Talk:Western Washington

definition?
The article starts with "Western Washington is a region of the United States defined as the area of Washington state west of the Cascade Mountains." Can someone provide a citation for this claim? Who gets to define such a thing? Who "defines" Western Washington? Doctormatt (talk) 02:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The term is widely understood to be the state west of the Cascades crest. Here's a 1917 text that plainly states The State of Washington comprises two distinct regions: Western Washington...and Eastern Washington...the Cascade range of mountains...divides the two. I found a 1920s geography textbook that confirms this, maybe a newer text would make a good citation. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:40, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Cool. Thanks for looking into this.  It does not seem to me that Western Washington needs its own article; the region is covered well in Washington.  Cheers! DoctorMatt (talk) 05:29, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Another early 20th century textbook, Essentials of Geography – probably the one I was thinking of before – clearly delineates Eastern and Western Washington. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:06, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Major cities
What qualifies a city to be listed in the "cities of note" section, beginning with the words "major cities..."? I see Shelton and Port Townsend, both with pop a tad over 10,000, but not Redmond, over 70,000 nor Kirkland, over 90,000, nor Kent, over 100,000; this seems not right. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:33, 17 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree; this is not well done. I'm unsure about the entire article; as I commented above, I don't know who decides what "Western Washington" is, so it is not clear to me that Western Washington warrants an article.
 * For the "cities of note" section, we could just make it cities with greater than X population, for some X to be stated in the article. As it is, the list is clearly too arbitrary and opinion-based. Cheers! DoctorMatt (talk) 21:10, 17 June 2024 (UTC)


 * There should be a minimum of one entry per county (usually the county seat) in addition to meeting a population threshold. It's hard to argue that a city like Lake Stevens (35K) is more regionally significant than a county seat like Aberdeen (17K) just because it has more people.  Sounder Bruce  05:52, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * If we use 75,000 as a cutoff, then using US Census July 1, 2023 data, we have the following cities plus other county seats by Bruce's formulation:
 * Auburn
 * Bellevue
 * Bellingham
 * Everett
 * Federal Way
 * Kent
 * Kirkland
 * Redmond
 * Renton
 * Seattle
 * Tacoma
 * Vancouver
 * Lowering the cutoff to 60,000 adds:
 * Lakewood
 * Marysville
 * Sammamish
 * Shoreline
 * Lowering the cutoff to 50,000 adds:
 * Bothell
 * Burien
 * Lacey
 * Olympia (Thurston County seat and state capital)
 * County seats not on any list above include:
 * Port Angeles (Clallam County)
 * Kelso (Cowlitz County)
 * Montesano (Grays Harbor County)
 * Coupeville (Island County)
 * Port Townsend (Jefferson County)
 * Port Orchard (Kitsap County)
 * Chehalis (Lewis County)
 * Shelton (Mason County)
 * South Bend (Pacific County)
 * Friday Harbor (San Juan County)
 * Mount Vernon (Skagit County)
 * Stevenson (Skamania County)
 * Cathlamet (Wahkiakum County)
 * Maybe one of these lists could be the basis? The 75,000 threshold plus Olympia actually looks pretty good to me. Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater agglomeration has pop 141,298 which is qualifying in addition to being the state capital. Adding the other 13 county seats makes the list a little large and they are generally obscure places IMO – despite having visited all of them at least once, with the possible exception of Cathlamet – but I'm persuadable. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:38, 18 June 2024 (UTC)