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| Year | Stories |
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| 1876 | 2 |
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| 1886 | 1 |
| 1888 | 15 |
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62 stories matching cheapest
- The Seattle Boom of 1888
A real estate pitch from 1888 promises fortune to those who buy into North Seattle’s 'unplatted land'—a document that highlights the origins of Seattle's rapid expansion and land speculation.
- Shopping Day for the Indigenous Visitors
A bustling Saturday in Seattle as Indigenous visitors from the bay fill the city's stores with goods and dry items.
- The Eight-Hour War: Metal Trades Try to Block Panama Fair
Everett labor leaders expose an attempt by regional employers to force open-shop conditions on the San Francisco World's Fair.
- The Original Queen Anne Land Rush
An 1889 promotional advertisement offers a rare look into how early developers sold the 'aristocratic' promise of Seattle’s steep topography to land-hungry investors.
- The Boomtown Hype of Queen Anne Hill
A classic 19th-century real estate advertisement paints a dream of rapid transit and prosperity on Seattle’s growing northern skyline.
- The Iron Road Rushes East
In 1892, railroad tycoon James J. Hill arrived in Spokane to finalize plans for a massive rail expansion that would forever link the Columbia River plateau to the transcontinental network.
- The Book Agent's Quick Exit
A traveling book salesman avoids a long legal ordeal by pleading guilty and leaving town immediately.
- Why Seattle Should Own Its Own Power
An 1889 editorial argues that municipal control of gas, electricity, and water is the only path to fair pricing and civic progress.
- The Unseen Resource: Seattle’s Timber Waste
A 1888 editorial proposes a transformative idea for the region: turning the massive piles of wasted forest debris into paper pulp.
- The Great Price War of 1878
A Seattle mercantile firm attempts to win over Snohomish customers by slashing prices in the face of local competition.
- Aberdeen Pitched as Future Hub for Tannin Extract
A San Francisco representative scouts the Grays Harbor basin, eyeing the abundance of bark and labor as the keys to a new industrial empire.
- The Snake Oil of Snohomish
A century-old miracle cure for man and beast that promised to heal everything from rheumatism to ‘hollow horn’.
- Poisoned Horses on the Horse Heaven Range: How One Sheepman Went to War With Coyotes
A Yakima County sheep raiser buys up 26 cayuses, shoots them, laces the carcasses with strychnine and arsenic, and reports that dozens of coyotes have already taken the bait.
- The Dream of a Working-Class Suburb at Palatine Hill
Promoters marketed the new Palatine Hill addition near Salmon Bay as the ideal, affordable commuter retreat for the city's growing workforce of laborers and mechanics.
- The High Cost of Being a Farmer
A scathing breakdown of how protective tariffs inflate the daily expenses of Washington homesteaders.
- The Real Estate Boom of the 1880s
Promotional copy for a new suburban development near Salmon Bay promised cheap, accessible housing for the city's rapidly growing workforce.
- The Unending Mountain: The Promise of the Newcastle Coal Mines
A detailed 1878 report on the labor, engineering, and seemingly limitless coal wealth of the Newcastle mines, then the engine of Seattle’s industrial future.
- The Dream of 'Palatine Hill': Selling the Industrial Suburb
Promotional copy from 1888 captures the rapid-fire development of Seattle’s outskirts, dangling the promise of affordable housing to laborers near the new railroad lines.
- The Promised Suburb: Sales Pitch for Palatine Hill
A late 19th-century land developer lures Seattle workers to a ‘suburban’ frontier near Salmon Bay with promises of factories and affordable housing.
- The $1,000 Payroll: How Seattle’s Hop Boom Put Cash in Local Hands
A local farmer’s record-breaking harvest didn’t just fill warehouses—it injected a thousand dollars into the city’s economy by hiring Indigenous laborers who spent their wages right here.
- Seattle's Audacious Bid for a Fresh-Water Harbor
In 1890, boosters promised that a ship canal from Lake Washington to Puget Sound would cut docking costs, defeat wood-boring teredo worms, and hand Seattle the world's cheapest harbor.
- A Brick Barn or a University? Olympia Presses Seattle on Its Grand Campus
A newspaper duel over the University of Washington's costly new buildings asks who pays for civic grandeur—and whether Seattle's generosity comes with unpaid debts.
- A Thousand Dogs for the Klondike
A Seattle syndicate imported stray dogs by the carload from Chicago, trained them to haul gold-rush supplies, and kenneled the pack in an abandoned brickyard.
- The Dry Dock That Would Make Puget Sound a Naval Power
Senator Watson Squire tells the U.S. Senate that the Port Orchard dry dock is the largest in America and the cheapest in the world—and that the Northwest's future depends on finishing it now.
- Spokane Falls Catches the 'Building Fever'
Every block in town is adding a structure, and Frank R. Moore's new brick block on Howard Street signals that the city's old capitalists believe in its future.