10 Best Sights in Washington Cascade Mountains and Valleys, Washington

Set along the Thea Foss waterfront, this history museum in a turn-of-the-20th-century structure—with a dramatic modern glass facade—is easily reached from downtown via a walk along the promenade that flanks the harbor. Inside the enormous timber building, the museum examines the city's waterfront heritage, including the history of Tacoma's brisk shipping business, the city's role as a major ship-to-rail center, and the indigenous Puyallup people's close relationship with local waterways. Extensive exhibits cover boat-making, vintage scuba and diving gear, and fin and humpback whales. Photos and relics round out the displays, children's activities are offered regularly, and Tacoma Night Market takes place here once a month.

Vintage railroad cars line a paved path along Railroad Avenue, with signs explaining the origin of each engine, car, and caboose, with more history and memorabilia inside several different buildings, including the former waiting room of the stunningly restored Snoqualmie depot. The Railway History Campus, located in the train shed a mile south of the depot at 9312 Stone Quarry Road, displays photographs, documents, and exhibits related to the region's rail history. Several times a day on weekends, a train made of cars built in the mid-1910s for the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroad travels between Snoqualmie Depot and North Bend. The two-hour round-trip excursion passes through woods, past waterfalls, and around patchwork farmland, and it includes a stop at the History Campus. Families pack the winter Santa Train journeys and the mid-August Snoqualmie Days rides; the latter event features an annual parade.

The basement of the town's quaint General Store is home to the Smithsonian-designed Port Gamble Historic Museum, which takes you through the region's timber heyday. Highlights include artifacts from the Pope and Talbot Timber Company, which built the town, and realistic ship's quarters. On the second floor of the General Store (which is open year-round), the Sea and Shore Museum houses more than 25,000 shells as well as displays on natural history. Kids love the weird bug exhibit. Stop at the General Store for souvenirs or a huge ice-cream cone or hand-dipped milk shake, or stay for lunch in the store's excellent café.

Washington's official history museum presents interactive exhibits and multimedia installations about the exploration and settlement of the state. Exhibits are wide-ranging and artfully designed, and feature Native American, Inuit, and pioneer artifacts, and mining, logging, and railroad relics. The upstairs gallery hosts rotating exhibits, and summer programs are staged in the outdoor amphitheater. During the winter holiday season, the Model Train Festival is one of the museum's top draws.

Bellingham's art and history museum fills three buildings near one another downtown; its centerpiece is the Lightcatcher, a LEED-certified building with an 180-foot-long translucent wall. It's home to FIG, the hands-on Family Interactive Gallery, along with permanent collections of contemporary Northwest artists and spaces for rotating exhibits. Three blocks away, Bellingham's imposing redbrick former city hall dates to 1892, became a museum in 1941, and now contains historic exhibits. The third building, the Syre Education Center, contains a photographic archive. The museum's restaurant, Bar Cicotti, is in the Lightcatcher and garners raves for its creative Northern Italian lunch and dinner fare.

A compelling collection of exhibits describes the city's maritime history, and there are photo archives, video programs, and a research library focusing on the area's pioneer heritage and Native American culture. The facilities include a one-room, early-20th-century schoolhouse and a 65-foot, 1950s purse seiner, a type of fishing vessel from the community's famous seafaring fleets. News clippings and videos about "Galloping Gertie," the bridge over the Tacoma Narrows that famously collapsed in 1940, are eerie.

A favorite among Bremerton's interesting maritime-related attractions, this museum on the waterfront near the ferry terminal is set inside a stately 1890s shipyard building. It brings American naval history to life through war photos, ship models, historic displays, and American and Japanese war artifacts.

This hilltop museum surveys domestic life in early Skagit County and Northwest Coastal Native American history. There's an interesting gallery showcasing goods commonly found in the region's early general stores, and rotating exhibits interpret the different aspects of the community's rich heritage.

At this quirky downtown museum, rooms filled with some of the world's earliest electrical appliances—light bulbs, phones, batteries, motors, radios, TVs—along with photos, news clippings, and interactive exhibits tell the story of how electricity transformed our world. A particularly interesting exhibit sparked by the film The Current War traces the competitive battle for technological supremacy among Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla. On weekends at 2:30, docents present a wildly entertaining electric light show, complete with 12-foot lightening bolts, in the museum theater.

A 15-minute drive north of Bremerton (not far from Poulsbo), this museum is fronted by a can't-miss sight: the 88-ton Trieste II submarine, which dove to the deepest spot in the ocean (the Marianas Trench) in 1960. The main building presents rotating shows and contains excellent permanent exhibits on oceanography, torpedo technology, submarine rescues, mine warfare, and the navy's strategic war deterrence initiative.