Archives West Finding Aid

Charles Marvin Gates was born in 1904 in New Hampshire. He graduated from Yale College in 1926 and received his M.A. in history from Harvard University in 1928. In 1930 he began his studies for the doctorate at the University of Minnesota. During his career, Gates served as a professor of history at the University of Washington, a charter member of the Society of American Archivists, and a member of various historians' organizations. In the mid-1940s, Gates and Herman J. Deutsch of the State College of Washington developed the Pacific Northwest History Project for collecting and preserving documents concerned with Northwest history.

Gates co-authoredEmpire of the Columbia: A History of the Northwestwith Dorothy Johansen. He also wrote the centennial history of UW,The First Century at the University of Washington, which was published in 1961. For the last twenty years of his life, Gates edited Pacific Northwest Quarterly. He died in 1963.