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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 3 |
| 1858 | 13 |
| 1859 | 27 |
| 1860 | 6 |
| 1861 | 6 |
| 1863 | 5 |
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 11 |
| 1877 | 11 |
| 1878 | 12 |
| 1879 | 5 |
| 1880 | 3 |
| 1882 | 3 |
| 1883 | 56 |
| 1884 | 25 |
| 1885 | 43 |
| 1886 | 26 |
| 1887 | 70 |
| 1888 | 34 |
| 1889 | 76 |
| 1890 | 6 |
| 1891 | 48 |
| 1892 | 267 |
| 1893 | 263 |
| 1894 | 243 |
| 1895 | 182 |
| 1897 | 1 |
| 1898 | 7 |
| 1899 | 30 |
| 1900 | 1 |
| 1903 | 64 |
| 1904 | 848 |
| 1905 | 2 |
| 1907 | 7 |
| 1908 | 1 |
| 1909 | 758 |
| 1910 | 5 |
| 1912 | 1 |
| 1914 | 3 |
| 1916 | 9 |
| 1917 | 5 |
| 1918 | 1 |
| 1923 | 2 |
| 1924 | 4 |
| 1925 | 1 |
182 stories
- The Judge Who Cleared the Way to Sell Puyallup Reservation Land
In April 1895, a federal court refused to block the sale of Puyallup Indian Reservation lands, ending an injunction and setting the stage for dispossession.
- The Whatcom Widow Who Bought the Coffin Before the Death
A five-times-married former Whatcom County first lady is back in the news—and old suspicions about her commissioner husband’s death at Steilacoom have followed her east.
- The Battle for the Waterfront
Tacoma and Seattle clash with the state over who owns the land between the high tide line and the harbor.
- The Booster Who Sold a Forest by the Lot
A Tacoma real-estate promoter turned a virgin forest into a one-day $135,000 land rush—then got lost in the woods and stumbled on a surveyor’s stake from his own subdivision.
- The Tacoma Gold Rush That Was Salted With Quicksilver
A mining journal exposes how placer claims on Tacoma school land turned a public trust into a speculative jackpot—complete with imported gold, alleged bribery, and a land office that kept saying yes.
- The Ledger Went Into the Furnace
A Tacoma courtroom heard how 94 company books were burned on orders from the assignee—while stockholders testified that minutes were falsified and $42,000 had vanished.
- The Puyallup Land Sale the Tribe Tried to Stop
Hours before the reservation auction, attorney Charles Woodworth filed revocations for nearly half the lands, arguing the Indians—not the commission—controlled the sale.
- The School Land That Was Salted With Gold
Washington's attorney general told the Interior Department that a claimant had planted jeweler's gold in gravel from a Pierce County school section to turn public land into a mine.
- Tacoma's Bribery Probe Ends With a Censure, Not a Conviction
A Tacoma City Council 'Lexow' committee cleared Councilman Thompson and City Clerk Smyth of bribery, then censured Smyth anyway for boasting he'd paid for a vote.
- They Climbed Rainier First—and Slept in a Sulphur-Scented Ice Cave
In 1870, Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump reached Mount Rainier's summit after a brutal 10½-hour climb, then spent a freezing night beside volcanic steam vents.
- The Tide Lands Plat: A Waterfront Laid Out for Sale
State appraisers file the plat for the Tacoma tide lands, opening 600 acres of shore and mud flats to sale—unless upland owners claim them first.
- Gunfire Before Midnight: The Bratton Tragedy in Tacoma
Isaac Henry Bratton, 41, shot his wife and then himself at their Tacoma home. The couple had come from Missouri two years earlier and left three children.
- Railroad Men Pack a Tacoma Hall to Kill the Grain-Rate Bill
Seventy railroad employees — or, the P-I suspects, the roads themselves wearing workingmen's clothes — ask the Legislature to reject a bill cutting wheat freight rates. Their argument: lower rates mean lost jobs.
- The Perilous Life at the Soldiers' Home
A legislative report reveals that veterans at the Orting home are forced to carry oil lamps through the halls, risking catastrophic fire.
- The Mysterious Death of Abe Gross
A 28-year-old Tacoma dry-goods partner was found shot through the mouth in his bed. His brother's grief, a coroner's open verdict, and a city's disbelief turned a private tragedy into a public mystery.
- A Magnate's Despair: The Suicide of Paul Schulze
A Tacoma streetcar president and irrigation promoter, ruined by debt and the loss of Northern Pacific confidence, takes his own life with a chilling note about ambition.
- The Puyallup Lands Went on Sale and Almost Nobody Bid
A congressional commission put 1,100 acres of Puyallup reservation land on the block outside Tacoma, appraised at $30,000. Two days in, roughly $3,000 had been taken — and the Indians on the land were already organising their own counter-sale.
- The Treasurer's Bond and the Asylum Signature
A Tacoma bondsman says her name was forged on ex-City Treasurer George W. Boggs's bond while she was confined at Steilacoom—and that she never authorized the defense filed in her name.
- A Judge Refuses to Seat Jurors Because Tacoma Has No Money to Pay Them
Judge John Stallcup's one-man budget protest shut down his Tacoma courtroom—and exposed a broken system of delinquent taxes and unpaid jurors.
- Tragedy at the Puyallup Indian School
A young student is killed in a firearm accident during a gathering on the reservation.
- The Ghost Husband of Tacoma
A woman remarries after believing her husband died in a British train wreck, only to discover he is alive and working as a railway guard.
- The Nativists Break Ranks: A.P.A. Refuses to March With the Hibernians
Tacoma's Fourth of July celebration splits in two as the American Protective Association, objecting to Irish Catholic marchers, stages its own morning parade — and the city council votes to march in both.
- A Widow's Estate, a Suspicious Death, and the Fight to Deny an Assyrian Immigrant His Inheritance
In Tacoma, the sudden death of Marie J. Bernhardy sparks a bitter battle over her estate, with influential locals trying to block her Assyrian husband, Michel Jasous, from claiming his rightful share.
- A Tacoma Marriage Ends in Murder and Suicide
Isaac H. Bratton shot his wife and then himself after weeks of suspicion, religious friction, and threats—a domestic tragedy that consumed a Tacoma household.
- Tragedy at the Carbonado Coal Mines
A young miner is killed in a horrific industrial accident while performing routine maintenance.