, climbing back up the other side, and racing to the rodeo grounds.”

Facts about Olympia center on the city’s role as capital of the state and include its Korean War Veterans’ Memorial “built in 1993 on the East Campus across the footbridge from the State Capitol Visitor Center” and its Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial “built in 1987 on the hillside east of the Insurance Building.”

Under “Military,” the almanac provides this underappreciated fact: “In addition to active military, there are more than 600,000 veterans of the armed services in the state, the largest segment being Vietnam veterans.” The War on Terrorism has doubtless pushed the number much higher.

Crammed with text boxes, photos, tables, maps, drawings, and historical tidbits—all arranged in alphabetical order—this little gem is perfect to take along on a trip. You’ll find sections on where to find “Erratics,” which are colossal boulders left over from the Ice Age, and a warning about “Red Tide”: The water need not be red to kill you.

For colorful facts to spew about America's most Northwestern state, The Washington Almanac: Facts about Washington is my number one pick.