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|---|---|
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| 1878 | 5 |
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44 stories
- A Breath of Fire-Damp Killed Twenty-Three Blue Canyon Miners
A coal-mine explosion near Lake Whatcom wiped out nearly an entire shift just before it was due to change, leaving only two survivors to tell what happened underground.
- Fire Damp and Twenty-Three Dead at Blue Canyon
A gas explosion in a new coal working near Lake Whatcom kills twenty-three miners and forces a state inspection into what the company knew about the mine’s ventilation.
- Twenty-Three Miners Died in a Nearly Undamaged Mine
Inspector Edmunds told a Seattle paper that the Blue Canyon explosion was one of the strangest disasters he had ever seen: the mine was barely damaged, yet 23 men were dead, most killed by concussion and gas.
- A Town Buries Its Miners
Funeral services for the Blue Canyon mine disaster dead fill Bay View cemetery as a coroner's jury begins asking whether enough air—and enough regulation—reached the men underground.
- Twenty-Two Miners Dead at Blue Canyon
A fire-damp explosion at the Blue Canyon coal mines kills twenty-two, and the paper turns to relief for widows and orphans.
- Lummi Fishermen Fight for Their Reefs
Prominent Lummi leaders seek an injunction against salmon canning companies to protect their traditional fishing grounds from industrial traps.
- Lummi Nation Fights Salmon Trap Incursion
The U.S. government intervenes on behalf of the Lummi people to stop commercial fishing interests from blocking their treaty-guaranteed fishing grounds.
- The Salmon War at Point Roberts: Lummi Tribe Battles Cannery Giant Over Treaty Fishing Rights
A federal judge is set to decide whether the Alaska Packing Association's fish traps illegally block the salmon run, pitting Indigenous treaty rights against a quarter-million-dollar cannery industry.
- Twenty-Three Miners Died. An Old Miner Blamed the Air.
After an explosion at Blue Canyon in Whatcom County killed 23 men, a veteran miner wrote to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the mines were not properly ventilated—and that inspectors and bosses ignored miners who knew better.
- A Squall Off Chuckanut: The Mail Steamer Buckeye Goes Down
The steamer Buckeye capsized in Bellingham Bay in 1893, leaving passengers and crew clinging to a lifeboat and raft. All but one survived.
- The Buckeye Went Down in a Gale—and One Passenger Almost Made It
The steamer Buckeye broke up in the Salish Sea; a rescued stockman described how shifting cattle, a swamped lifeboat, and freezing water killed H. Kautzman within sight of help.
- Twenty-Three Dead, and a Jury Clears the Company
An inquest into the explosion that killed twenty-three miners at the Blue Canyon mine blames gas and dust — and flatly exonerates the company of any fault.
- A Judge Stops the Fish Traps—for Now
A federal injunction halts a Chicago company from driving piles for salmon traps at Village Point on Lummi Island, while the company searches for a loophole and Native fishing rights remain unresolved.
- A Cannery, a Reef, and the Indians’ Right to Fish
A federal injunction stops the Point Roberts packing company from taking sockeye while the cannery argues the reef was never reserved to the Lummi—and that 130 jobs hang in the balance.
- The Cabin Door That Killed: A Man-Trap, a Storm, and a Supreme Court Warning
A Whatcom County man rigged a gun to fire when his cabin door opened. A storm-driven traveler triggered it and died—and Washington's high court upheld the conviction, ruling property rights stop short of deadly traps.
- A Young Mother Died After Being Taken From the People Caring for Her
Caroline Erickson, a Swedish immigrant who had just given birth, was removed to St. Joseph’s hospital against her will and died the next day; the woman who sheltered her blames the charity.
- The Blaine Fisherman Who Pulled Seven People Out of the Water and Never Told Anyone
Hans Nielson is 24 years old, slight of build, and has saved seven lives in ten years — two in Denmark, five around Blaine — and calls each rescue a thing 'only incidental to the life of a water toiler.'
- Two Years in Limbo: Whatcom's Failed Bank
Depositors in the Columbia National Bank get only a sliver of their money back while the officers scatter — one to Honolulu, one to the shingle business — and the receiver's promises dissolve.
- New Whatcom’s Ledger Had a Credit Side, Too
After a defalcation and the Panic of 1893, New Whatcom’s mayor and a local editor argued over whether the city was broke or merely bruised.
- A Packing Company Tries to Buy Point Roberts' Tidelands at $1.25 an Acre
As the Alaska Packing Association angles to lock up a fishing monopoly on cheap public shore, Governor McGraw scrambles for witnesses to prove the tide flats are worth far more than the appraisement.
- Fleeing the Blizzard: Farmers Look to Puget Sound
Colonies of farmers from North Dakota, Minnesota and Michigan—some worth up to $50,000—are selling out and heading west to Whatcom, Skagit and Whidbey Island, drawn by railroad inducements and a milder climate.
- A Polish Colony in the Washington Woods
Organizers are recruiting hundreds of dissatisfied Polish and Swiss families from the Midwest to a planned settlement called Rapperswyl, on the south fork of the Nooksack — a Swiss name planted on the edge of Whatcom County.
- A Captain's Midnight Wrestle With an Armed Robber
Capt. W.W. Gardner loses a small sum but saves his watch after a holdup at Thirteenth and I streets—part of a burglary wave police cannot seem to stop.
- A Wave, Unbarricaded Doors, and the Wreck of the Buckeye
The wrecked steamer is found near Fairhaven as passengers blame the mate and a drowned Anacortes liquor dealer goes to the grave without an inquest.
- The Cabin Booby-Trap That Cost Newell Barr Ten Years
Sentenced for a gun trap rigged in his Whatcom cabin that killed John Erickson, Barr heads to Walla Walla as hopes for a pardon fade.