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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 170 |
| 1892 | 154 |
324 stories
- Three Hundred Olympians Pack Columbia Hall to See Who Takes the Cake
A novelty dance craze two weeks in the gossiping arrives at last: one hundred couples, a flag, a pair of clashing cymbals, and a ten-cent ticket for every march — all to raise money for the YMCA's women's auxiliary.
- A $107,000 Courthouse Still Without a Roof
Thurston County's grand new courthouse blows past its March 1 deadline with $73,000 already paid out — and a local builder predicts the final bill will top $150,000, every dollar of it leaving the county.
- The Old Capitol Gets a Hurried Remodel Before the Legislature Returns
Secretary Weir is shoring up sagging foundations, rebuilding the Senate chamber, and squeezing five or six more years out of Olympia's aging statehouse.
- The Groom’s Armed Ultimatum
A wedding ceremony in Olympia was interrupted when the groom drew a six-shooter to prevent the minister from claiming the traditional first kiss.
- Olympia’s Streetcar Service Suspended
The city’s 'bob-tail' line has ceased operations following a sale to the Olympia Light and Power Company, leaving residents without transit until electric service begins.
- A Beardless Boy's 1855 Passage Through Puget Sound—and the Death of Abe Moses
A reminiscence from the Montesano Vidette recalls Olympia as a village in the woods, a kindness in Steilacoom, and a fatal ambush during Washington's early Indian wars.
- A Parent Asks What Olympia Is Paying to Police Its New Variety Theater
A letter to the editor complains that a new theater below the “dead line” is drawing drunken loggers, running a bar, and selling private boxes—and asks what the city gets for its license and police protection.
- The Sewer Plan That Imagined a City of 200,000
Engineer J. S. Camp presented Olympia’s council with a tide-powered reservoir and automatic flush tanks, a system meant to grow with the capital city.
- A Hatchet Charge, a Mayor's Household and a Chinese Worker in Court
In 1891 Olympia, a Chinese man known as Jim was arraigned for an alleged hatchet attack on an Olympia News clerk, with the mayor's wife among the first bondsmen.
- The National Theater Manager Skipped Town With the Glassware
H. H. Kline vanished from Olympia's National Theater, leaving unpaid salaries, a bar tab, and empty beer bottles—while police took charge of the building.
- The sheriff seizes Olympia's streetcars, mid-block, over a bond
A lawyer's objection leaves a Main Street horse car standing stock still at Sixth for hours while the company's backers scramble for a new bond.
- A Family on a Float, a Dead Baby, and a Neighbor's Kindness
When the Gore family was found feverish and destitute aboard a float at the foot of Franklin Street, Olympia's charity could not save their youngest child—but it did not abandon them.
- The Settler Who Watched Olympia Get Claimed
R. C. Smith, who crossed the plains in 1848, recalls the canoe landing where Edmund Sylvester took the claim that became Olympia.
- A Saw Blade, a Slipped Foot, and a Surgeon's Race to Save a Worker's Arm
A worker's foot slipped against a circular saw, severing the artery and nerve in his right arm; doctors ligated the artery and stitched the nerve.
- Tumwater Gets Electric Lights but Still No Crossings—Two Ladies Stuck in the Mud
New lights on Reserve Street only made the missing crossings more obvious when two women tried to walk from the wagon bridge to the post office and sank to a standstill.
- A Forged Delegate Ticket at the Second Ward Meeting
A letter to the Tribune accuses Boss Sickels and sewer contractor Gillie of slipping a printed delegate ticket into a Second Ward meeting, using names without permission.
- A Newspaper Opens a Fund So Poor Men Can Afford the Keeley Cure
The Tribune sets a contribution box at Main and Fourth for Olympia residents too poor to pay for the Keeley Institute's addiction treatment, seeding the fund with $5 and naming a committee to vet applicants.
- The Water Company Wins the Right to Shut It Off
The state supreme court backs the Olympia Light Power Company's authority to cut off water service when a hotel falls behind on its rent.
- A Fortune in Strawberries: The Grower Who Says Thurston County Is Sleeping on Its Own Soil
Olympia closed the fruit season with its biggest shipments yet, but veteran orchardman George B. Hartman says the county's trees are thriving on forty years of neglect — and that proper cultivation could out-earn Oregon and California combined.
- The Gold Cure Club: Olympia's Reformed Drinkers Form a Society of Their Own
Veterans of the Keeley Institute organize a mutual-aid club — president, sergeant-at-arms and all — to pull other men with "the drink disease" back from the brink.
- Before Breakfast at the Wilson Tract
The Olympia Light and Power Company sent a crew at dawn to cut a roadbed through Col. Ben Turner's land. He vowed to fence it right back up.
- A Streetcar Cathedral Rises at Chestnut and Fifth
Olympia Light and Power plans a three-story headquarters with repair pits, a supply store and dormitory rooms for single employees — if City Council approves the route it wants.
- Two Iowa Veterans Find Each Other After Thirty Years in an Olympia G.A.R. Hall
At the first meeting of Geo. H. Thomas Post in its new rooms, a visiting commander discovered a fellow Iowa soldier in the audience—and the speechmaking dissolved into a handshake.
- Two Women Who Held Their Own Land for Eighteen Months
Estelle Williamson and Gertrude McCann pass through Ocosta on the way to Olympia to prove up on homestead claims they worked alone — braver, a neighboring paper says, than most men.
- The Ladies Turn Out First for Olympia's $40,000 School Bonds
The polls open in the Central School building on a bond issue for the city schools, and women are on hand casting ballots from the first hour.