Washington State's Extension Service has its roots in the Washington Experiment Station, which began active life in 1892 as part of the Washington Agricultural College, Experiment Station, and School of Science, later known as Washington State University. A major part of the Experiment Station's role was outreach to the rural farmers of the state; this initially occurred primarily face-to-face through methods like instructional Farmers' Institutes and traveling Demonstration Trains. This outreach was legally formalized in 1913 through Washington's creation of the Extension Service. That year the new Extension Service released their first Extension Bulletin, Growing Alfalfa without Irrigation. Extension publications were frequently intended as a means of reaching farmers and homemakers while avoiding the time and hazards involved in travel in that era. The series continues today, over one hundred years later. Several parallel series of publications came into existence (Extension Bulletins, Extension Circulars, and Extension Mimeographs, among many others), and both the Washington State University Experiment Station proper and WSU agricultural programs have also published similar series of their own.

Some other outdated WSU Extension publications may be found in WSU's Institutional Repository at https://research.libraries.wsu.edu/xmlui/handle/2376/4333.

Current Extension publications may be found at https://pubs.wsu.edu/.