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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1858 | 2 |
| 1859 | 5 |
| 1860 | 3 |
| 1861 | 2 |
| 1862 | 1 |
| 1863 | 1 |
| 1865 | 1 |
| 1871 | 1 |
| 1872 | 11 |
| 1876 | 68 |
| 1877 | 54 |
| 1878 | 36 |
| 1879 | 5 |
| 1880 | 11 |
| 1882 | 1 |
| 1883 | 68 |
| 1884 | 44 |
| 1885 | 43 |
| 1886 | 20 |
| 1887 | 32 |
| 1888 | 32 |
| 1889 | 98 |
| 1890 | 18 |
| 1891 | 80 |
| 1892 | 146 |
| 1893 | 122 |
| 1894 | 118 |
| 1895 | 212 |
| 1897 | 4 |
| 1898 | 22 |
| 1899 | 30 |
| 1900 | 3 |
| 1902 | 2 |
| 1903 | 46 |
| 1904 | 62 |
| 1905 | 6 |
| 1907 | 1 |
| 1908 | 40 |
| 1909 | 95 |
| 1910 | 21 |
| 1911 | 10 |
| 1912 | 3 |
| 1914 | 12 |
| 1915 | 25 |
| 1916 | 30 |
| 1917 | 12 |
| 1918 | 1 |
| 1919 | 1 |
| 1922 | 3 |
| 1923 | 8 |
| 1924 | 4 |
| 1925 | 6 |
| 1929 | 1 |
22 stories matching improvement
- The Future of Farming at Washington Agricultural College
A visit to the Pullman campus reveals the experimental work being done to improve Eastern Washington's agricultural yields.
- A Steel Bridge to Make Vineland a Boom Town
A 1,485-foot span across the Snake River to Lewiston is under construction, and its promoters promise it will raise property values more than any improvement ever could.
- The Railroad Men's Retirement Plan
With jobs held at the whim of superiors, railroad employees are buying up farmland as a hedge against being fired or incapacitated.
- The Populist Fight for Tax Relief
A representative explains the constitutional struggle to exempt small property holdings from taxation.
- James J. Hill's Gamble to Make Seattle the Cheapest Port on the Pacific
The Great Northern's president arrives in Seattle with the country's foremost elevator builder and a plan to carve a ship canal, fill it in, and plant a 500,000-bushel steel grain terminal beside it — before this year's harvest comes in.
- The Battle for the Road into Ritzville
Local farmers are organizing to repair the treacherous road leading into town, demanding the city match their efforts to improve the final stretch.
- The Creamery Boom in Kittitas Valley
How specialized dairy production transformed the landscape and economy of Ellensburg at the turn of the century.
- Farmland Near Garfield Doubles in Two Years as Newcomers Pay Cash
A railway sells 9,600 acres in Adams County outright, and Whitman County farms that went begging at $15 an acre now bring $25 to $30 — bought to work, the paper insists, not to speculate on.
- The Battle for the White River Valley
Farmers rally against a plan to divert the White River, fearing a return to the devastating floods that ruined their land.
- They Called the Prairie Worthless. He Planted Wheat Anyway.
A government immigration inspector bought gravelly land south of Tacoma and proved the skeptics wrong — sixteen bushels an acre of No. 1 hard wheat.
- The Sheriff’s Bold Stand Against Mob Rule
A newly minted newspaper editor-sheriff argues that local complicity, not just law enforcement failures, fuels vigilante violence in Washington.
- When Every Eastern Market Was Swamped: The 1897 Fruit Glut That Broke Northwest Growers
A Northwest agricultural writer tallies the wreckage of a boom season — glutted markets, freight and icing bills nobody could pay, and a blunt prescription for growers: dry your prunes and hold for a price.
- The Dairy That Started With 20 Rented Cows and Ended Up With 2,560 Acres
Two Spokane entrepreneurs built Hazelwood Dairy on a promise that milk would be exactly as advertised—at a time when watered milk was the norm.
- Two Creamery Men Split Yakima County's Milk — Then Went to War Over It
Between them, E. E. James and Jacob Frazer control nearly every creamery in the county. Instead of agreeing on a price for milk, they are raiding each other's routes, poaching suppliers, and appealing to the state dairy commissioner over who can even run a Babcock test correctly.
- Yakima Farmers Answer the Call to Organize
At Mason's Opera House, A. B. Leckenby tells North Yakima growers that cooperation—not outside capital—is the valley's best hope, and a countywide farmers' club takes shape for Feb. 12.
- Dairymen Declare War on the 'Bogus Butter' Combine
Washington's dairymen vote to petition Congress after their own dairy commissioner admits he cannot stop cheap oleomargarine shipped straight through to Alaska — and one delegate proposes dyeing it black.
- The Debts a Country Owes Its Farmers — and Its Farmers' Wives
An 1898 farm-column editorial tallies what rural Washington neglects: untrained road supervisors, school directors so illiterate the legislature had to bar them, and farm women who never see a newspaper or a neighbor.
- Seattle's Fruit Growers Take On the Wholesalers — and City Hall
A lively meeting of the King County Fruitgrowers' Society pushes for a cooperative cannery, hears a pioneer judge denounce the middlemen who ship in California's cast-offs, and calls out a city council that once tried to license peddlers out of business.
- The Palouse Wheat Boom Was a Gold Mine—Until the Debt Came Due
An agricultural professor traces the Palouse’s speculative wheat economy: inflated land purchases, the rain-ruined crop of 1893, the panic that followed, and the sudden recovery by 1897.
- The Dairy Commissioner’s War on Adulterated Food
A Washington dairy official warns that fake honey, poisoned candy, oleomargarine and brewers’ grain are cheating farmers — and demands stronger pure-food laws.
- A Fruit Grower's Pitch: Stop Sending Cash East — Feed Alaska Instead
Before the Northwest Fruitgrower's Association, S. L. Moore argued that Washington farmers should diversify beyond wheat and prunes, supply Alaska and Western markets, and let the Northern Pacific's traveling fruit exhibit lure settlers west.
- The Night the Chickens Sang Backup: Spokane’s Poultry Show
Spokane’s annual poultry exhibition drew hundreds of birds, a towering silver trophy, and an orchestra the chickens refused to let finish alone.