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Research dossier · Places & Architecture

Bellingham, Washington

City in Washington, United States

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 24, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Bellingham is a city in and the county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies 21 miles (34 km) south of the Canada–United States border, between Vancouver, British Columbia, 52 miles (84 km) to the northwest and Seattle 90 miles (140 km) to the south.

Editorial summary

“Bellingham, Washington” enters the record as city in Washington, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bellingham, Washington and City can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA strong orientation record where physical form, institutional use and historical geography need to be read together. The current 50-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Bellingham, Washington and City.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Bellingham, Washington” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bellingham, Washington and City provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026.

Critical limits

A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bellingham, Washington”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bellingham, Washington primary sources, Bellingham, Washington archive and Bellingham research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bellingham, Washington”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bellingham, Washington” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.