Journals of the Senate of the Legislative Assembly of the State of Washington: title varies, 1854–, Olympia, var. state printers, 1854–. (The
pre-statehood history of present-day Washington was mostly bound up with a larger area called the Oregon territory. At the end of the eighteenth century the
phrase “Oregon Territory ” signified a vast but amorphous area stretching from somewhere above the Spanish settlements in California to somewhere
below the Russian settlements in Alaska, and including everything between the Rockies and the Pacific. Spain, Russia, Great Britain, and the United
States all made equally nebulous claims on the area. By 1818 the lack of forces on the ground having rendered the Spanish claims untenable, the United
States and Great Britain attempted to exclude all other parties by signing a Convention of Joint Occupation. The reality of the latter was confirmed in
1821, when Russia agreed to limit its settlements to areas within present-day Alaska. The joint U.S./U.K. occupation kept the peace for a decade or two
while the area was virtually unpopulated. A legislature of sorts functioned in the more American part of the territory during 1844-49. The laws
adopted by that body can be found in the compiled laws of Oregon, 1853. By the mid-1840s there were sufficient American settlers in the southern portions of
the condominium that determining who was in charge came near to being a causus belli. Fortunately, in 1846 President Polk negotiated a treaty that
conceded everything north of the forty-nine parallel, and all of Vancouver Island, to Great Britain. In 1848 Congress organized everything south of the
forty-nine parallel as the Territory of Oregon. The Territory of Oregon Legislative Assembly first met in July of 1849. By 1854 the area comprising
the present-day State of Washington had been severed off and organized into Washington Territory. The first session of the Washington Territory
Legislative Assembly met in December, 1854. Statehood came on 22 February 1889, with the first session of the Washington State Legislative Assembly meeting in
December 1889.) (Documents from the Early State Records collection were digitized from a microfilm copy of title originally held by the Washington
Secretary of State, the Washington State Law Library, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library).
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