Research the archive
Narrow 27,002 newspaper stories by words, years, place, newspaper and subject. See when and where they ran, then download what you find.
Put a phrase in quotes ("rent strike") or leave a word out with a minus (strike -baseball). Old scans misspell names, so when little is found, near-spellings are offered.
Refine1 on
Show the numbers
| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 62 |
| 1858 | 29 |
| 1859 | 52 |
| 1860 | 27 |
| 1861 | 101 |
| 1862 | 87 |
| 1863 | 69 |
| 1864 | 32 |
| 1865 | 11 |
| 1871 | 11 |
| 1872 | 140 |
| 1876 | 812 |
| 1877 | 678 |
| 1878 | 526 |
| 1879 | 64 |
| 1880 | 180 |
| 1882 | 130 |
| 1883 | 911 |
| 1884 | 499 |
| 1885 | 838 |
| 1886 | 492 |
| 1887 | 484 |
| 1888 | 440 |
| 1889 | 1,324 |
| 1890 | 287 |
| 1891 | 1,115 |
| 1892 | 2,855 |
| 1893 | 2,829 |
| 1894 | 2,116 |
| 1895 | 1,830 |
| 1896 | 2 |
| 1897 | 62 |
| 1898 | 196 |
| 1899 | 446 |
| 1900 | 114 |
| 1902 | 34 |
| 1903 | 1,332 |
| 1904 | 1,126 |
| 1905 | 124 |
| 1907 | 53 |
| 1908 | 351 |
| 1909 | 1,545 |
| 1910 | 413 |
| 1911 | 160 |
| 1912 | 73 |
| 1914 | 261 |
| 1915 | 300 |
| 1916 | 545 |
| 1917 | 332 |
| 1918 | 45 |
| 1919 | 5 |
| 1920 | 1 |
| 1922 | 18 |
| 1923 | 185 |
| 1924 | 151 |
| 1925 | 64 |
| 1928 | 14 |
| 1929 | 19 |
11,738 stories
- Pay for a Job That Wasn't There: Seattle's Employment-Agency Scam
A city council committee heard workers describe paying fees to G.W. Crane's employment office and arriving to find no jobs, with agents accused of splitting fees with contractors.
- Condemned at Home, Detained in Port Townsend: Three Men Offer to Buy Their Way Out of the Axe
Three Chinese men held by the collector of customs for being in the United States illegally were to be shipped home, where desertion from the imperial army is punished by beheading. Local Chinese merchants said a substitute could be hired to die in a man's place.
- A Captain Tries Twice to Die—and Walks Home
Capt. Alfred Garton took morphine, then a bullet, in an Occidental Hotel room. Both failed, and his letter blamed a fortune in real estate that no one would buy.
- Red Pepper Tea and a Blind Healer: The Death That Aroused Olympia's Eastside
A fourteen-year-old girl died after two weeks of treatment by a blind Thomsonian practitioner. Neighbors called it poison, and an inquest was set for that night.
- Spokane Editor Survives Shooting Over Indecent Literature Charges
A local editor was fired upon in the street after a dispute over a rival publication's legal troubles.
- The Chief's Daughter in the Shadow of the City Named for Her Father
A San Francisco Chronicle correspondent visits Princess Angeline in her Seattle shack and finds the city proudly carving her father's face on a new business block while his daughter lives on charity.
- The Town That Grew in Ninety Days—and Then Waited for the Railroad
In 1890, promoters carved Anacortes out of the Fidalgo Island forest, sold lots at galloping prices, and promised a transcontinental rail terminal. Two years later, the trains still stopped short and the company wharf was closed to the public.
- A Ballard Family's Desperate Winter: Five Children Crying for Bread
A sick father, a dying mother, and five hungry children in Salmon Bay Park. A stranger's dollar is all they have.
- A Circular Saw Opened His Skull—and He Stayed Conscious
At the Stetson Post Mill on Commercial Street, engineer Horatio Stetson crawled under a rip-saw table to fix a belt. The saw caught his head, cutting through bone and into his brain, yet he never lost consciousness.
- Unemployed Rail Worker Attempts Suicide After Years of Hardship
A former American Railway Union member, struggling to find work since the great strike, attempts to take his own life near the Denny clay works.
- The Man They Called an Informer
After learning English in the county jail, a Chinese Olympian announced he would cut his queue and become 'American.' His community branded him a snitch—and the Tribune turned his peril into an anti-Chinese exposé.
- The $163 Bender: How a Saloon Owner Allegedly Drunk a Laborer Out of His Wages
Andrew Gilberg says Frank Lindquist, former owner of the Mint saloon, plied him with whisky for days until he signed away a $163 labor claim for $17—then put him on a train to Ballard.
- The Farmer Who Thanked the Jury for Sending Him to Prison
After shooting a man on the Spokane courthouse steps, an eccentric Whitman County farmer rejected an insanity defense and told the jury he would rather be in hell than an asylum.
- A Seattle Utopia Sold in One-Cent Shares
A society of unemployed men pools its wages and plots a Bellamy-style commonwealth of railroads, coal mines and common tables — starting from $5 of capital and 500 one-cent shares.
- The Kicked Coffin and the Girl With Two Names
A reporter's accidental kick led Seattle authorities to a body first identified as Myrtle Cook, then as Emily Hall - an Englishwoman whose death at a private lying-in hospital ended with arrests and a Birmingham minister's letters.
- They Would Rather Grow Than Beg: Seattle’s Unemployed Turned Vacant Lots Into Potato Patches
In the depression year of 1893, nearly 200 Seattle men—most with families—were given free seed, tools and borrowed city lots through the Pingree plan and the Co-operative Industrial Society.
- A Son Takes the Stand Against His Father in a Seattle Murder Trial
Prosecutors in the second Wilcox trial alleged that Charlotte Fetting's murder was a conspiracy involving her son-in-law—and the witnesses included the son-in-law's own teenage son.
- The Steamship Captain Who Defied the Union with a Revolver and a Hot-Water Hose
When labor organizers boarded the schooner 'Maid of Oregon' to enforce a non-union purge, the sixty-five-year-old captain met them with a weapon in one hand and a blast of steam in the other.
- The Lynch Law in Conconully
After settlers in Okanogan County took an Indigenous prisoner from jail to hang him, local officials scrambled to arm the white population, fearing a retaliatory uprising.
- The Lynching of a Teenager in Okanogan
A fifteen-year-old boy, accused of murder, was dragged from a jail cell by a masked mob and executed, igniting a cycle of violence in the Washington territory.
- Vigilante Justice in Okanogan County
A young indigenous man held in the Conconully jail is abducted and lynched by a masked mob, leaving behind a chilling report of frontier lawlessness.
- The Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act
Three men arrested under the 1882 Exclusion Act face deportation despite claims of residency; Judge Hanford declares the legal rights of Chinese laborers effectively suspended.
- The Waterfront War: How Seattle's Property Owners Stopped the State from Stealing Their Land
A landmark court ruling in January 1901 declares that the state cannot redraw harbor lines and seize waterfront property without paying fair compensation, marking a major victory for private ownership against government overreach.
- Judge Hanford Rules on Native Rights to Personal Autonomy
A landmark federal court decision affirms that Indigenous citizens holding land in severalty are not subject to the same liquor restrictions as those on reservations.
- The Fight for the Sound’s First Dry Dock
A century before Puget Sound became a hub of naval power, local politicians battled Congress for federal funding to establish a permanent dry dock at Port Orchard.