On Oct. 3, 1918, the Spanish Flu reached the state of Washington when Seattle newspapers reported that one cadet at the naval training station at the University of Washington had died of influenza and that over 700 more were ill, 400 of them in the hospital under treatment and observation.

Still, despite the location of the University within Seattle proper, Commissioner of Health, Dr. J. S. McBride stated that there were no city cases, claiming that the outbreak among the cadets was only la grippe. The distinction lasted less than a day, after two influenza-related deaths were reported in the city that evening and after state health commissioner Dr. Thomas D. Tuttle proclaimed grip and “Spanish” influenza to be one-in-the-same.

Across the state, public assemblies were prohibited and citizens were required to wear gauze masks to prevent the spread of the virus. Seattle’s influenza epidemic claimed over 1,400 lives from September 1918 through February 1919, and left the city with an excess death rate of 414 per 100,000.