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Old newspapers, pinned to the places they wrote about — the streets you can still walk today.
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A catastrophic flood in the Skagit Valley leads to two consecutive train wrecks and the death of fireman Ed Cole, leaving his young family behind.
“The warm wind of Friday night had melted the snow in the hills and swollen the Skagit river and tributaries to torrents.”
A Washington court awards $3,000 to a woman after the founder of the town of Hamilton reportedly broke a marriage promise following a seduction.
“Three weeks later, according to her testimony, he seduced her under promise of marriage.”
A quarrel over steam, firewood and a dollar a day left an electric-light manager dead, a young night watchman charged with murder, and a town talking of lynching.
“You have shot me through and through.”
When a murder investigation in the North Cascades turned into a high-stakes manhunt, local settlers faced a volatile standoff with Indigenous tribes that nearly sparked a regional conflict.
“The Indians demand that the whites be handed over to them. If the whites refuse to surrender, they threaten to burn down the houses and slaughter every white person in the locality.”
When a mill worker demanded his pay early, a local dispute sparked an accidental raid on a company store in Hamilton.
“The clerk... jumped four feet in the air when the door opened and a half dozen brawny, wild-eyed shingle weavers appeared.”
Adam Mechling shot at what he took for a fawn in the Skagit County woods and found himself beneath a 300-pound she bear.
“The bear, for such it was, immediately closed with him, and down he went, the savage beast on top, tearing his clothing to shreds and lacerating the flesh in a dozen places.”
A tavern fight in Hamilton, Washington, turned into a minor civic ordeal when a local justice of the peace panicked and assumed a man had been murdered.
“Justice of the Peace K. O. Walders came to town and hearing of the trouble at once jumped to the conclusion that Peterson was dead and Addington had fled.”
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