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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1888 | 27 |
| 1889 | 51 |
| 1891 | 28 |
| 1892 | 206 |
| 1893 | 224 |
| 1894 | 201 |
| 1895 | 161 |
898 stories
- A Tragic End at K and 11th
A Tacoma carpenter, struggling with alcoholism and personal despair, takes his own life.
- The Disappearing Lay Reader of Tacoma
A Minnesota man and church treasurer leaves his bride and his creditors behind in a cloud of financial scandal.
- The Barber Who Stole His Own Shop
Facing a rent hike, a Tacoma barber dismantled his entire business and vanished into the night.
- The Minstrel Show of High Society
Tacoma’s social elite perform in blackface for charity, reflecting the normalized racial appropriation of the 1890s.
- The Newspaper War of Tacoma
A confrontation between the Ledger and the News turns physical as a publisher faces off against a union printer over the use of machinery.
- The Letter That Turned a Railroad Strike Into a Frontier War
A Tacoma cavalryman's lurid account of fighting Indigenous people in the Olympics and riding through a strike reads like pulp fiction — and the paper knew it.
- Bags of Gold and a Streetcar Auction in Tacoma
A sheriff's auction outside the Pierce County courthouse transfers the Point Defiance end of the street railway to General Electric for $82,000—with $100,000 in gold sitting in a hack.
- The Divorce Case Slugfest
A bitter custody and alimony dispute turns physical in a Tacoma law office.
- A Detective's Bizarre Extortion Claim
A Tacoma private investigator is accused of kidnapping a woman who claims he harassed her after a dispute over a $1,000 demand.
- The Saloonkeeper’s Misrepresented Nationality
A group of Norwegian citizens in Tacoma take a public stand against a local businessman claiming their heritage for political gain.
- The Great Moonlight Water Pipe Heist
The Tacoma Light and Water Company sues the city after the Mayor and Board of Public Works seized their pipes under the cover of darkness.
- The Deputy Who Was 'More Dead Than Alive'—and Came Back
Shot in the back at North Yakima, Deputy U.S. Marshal Jack Jolly survived blood poisoning after a desperate abdominal operation in Tacoma.
- A Rope of Rags, a Jar of Coal Oil, and a Tacoma Arson Plot
Fire Chief Bruemmer found a carefully laid fuse running through a mortgaged tenement—just before the owner left town for Neah Bay.
- A Wife Followed Her Husband to Tacoma. Then She Swallowed Laudanum.
William Woodard's wife tracked him from Portland to the Auburn House, where she found him living with Mollie Agnew. A suicide attempt, an adultery charge and a stack of newspaper clippings followed.
- Three Banks, One Creamery, and a Race Against the Clock
Seattle and Tacoma banks claw over the last assets of an insolvent creamery, ending with a sheriff's sprint to the wharf before an injunction could land.
- The General Who Laid Out Tacoma
Maj. Gen. John W. Sprague—Northern Pacific superintendent, Tacoma's first mayor and a founder of its bank and chamber—died at 74, leaving a city he helped place on the map.
- The Decoy in the Rubbish Heap: How Tacoma Residents Outsmarted a Private Detective
When a notorious private eye attempted to frame two young express employees for a phantom theft, their friends staged an elaborate performance to expose his heavy-handed tactics.
- The Arsonist's Confession: 'He Wanted Me to Burn It'
A Tacoma man details his coerced participation in the Aurora Hotel fire, revealing a plot by property owner Ed Williams to collect insurance money.
- The Tacoma Coal Strike: When Miners Turned on the Overseer
A labor dispute at the Pacific Coast's only coke works escalates into a siege of an office and mass arrests, highlighting the volatile tension between mine owners and workers in 1890s Washington.
- The Smuggler's Shield: How a Seattle Customs Chief Defended Himself in Tacoma
In the height of the 1888 opium smuggling scandal, Chief Inspector Gardner takes the stand in Tacoma, claiming he was set up by political rivals to cover his own failures.
- The Seduction of a Judge: Wickersham Indicted in Tacoma
Territorial Grand Jury Returns True Bill Against Probate Judge James Wickersham for Alleged Seduction of Miss Sadie C. Brantuar; He Arraigned and Given Until Noon to Plead.
- The Women Who Refused to Look Away
Tacoma’s most prominent ladies rally behind a betrayed young woman in court, challenging Seattle’s apathetic society to stand with her.
- The Third Time's the Charm: Tacoma Court Begins Murder Trial of Mortgage Foreclosure Killer
William M. White faces his third trial for the fatal shooting of James McMillan over a farm dispute in the Puyallup Valley, a case that has dragged on since 1886.
- The Tragedy of a Backyard Stream
A toddler’s unsupervised play ends in a heartbreaking drowning in a narrow irrigation ditch, highlighting the perils of a growing city.
- The True Cost of a 'Terminus'
In 1889, Tacoma residents began to realize that the price of hosting the Northern Pacific Railroad’s Pacific terminal was the surrender of their civic independence.