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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 1 |
| 1858 | 1 |
| 1859 | 1 |
| 1863 | 1 |
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 8 |
| 1877 | 12 |
| 1878 | 5 |
| 1879 | 1 |
| 1880 | 3 |
| 1882 | 2 |
| 1883 | 20 |
| 1884 | 2 |
| 1885 | 19 |
| 1886 | 12 |
| 1887 | 5 |
| 1888 | 4 |
| 1889 | 22 |
| 1890 | 3 |
| 1891 | 15 |
| 1892 | 38 |
| 1893 | 37 |
| 1894 | 39 |
| 1895 | 36 |
| 1898 | 1 |
| 1899 | 10 |
| 1903 | 10 |
| 1904 | 10 |
| 1905 | 2 |
| 1907 | 1 |
| 1908 | 5 |
| 1909 | 17 |
| 1910 | 7 |
| 1911 | 2 |
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| 1914 | 3 |
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| 1916 | 7 |
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| 1923 | 1 |
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| 1929 | 1 |
89 stories matching smoke
- The Summer the Smoke Saved the Harvest
With rainfall a third of normal and crops burning in the fields, Seattle's paper made the case that the season's suffocating pall of forest-fire smoke had been the region's salvation.
- The 1885 Opium Raid on Washington Street
Constable Van Doren and the Knights of Labor descend upon Chinese opium dens in a bid to test the legality of territorial anti-smoking laws.
- The Opium Dens of Justice Hammer
A police raid on opium dens and gambling halls nets a large group of Chinese residents and three white men in the heart of Seattle.
- Drought and Forest Fires Gripping the Inland Empire
A grim report from the Colville Valley details parched crops, ruined timber, and a sun obscured by thick smoke.
- The Grand Jury's List of Complaints
In 1885, Seattle’s grand jury turned its attention to everything from jail conditions to the 'inhaling or smoking' of opium, highlighting a city struggling with the growing pains of a frontier boom.
- The Smoke Over the Okanogan
Forest fires fueled by arsonists are devastating the landscape and choking the residents of the Okanogan country.
- Washington Territory’s Hop Harvest Finds Relief
After a grueling dry spell, welcome rains have cleared the harvest smoke and signaled a better market for Puyallup Valley growers.
- The Smoke That Choked Seattle
A Seattle timber investor returns from the Puget Sound to find the region shrouded in disaster as forest fires consume the landscape.
- A Father’s Desperate Dash Through the Flames
In Snohomish County, a father saved his three young children from a burning home just as the roof collapsed, leaving the family physically scarred but alive.
- Tragedy at the Occidental Hotel
A pre-dawn fire at a downtown boarding house kills a resident and leaves others fighting for their lives in the smoke.
- The Seattle Baker Who Stopped a Midnight Inferno
A quick-thinking baker at the Queen City Bakery spotted smoke rising from the Denny Block, narrowly averting a major downtown catastrophe.
- The Political Pudding of the Washington Legislature
How local party bosses in the late 1880s traded speakerships and senate seats in smoke-filled backrooms to secure personal power.
- The Desperate Final Days of an 'Opium Den' Raided in Seattle
A police raid on a Grant Street boarding house exposes a web of illicit activity, homelessness, and the grim reality of life in the city's fringes in 1890.
- The Smoke-Filled Backroom Deals of 1886
A disgruntled contractor exposes the murky process behind the construction of public works in early Seattle, challenging the city's power brokers.
- The Paper Trail That Went Up in Smoke
A King County tax assessor admitted that sworn property records were routinely burned, sparking a public outcry over local fiscal transparency.
- The Unseen Perils of the Puget Sound Fog
An experienced mariner describes the harrowing reality of navigating steamships through the thick, impenetrable mists of the late 19th-century Sound.
- Four Men Spend the Night in a Boiling Crater: An 1883 Assault on Mount Rainier
A climbing party from Olympia reaches the summit of Mount Rainier and bivouacs inside the crater, where the ground itself is too hot to touch.
- The Smoke That Choked the Sound
As Seattle rebuilds from its Great Fire, a more insidious disaster—the annual torching of Washington’s vast forests—threatens the region’s economic future.
- A Governor's Buggy Ride Through a Wall of Fire
Gov. Newell and Rev. J. K. Thompson returned to Olympia after a forest fire closed in on both sides of the road, scorching their faces and nearly dropping a tree across their path.
- A Kenton Picnic Speech and the Justification of Native Displacement
At a Kenton picnic, Judge Orange Jacobs cast pioneer survival as historical necessity and used dehumanizing rhetoric to defend the displacement of Native Americans.
- The Senator Who Called a Race 'Hell on Wheels'
In the smoke-filled backroom of the Seattle Jockey Club in 1888, U.S. Senators discussed tariffs and whiskey while recounting a chaotic horse race where the crowd 'yelled like demons' and hats flew like confetti.
- The Great Opera House Escape
A suspected swindler slips his guard and vanishes from a Seattle building mid-construction.
- The Campaign to Purge Seattle’s Chinatown
In 1885, as anti-Chinese sentiment surged across the Pacific Northwest, a Seattle city official led a raid on the city's Chinatown, marking an early, aggressive move in the movement to drive the Chinese community out of the city.
- The Day Seaton Went Up in Smoke
A devastating fire tore through a Washington sawmill town, proving how quickly the industrial heart of the frontier could vanish.
- The Unlucky Dreamer’s Club
A satirical club meeting in Seattle warns members against the dangers of interpreting dreams and reporting ghost sightings.