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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1888 | 34 |
| 1889 | 65 |
| 1891 | 31 |
| 1892 | 246 |
| 1893 | 259 |
| 1894 | 239 |
| 1895 | 182 |
1,056 stories
- Tacoma’s Costly Water Scandal
City officials discover that the expensive gravity-fed water system sold to the public is a fiction, sparking a search for accountability.
- Legal Troubles and Domestic Strife in Tacoma
A Chinese missionary arrested under the Geary Act and a father's charge of vagrancy against his daughter.
- Hard Times in the North Dakota Trade
A collection of desperate and defiant letters from business owners across the country captures the economic misery of 1893.
- The Fight for the Graveyard
Puyallup Indians threaten to dismantle a parsonage built on their burial grounds as tensions over reservation land ownership flare.
- The Buckley Bank Scam
A town in shock as two men posing as bankers abscond with the life savings of farmers and laborers.
- The Secret Business of Deportation
Shipping firms compete for lucrative federal contracts to transport Chinese residents being forcibly removed from the Pacific Northwest.
- Embezzling banker flees to parts unknown
A former Island County bank cashier accused of stealing nearly $15,000 has skipped town, leaving his legal defense behind.
- Tide Lands Battle: Northern Pacific Faces New Legal Hurdle
A Supreme Court ruling on harbor lines threatens the expansive waterfront infrastructure held by the railroad giant.
- The Fight for Puyallup Land Rights
A Congressional debate reveals the struggle for tribal land ownership and the interference of government commissions.
- Tacoma's Labor Council Pledges to Keep Chinese Out For Good
Invoking the same 'Committee of Fifteen' that drove the city's Chinese residents out in 1885, the Tacoma Trades Council passes resolutions to block any return and calls an anti-Chinese mass meeting.
- Tacoma’s Missing Warrant Book and the Forgery Scandal at City Hall
A former assistant city clerk had already been sent to prison. Now his talk of accomplices had Tacoma officials eyeing a missing warrant book and city paper selling at a steep discount in Chehalis.
- A Former County Commissioner's Despair Ends in an Old Tacoma Room
Charles T. Fay, a well-known Steilacoom settler and ex-county commissioner, shot himself after financial worries and an election defeat.
- Tacoma Petitions to Throw Open the Puyallup Reservation
Businessmen, railroad men and politicians circulate petitions to oust the Puyallup Indian agent and dismantle federal restrictions, arguing the reservation's lands and rail routes should be 'opened' — a dispossession dressed as progress.
- Buy Our Waterworks, or We'll Sell You to a Syndicate
Tacoma's Light and Water Company files its inventory for a $1.75 million city buyout — and a critic notes that the company has always known how to win a Tacoma election.
- Tacoma’s Electric Light War
A private power company accuses the city of selling light below cost to drive it out of business—and of a local editor gagging the story because he runs his own hotel plant.
- The City Against the Light Company
A judge threatens Tacoma's public works board with contempt as the city and a private electric company go to war over rates — and a newspaper editor with his own private electrical plant gets called out in the process.
- How Tacoma Beat Seattle for the Railroad—and Who Paid for It
An Eastern paper says Northern Pacific officials picked an inferior Tacoma site because it let a small coterie profit from townsite speculation, while Seattle refused to hand over its waterfront.
- 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.
- Tacoma's Water Was Cut Off by a Court Order—and the City Went Looking for Wells
A judge holds Tacoma officials in contempt for ignoring an injunction over Clover and Spanaway creeks, forcing the city to shut off a major source and scramble for gulch water and Northern Pacific wells.
- A City Accused of Stealing Its Water by Night
A rancher with an injunction, a mayor at the end of his borrowing power, and a reservoir that empties at dusk and fills by dawn: Tacoma's fight over Clover Creek water becomes a standoff between the city and the man who owns the creek.
- A $2 Million Power Plant Would Harness White River for Tacoma and Seattle
Promoters behind a New Jersey-chartered company plan a Lake Tapps reservoir and a Stuck Valley generator, aiming to power an interurban railroad and industry in Tacoma and Seattle.
- A Cook's Last Night in Tacoma
Injured, stranded ashore and facing the loss of his berth, a steamboat cook spends his final hours quarreling with his wife before swallowing morphine in a boarding-house room.
- Shanghaied in Tacoma: How a Sailor-Crimping Ring Hijacked a Ship's Crew
Affidavits from the Coast Seamen's Union describe a brazen scheme to force a captain to hire a crew through boarding-house bosses—then leave the sailors to pay.