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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1861 | 1 |
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 2 |
| 1880 | 1 |
| 1883 | 3 |
| 1885 | 3 |
| 1886 | 1 |
| 1889 | 3 |
| 1891 | 1 |
| 1892 | 7 |
| 1893 | 3 |
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| 1895 | 7 |
| 1898 | 2 |
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48 stories matching invari
- Seattle's Teachers Were Put on Monthly Contracts—and Cut Off in a Fire or Epidemic
In June 1895, the Seattle school board approved next year's teaching staff but changed the terms of the job: no annual contracts, ten days' notice, and no pay if fire or disease closed a school. The same meeting also debated Queen Anne school plans and cost overruns.
- The Art of the 'Back-Seat Sermon'
A Seattle preacher shares his cunning, slightly cynical strategy to force young couples in the back pews to stop courting and actually listen to the gospel.
- The Steam-Heated Ice Caves of Mount Rainier
A mountaineering party discovers the natural comfort of volcanic heat at 14,000 feet, sleeping in ice chambers kept warm by the mountain's own breath.
- The Tyrant of the High Seas: A Sailor’s Knife vs. a Mate’s Revolver
In a dramatic trial before U.S. Commissioner D.S. Smith, witnesses describe how the first mate of the brig *Sampson* beat a sailor into paralysis with an iron bar and revolver, sparking outrage over maritime abuse.
- The Partisan’s Price: How Civil Service Reform Cost a Delegate His Seat
In 1876, King County’s Republican establishment turned on Judge O. Jacobs for refusing to hand out federal jobs to party loyalists, revealing the brutal mechanics of the spoils system in early Washington Territory.
- The Streetcar Men Asked Seattle to Set Their Wages. The City's Lawyer Said No.
A union petition to write conductor and motorman pay into the street railway franchise ran into the corporation counsel's constitutional wall — so the council sent it back to committee to try again as an ordinance.
- The Town That Grew on Nerve and Water Power
A visitor marvels at Spokane Falls in 1883, where brick blocks, a flouring mill and two colleges were rising on pure booster confidence.
- The Man from Mexico Comes to Town: Wenatchee’s New Theater Opens with Star-Studded Fanfare
As the city celebrates its new cultural landmark, the Watson Stock Company arrives to perform 'The Man from Mexico,' promising a week of high drama and comedy that rivals Seattle's biggest hits.
- The Capitol Riots: How a Bribery Scandal Shook Washington’s First Legislature
In the halls of Olympia, Republican lawmakers turned on each other with fists and threats over a U.S. Senate seat, exposing a brazen attempt to buy votes that disgraced the young state.
- The Pigeon Shoot That Turned Tacoma's Traps Into a Free-for-All
Seattle's Stevens outgunned Tacoma's Ed Barlow 85 to 76 before a roaring crowd, while side bets, civic rivalry, and a rogue band of skirmishers turned a genteel trap match into barely controlled chaos.
- The Man Behind Newport's Electric Lights
A Chicago utility magnate's company invests $100,000 to bring electric power to Newport, promising modern service at fair rates.
- The Sudden Death of the Man Who Ran Seattle’s Newspaper, Bank and Republican Party
George H. Heilbron, banker, Republican kingmaker and editor of the Post-Intelligencer, died without warning. Rival Seattle papers agreed the city had lost one of its most useful citizens.
- The Chief's Daughter in the Shadow of the City Named for Her Father
A San Francisco Chronicle correspondent visits Princess Angeline in her Seattle shack and finds the city proudly carving her father's face on a new business block while his daughter lives on charity.
- The Ten-Hour Day That Split Seattle’s Streetcar Men
A new state law barred Seattle’s streetcar companies from forcing motormen and conductors to work more than ten hours a day. But some workers petitioned to keep the old schedules, because they were paid by the hour.
- The Iron Hotel: Seattle's Jail Let Convicted Killers Wait Out the Law
A 1905 exposé inside the King County jail found convicted murderers lingering for years in a steel cage while appeals stalled, one prisoner fashioning a pistol from a shoe shank and escaping, and taxpayers footing the bill.
- The Self-Made Man of Spokane Falls and His 240-Acre 'Idlewild'
A profile of James E. Roe, who arrived four years ago with not a dollar and now owns a livery stable, a sawmill interest, and a ranch of surpassing beauty eight miles east of the city.
- A Yesler Avenue Divorce Scandal Gets a Merciless Airing
Testimony closes in one of Seattle’s most notorious divorce cases, with Mary Steel cross-examined for hours and a money collector named Dugan on the defensive.
- Sell the Bonds, Build the Furnaces: Seattle's Steel Gamble
A 1902 prospectus asks ordinary Seattle savers to finance a Pacific Coast iron and steel empire — a furnace at Irondale, open-hearth works on the West Seattle waterfront — with a hundred dollars of stock thrown in free with every hundred-dollar bond.
- The Berry Math That Made Puyallup
A fruit-growers' manager laid out the 1898 economics of Western Washington berries: $1 a crate, 75-cent hired labor, and a cannery on the horizon.
- The Beating of Henry Brown: A Runaway Elevator Boy and a Family's Violent Secret
A 14-year-old black elevator operator flees his home after a savage whipping by his father, revealing a tangled story of poverty, pride, and punishment in 1894 Seattle.
- The Night the Chickens Sang Backup: Spokane’s Poultry Show
Spokane’s annual poultry exhibition drew hundreds of birds, a towering silver trophy, and an orchestra the chickens refused to let finish alone.
- Who Gets to Rewrite Seattle's Charter — the Council or the People?
A crowded, argumentative hearing at City Hall: the Chamber of Commerce is accused of a 'somersault,' a lawyer sneers at 'the people,' and Dr. Ramsey answers a councilman with a line of Latin.
- 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.