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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 2 |
| 1877 | 3 |
| 1878 | 2 |
| 1883 | 1 |
| 1884 | 1 |
| 1886 | 1 |
| 1889 | 4 |
| 1891 | 2 |
| 1892 | 5 |
| 1893 | 5 |
| 1894 | 4 |
| 1895 | 5 |
| 1898 | 1 |
| 1903 | 1 |
| 1910 | 1 |
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| 1925 | 1 |
41 stories matching cautious
- The Eccentric Prussian Who Vanished Near Green Lake
Joseph Lingenau disappeared from Walla Walla addition with about $250 in his pocket, leaving behind a trail of odd behavior—and two sons he had sent to the orphans' home.
- The City That Couldn't Build: A Letter from a Frustrated Investor
In February 1889, an anonymous writer lambasts Seattle’s Common Council for failing to establish street grades, arguing that this bureaucratic paralysis is the primary reason developers are withholding capital and leaving the city in a building slump.
- The Treasurer-Elect Nobody Would Sign For
J.W. Maple won the King County treasurer's office, then allegedly traded away patronage and alienated his own party—leaving him unable to post the bond required to take the job.
- The Sea Gives Up a Member of the Ganiard Party
Four months after a storm swallowed a family of musicians bound for a dance, the body of young Wesley Ganiard is recovered near the mouth of the Snohomish River — but his mother is still missing.
- The Trial That Shook Tacoma: The Scandal of Sadie Brantner and Judge Wickersham
A dramatic courtroom battle in the late 1880s reveals a web of sexual politics, professional ethics, and character assassination involving a prominent probate judge and a young woman accused of immorality.
- The City's Sudden Morality Raid Targeted the Wrong Women
A Yakima letter-writer asks why licensed saloons kept their protection while women were fined $5 a month in police court.
- The Plague at the Doorstep: Seattle’s Battle Against Smallpox in 1877
As smallpox ravages Port Orchard and Salmon Bay, the city's Health Officer takes drastic quarantine measures against Indigenous communities, highlighting the fragile public health infrastructure of early Seattle.
- Troops Take the Yards as Seattle Braces for the Great Railroad Strike
Regular artillery, deputy marshals and a nervous militia dig in across the city — even hauling the state's rifles up to the university for safekeeping — as the 1894 Pullman boycott reaches Puget Sound.
- The Minister, the Miracle Cure, and Olympia's War on Drink
Rev. Napoleon Hoagland preached "salvation by science" at Tacoma Hall, touting Dr. Keeley's famous remedy for alcoholism and urging Olympia to raise money so the poor could be treated too.
- Anything to Beat Stretch: The Whole County Ticket, Man by Man
The Sun walks Snohomish County's 1876 ballot from sheriff to coroner, and finds a whaling skipper turned pile-driver, a college-trained logger, and a sheriff whose enemies have a slogan of their own.
- Ten Gales, Three Lost Schooners, and a Widow Who Wasn't
A Seattle seal hunter back from eight months in the North Pacific describes a season that swallowed whole crews — and explains why he'd rather kill seals with a spear than a gun.
- Seattle’s Post-Panic Pep Talk: Canals, Steel and Paved Streets
On New Year’s Day 1895, Seattle’s mayor and aldermen promised economy, railroad terminals and a Lake Washington canal—and insisted the Panic of 1893 was finally fading.
- The Poor Man's Stump Burner: Newport Farmers Pack Kelly's Hall
In 1909, 150 farmers crowded a Newport hall to hear a state expert explain how to clear land by charring stumps—a low-cost method that promised to open Pend Oreille County fields.
- Bismarck’s Bluff: Germany Claims Samoa While Washington Watches
As the German Chancellor declares no treaty prevents his nation from seizing control of the Pacific islands, U.S. officials in Washington struggle to respond to a diplomatic crisis that threatens American interests across the ocean.
- Canoeing the Queets: Promise and Dispossession on the Olympic Peninsula
An 1892 travelogue celebrates homesteaders in the Queets River valley while arguing that Native hunters should be confined to the reservation.
- The Yesler Will Case: A Dead Millionaire, a Missing Will, and a Widow on Trial
In a Seattle courtroom, prosecutors argue that Mrs. Yesler conspired to destroy her husband's will—while defense lawyers call the case a web of speculation and newspaper rumor.