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234 stories matching border
- Cowboy Terry Caught Running Chinese Immigrants Across the Sumas Line
A notorious border outlaw, already linked to a fatal shootout, is arrested by customs inspectors after a stolen railway speeder is stopped south of Sumas.
- Border Smuggling Crisis
Revenue officers report nearly one hundred Chinese laborers crossing the northern frontier by boat as current enforcement resources prove inadequate.
- The Great Washington Land Grab
A federal investigation reveals how the Northern Pacific Railroad manipulated land office officials to claim 600,000 acres of prime territory in the Walla Walla Valley.
- The Pig That Almost Started a War
Before Seattle became a metropolis, Puget Sound was a wild frontier of rugged homesteaders, vigilante justice, and international border disputes sparked by a single, ill-fated swine.
- The Forgotten Prisoners of McNeil Island
Thirteen men held in limbo for years, caught between a nation that didn't want them and a border that refused their return.
- The Rogue of the Sound
A smuggler on the Puget Sound recounts a brutal night of human trafficking and violence, offering a chilling glimpse into the lawless reality of the 1880s maritime border.
- The Plague Panic at the Border
As smallpox cases surge in British Columbia, Seattle and surrounding towns scramble to implement strict quarantine measures and mandatory vaccinations to keep the disease at bay.
- Tacoma Man Arrested for Refusing Smallpox Vaccination
As fear of disease grips the border, travelers are being forcibly vaccinated and quarantined in a climate of escalating hysteria.
- A Nighttime Murder in Tacoma
A popular patrolman is stabbed to death by strangers while off-duty, sparking a vigilante threat in the streets.
- Four Killers Confined in Pierce County Jail
A grim summary of four separate homicide cases in Tacoma, as of August 1892, including one death caused by a drunken assault.
- The Kidnaping of Sam
A witness speaks out against the detention and deportation of a Chinese laborer by a local official.
- Border Smuggling and Violence Near Wickersham
A citizen posse intercepts a group of thirteen migrants near the railroad tracks, leading to a shootout and local manhunt.
- The Judge Who Warned Seattle Not to Sell Its Waterfront to a Canal Company
In 1894, Judge John J. McGilvra urged Congress to build the Lake Washington Ship Canal and warned that a private company's tideflat scheme would put tolls on the water and enrich speculators at public expense.
- A Wall of Smoke and Flame Across Puget Sound
Forest fires from Hood Canal to the Nooksack Valley left dozens of families homeless in 1894, while smoke turned steamboat travel blind and daily life in Seattle into a gray haze.
- The Poet-Waiter Who Drowned in Seattle Harbor
C. W. Chantrell came from a noble French family and carried a love poem in his pocket. He died broke, alcoholic, and alone on the steamer Idaho—and Seattle's coroner called it an accident.
- Olympia’s Capitol Fight: Donate the Land or Lose the Statehouse
A late-night Senate debate over the new state capitol turned on eleven acres, a $150,000 land scheme and whether Olympia should pay to keep the building—before the bill passed to applause.
- The Tide Line War: Who Owns the Water?
A judge in Tacoma settles a bitter dispute over waterfront property, ruling that private owners can only claim land up to the high-tide mark—leaving the rest for the state and public use.
- The Opium Conspiracy: How Seattle’s Customs Chief Played Both Sides
A dramatic trial reveals a scheme where federal inspectors smuggled contraband across the border while pretending to seize it, exposing deep corruption in early 20th-century Pacific Northwest law enforcement.
- The Panhandle's Longing: A Century-Old Border Dispute
Before Washington became a state, Northern Idahoans fought for annexation, citing mountain barriers and shared economic interests with the Columbia River basin.
- The Unsung Pioneers of the Skagit River
When federal funds for regional infrastructure failed to materialize, a group of Seattle loggers took matters into their own hands to open the Skagit River to navigation.
- The Ghost of a Train Passenger
A traveler on an express train encounters a sweet, golden-haired girl in a shawl, only to discover she was a desperate murderess fleeing toward the Canadian border.
- The 'Whisky Trade' at Port Townsend
A British gunboat captures twelve Indigenous prisoners following violent disorder fueled by the illegal supply of American spirits across the border.
- The Black Gold Rush of 1888
As Seattle's industry boomed, the city's hunger for coal outpaced its supply, triggering a frantic expansion of mines across the territory.
- The 'Other' America: How Seattle's Elite Feared the 'Unassimilable' Masses
A January 1889 federal report on immigration warns that new arrivals are too different to become citizens, fueling calls for exclusion just as Seattle prepares for its own explosive growth.
- Seattle's 1889 Fight Over Tide Flats and Docks
As Washington prepares for statehood, a contentious battle emerges over who owns—and who profits from—the valuable tide lands bordering Seattle.