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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 long-standing dispute over a donation land claim ends in a deadly shooting on a farm near Sumner.
“James, armed with a rifle and revolver, accordingly went to the lines to cut the hay. White was cutting the hay. McMillan also started in to cut it. White came over and ordered McMillan off.”
A landslide on the Northern Pacific line construction site leaves one laborer dead and several others injured.
A federal land ruling near Sumner untangles decades of inheritance, foreclosure, and a killing tied to a donation claim first filed in 1853.
“The land has been in litigation for many years, and in its history is chronicled the death of one man and a prolonged siege in the courts.”
A disgruntled worker is suspected of burning down his former employer's new home near Dieringer station.
“It is believed an evil-faced hired man who claimed that Aitken owed him $13, fired it to spite his employer.”
Facing a glut of inventory and low market prices, Seattle-area hop growers debate whether to pick the season's yield or let it wither on the vine.
“Rather than sell my crop for less, I will turn the hogs in and let them harvest the crop.”
The Fairhaven Herald takes a rare, strong public stance against a neighboring editor's racist call for colonization.
“As this grand state of Washington is as free to the negro as it is to anybody else, and as that race has, by the laws of the country, the same civil rights as other people.”
A young man from Tacoma drowns while bathing his feet, leaving behind only a letter from his mother.
“How the young man happened to fall into the river is a mystery.”
As hop prices soar in the Puyallup Valley, Washington Territory farmers find themselves in the midst of a speculative frenzy, echoing the volatility of modern commodity markets.
“There will be enough money received from the tiny leaves to leave everybody concerned in good humor.”
In 1878, Sumner settlers faced a familiar struggle: a transportation monopoly that forced them to pay as much to haul freight across the river as to ship it 150 miles by rail.
“No community has permanent prosperity that depends upon a single product that finds a market once a year, and has nothing to dispose of the rest of the year.”
Pierce County engineers cut a new channel through the Stuck River to drain 2,000 acres of farmland and end the cycle of sand-choked floods.
“It is estimated that 2,000 acres of land will be rendered available for cultivation by this and other contemplated drainage improvements.”
A riverside elopement turns into a dramatic showdown when a steamer captain intervenes in a young woman's flight.
“The success of the matrimonial journey of Miss Wunger and Rev. Gallertan last week threatened to produce one, but yesterday an attempt to follow their example failed completely.”
Contractors overcome swamp and tangled brush to advance the critical rail link between Puget Sound and the East.
“The worst part of the road was in the Stuck Swamp. It had to be piled for the entire length.”
Decades before modern flood control, Stuck Valley farmers sought relief from log jams and the rival interests of King and Pierce county commissioners.
“The farmers have grown so sick at heart at seeing their property destroyed... that they are now making a new proposition.”
An elderly woman is struck and killed by a passenger train just days before her planned relocation to Tacoma.
“Uttering a despairing cry to her husband, who stood but a few feet from her, Mrs. Carrie Kribs... was run down by a passenger train.”
A local political feud in the town of Sumner lands before a grand jury as citizens debate the enforcement of ordinances and the limits of mayoral power.
“It is just a question of political nastiness.”
A newly launched publication is sabotaged just days after its first issue hits the stands.
“Here let the light of reason show the right of all to think as you.”
When Henry Brianer left for a business trip, bartender B. Grant moved in on his wife. Now the couple—and her two children—are missing, presumed headed to Seattle.
“Monday, while her husband was in Tacoma, Mrs. Brianer took her two children and left with Grant.”
A Sumner man falls into a fire while clearing brush, only to be pulled to safety by his two young daughters.
“Seeing their father fall, they rushed to him and pulled him to safety.”
A power company lineman suffers severe burns while working on a 60,000-volt transmission line near Sumner.
“Ralph Wright... was seriously burned recently when he came in contact with a power line bearing 60,000 volts.”
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