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Treasures of the Archives: Digital Archives Adds Snohomish County Superior Court Records

Photograph of a drawing of the Snohomish County Courthouse ca. 1920, artist unknown, General Subjects Photograph Collection, 1845-2005, Washington State Archives, Digital Archives.

Photograph of a drawing of the Snohomish County Courthouse ca. 1920, artist unknown, General Subjects Photograph Collection, 1845-2005, Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov.

Over 14 million new Snohomish County superior court case files are now available through the Digital Archives. The Snohomish County Clerk transferred the records to the Digital Archives the first week of March, and staff spent the rest of the month processing them. This massive effort enabled them to publish the cases (14,598,722 in all) to the website on August 20, 2013. Users can search the records by case number, keyword, and case year.

This series contains the official documentation of all case types tried in Snohomish County Superior Court between 1950 and 2013. Case types include criminal, civil, domestic relationships (dissolution), probate/guardianship, adoption/parentage, mental illness, juvenile dependency, and juvenile offender. However, public access to proceedings involving adoption/parentage, mental illness, and juvenile dependency is restricted and those files are not available. Additionally, neither juvenile offender records nor domestic relations court records prior to 2004 are publically accessible at this time (only docket information is provided). Requests for court records not available on this website should be directed to the Snohomish County Clerk.

This resounding success is a result of the cooperative efforts of both the Archives and the Snohomish County Clerk’s Office over a four-year period, and represents Washington State’s commitment to transparency in government. The public can order the records by visiting the title “Snohomish County Superior Court Case Files, 1950-2013” in the Superior Court Cases Collection. The Snohomish County Clerk transfers new cases to the Digital Archives daily.