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1. He Burned the Deed to Prove His Love — Then Sold Her House for $1

   A Tacoma wife says her husband coaxed her into signing away the family home, torched the paper to win her back, and secretly sold the property to his son.

   May 23, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerTacoma, Pierce CountyHousing & Rent · Scandal

2. A Mountain Ford, a Missing Body, and a Father’s Search

   Seth Catlin crossed the Upper Cowlitz to fetch the mail and never came back. Days later, his father was still on the river with nets set for his son.

   May 25, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerCowlitz CountyTrue Crime · Disasters

3. The Buried Gold of Dungeness and the Woman Ansel White Left Behind

   Neighbors near Dungeness take up divining rods and dig out stumps hunting a dead man's fortune — and turn up instead the fifty-year-old story of the woman he ruined.

   May 26, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerDungeness, Clallam CountyTrue Crime · Local Legends

4. The $5,000 Price of Freedom: Tacoma's Wilcox Trial and the Taxpayers' Burden

   A detailed accounting of the Wilcox murder trial reveals the staggering cost of criminal prosecutions in 1899, from $137 for a witness from Los Angeles to the fees for 76 witnesses and a jury.

   May 26, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerTacoma, Pierce CountyCity Hall

5. The Chief and the Demijohn: Napoleon Whatcom Dies on the Tracks

   A former chief of the Puyallup, remembered for wit and wisdom, is struck by a freight train near the Puyallup depot — with a jug of beer at his side.

   May 29, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerPuyallup, Pierce CountyStrange But True

6. Teredos Ate the Piles—and 800 Sacks of Oats Went Into the Harbor

   A warehouse on the Harrington & Smith dock collapsed at the Seattle waterfront, nearly trapping workers and dumping a cargo of oats into the silt.

   May 29, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyDisasters

7. The Real-Estate Man Who Talked to His Dead Wives

   A Seattle real-estate operator was committed to Steilacoom after a court found him insane—convinced he could commune with his dead wives and that enemies were trying to poison him with chicken lice and smallpox germs.

   Jun 1, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyStrange But True

8. Seventy Percent of Washington's Schoolbooks Came From One Publisher

   A new textbook law forces Olympia to throw out most of the books Washington children use. One agent demanded a private hearing with the state board; the board opened the doors and he walked out.

   Jun 2, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerOlympia, Thurston CountyFollow the Money · City Hall

9. Tacoma Looks to Seattle for Paving Lessons

   Tacoma city officials plan a trip to Seattle to study paving techniques, hoping to resolve a long-standing dispute over the condition of Pacific Avenue.

   Jun 4, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerPacific Avenue, Tacoma, Pierce CountyCity Hall

10. A Missed Deadline for the Rainier Avenue Line

    A failed payment leads to the forfeiture of earnest money for a local electric railway.

    Jun 15, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerRainier Avenue, Seattle, King CountyFollow the Money · Boom & Bust

11. College Musicians Take Seattle by Storm

    Stanford and University of California students perform a sold-out concert at the Seattle Theater, complete with a bushel of roses and a bouquet of turnips.

    Jun 16, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle Theater, Seattle, King CountyBoom & Bust

12. Kent Farmers Demand the Electric Railway Seattle Promised

    A Kent Valley letter-writer says freight costs to Seattle are strangling the valley — and calls out the Rainier electric line to finally reach Renton and Kent.

    Jun 18, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerKent Valley, Kent, King CountyBoom & Bust

13. The Shingle Trust: Northwest Millmen Build a Blacklist for Eastern Buyers

    Twenty-three firms controlling nine-tenths of the Pacific Northwest's shingle output meet in Seattle to form an association, blacklist short-paying Eastern dealers and face down the railroads.

    Jun 18, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyWork & Pay · Follow the Money

14. A Whole Ox on a 30-Foot Trench: The Butchers' Free Feed for Ten Thousand

    Six beeves, sixteen sheep, one ox and 45 boiled hams — roasted overnight over open coals at Madison Street Park and handed out free on pasteboard plates, with a greased pig, a greased pole and dancing until daybreak.

    Jun 20, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMadison Street Park, Seattle, King CountyNightlife · Strange But True

15. Fifteen Thousand for Dinner: The Butchers Roast Seattle a Whole Ox

    The trade closed the shops, marched from Pioneer Place to the Yesler dock to meet Tacoma, and hauled the whole town out to Madison Park for four solid hours of carving, a ball game against Arlington, a greased pig and a dance under the lanterns.

    Jun 21, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMadison Park, Seattle, King CountyNightlife

16. When Wires Crossed: Seattle's Great Electrical Tangle of 1895

    A freak accident at 11 p.m. mixed electric light, fire alarm, and telephone lines, cutting off 50 subscribers and burning out equipment across downtown Seattle.

    Jun 23, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyStrange But True

17. A Five-Year-Old Boy Killed on the Railroad Bridge — Weeks After His Father Died the Same Way

    Little Napoleon Whatcom was playing on the Puyallup reservation bridge when an eastbound train struck him; his father had been killed by a freight train only weeks before.

    Jun 25, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerTacoma, Pierce CountyExclusion & Resistance · Disasters

18. The Newspaper Bribe: How State Printing Muzzled New Jersey's Press

    A Seattle editor warns against a Washington law that would pay newspapers to print the statutes, citing New Jersey's scandalous 'corruption fund.'

    Jun 25, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyFollow the Money · City Hall

19. A Launch, a Leaking Tank, and Eight Tourists Who Nearly Died on Lake Washington

    A gasoline explosion aboard J. B. MacDougall's launch off the Madison Street landing nearly turns an Alaska reunion into a catastrophe — no life preservers, no bars, and flames between the double hull.

    Jun 25, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyDisasters

20. A Lake Chelan Man Says He Was Beaten and Robbed in a Seattle Saloon

    Martin Fleming claims the proprietor and a bartender of the Bureau saloon took $95 in gold from his pockets while a woman held his arms — but the saloonkeeper tells a very different story.

    Jun 26, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyTrue Crime · Nightlife

21. Packing House Ultimatum: Repeal the Ordinance or We Move to Tacoma

    Frye & Bruhn want to rebuild their slaughterhouse inside city limits and warn Seattle will lose eighty jobs to its rival if the council refuses.

    Jun 28, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyWork & Pay · City Hall

22. What and Where Is Puget Sound?

    A church naming dispute over a new Episcopal bishopric spirals into a history lesson on the waterway's true boundaries — and how mapmakers, old settlers and Congress each drew the line differently.

    Jun 30, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyStrange But True

23. The Saloon Tip-Off That Saved Six Italians From a Shangaied Ship

    A sailor boarding-house man promised six Italian longshoremen 35 cents an hour at Port Townsend. Union men smelled a shanghai and got word to the waterfront before the ship sailed for South America.

    Jun 30, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyWork & Pay · True Crime

24. The Drunken Clerk Who Shot a Policeman Walked Out With a $1,000 Fine

    Harry C. Good, a young man of good reputation, shot Officer Glasscock in a drunken freak. A judge who could have sent him to prison for years let him off with a fine — while a horse thief and a burglar each got three years.

    Jun 30, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyCity Hall · True Crime

25. The Editor Who Told the Populists to Cancel Their Subscriptions

    A small-town Washington editor refuses to let a secret Populist club run the Fourth of July, and invites any reader who disagrees to stop his paper.

    Jul 2, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerColumbia CountyCity Hall

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