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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1882 | 130 |
| 1883 | 799 |
| 1884 | 455 |
| 1885 | 838 |
| 1886 | 492 |
| 1887 | 484 |
3,198 stories
- The Ten-Hour Day comes to Port Gamble
A major mill company unilaterally reduces labor hours without cutting pay, setting a new industry standard in the Puget Sound.
- The Shadow on Lake Washington
A grizzly discovery on Mercer Island leads to a frantic, suspicion-filled murder investigation in 1886 Seattle.
- The Siege of Port Blakely
When mill workers organized for better conditions at the Port Blakely mill, the company responded by calling in the National Guard, turning a labor dispute into a military occupation.
- The Trial of 'Mickey' McGrekan: A Window into Frontier Domestic Violence
A young woman’s struggle for survival and a legal showdown in 1887 Port Townsend reveal the brutal realities hidden behind the closed doors of boarding houses.
- The Ghost of Fort Steilacoom: Workers Cheated Out of Their Wages
A group of laborers at the new asylum construction site speak out against contractors and commissioners who left them unpaid and used rot-prone materials.
- The Swindled Sheep of Whatcom County
A malicious act of agricultural sabotage left 2,000 sheep dead, exposing the brutal desperation of early range life.
- The Horror at Slaughter
A man named Spafford is arrested for the gruesome killing of his wife in a small village near the White River after he attempted to perform an illegal abortion.
- The Yakima River Train Wreck
A tragic collision at a rocky bluff on the Yakima River leaves seven dead and exposes a reckless culture of railroad speeding and negligence.
- The Horror on South Eighth Street
A brutal incident in the outskirts of Seattle leaves a neighborhood in shock after a domestic attack.
- The 'Pompous Autocrat' of the Sound
A Seattle newspaper lashes out at a revenue cutter captain who refused to aid a vessel in distress, claiming his uniform shouldn't be 'rubbed the wrong way.'
- The Shadow of the Noose: The Murder Trial of O.B. Miller
A gripping courtroom drama unfolds in Seattle as O.B. Miller faces his third trial for the 1887 murder of two men on Lake Washington.
- The Missing Certificates of Port Townsend
A federal judge probes a mysterious 1,000-certificate shortfall that allowed Chinese immigrants to bypass strict exclusionary laws.
- The Whatcom Million-Dollar Bet
Citizens of Bellingham Bay pledge their own wealth to lure the railroad, hoping to transform their sleepy coastal town into a Pacific terminus.
- Tragedy in the Trenches: A Fatal Seattle Construction Collapse
Two laborers were killed instantly when a sewer excavation on 25th Street succumbed to shifting earth and rock.
- The Brutal Reality of the Seattle Sailor Market
A waterfront insider describes the predatory schemes used to trap unsuspecting men into dangerous lives at sea.
- The Cannery Confrontation: Tacoma’s Labor Fight Over Chinese Workers
When an agent attempted to bring Chinese laborers to a Tacoma cannery in 1887, city officials clashed over the rule of law versus the intense public anti-Chinese sentiment.
- The Fight for Cheap Labor in the Pacific Northwest
In 1887, prominent Seattle and Tacoma business leaders sat down to argue over the 'necessity' of the Chinese exclusion movement and the future of regional trade.
- 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 Struggle for Tacoma’s 'Salvation'
A committee of business owners meets to address the proposal of re-introducing Chinese workers to a city that prided itself on their total expulsion.
- The Shadowy Land Claim at Quilayute
A local teacher exposes a fraudulent land grab scheme involving the intimidation of Indigenous residents and forged petitions to the Land Office.
- The Unsolved Murder of John Smith
A Scottish laborer is found beaten to death on the roadside, his pockets empty and his identity a mystery to the local coroner’s jury.
- Seattle's Corrupt Policing: The Fee System of 1887
How Seattle’s police force was incentivized to hunt for arrests and padding their own pockets through court fees, sparking a local civic scandal.
- The Seattle Kitchen Fire
A fire guts a cheap Seattle boarding house, leaving lodgers scrambling for safety through upper-story windows.
- The Baltimore Oyster House Fire
A suspected arson and double tragedy at a Second Street hotel leaves the community in shock as the accused points a finger at his own wife.
- English Homesteader Runs Out of Money Near Seattle
An immigrant family struggling to clear their homestead near Seattle loses their only daughter and everything they own to a tragic logging accident.