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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 1 |
| 1872 | 2 |
| 1876 | 3 |
| 1877 | 2 |
| 1878 | 1 |
| 1883 | 3 |
| 1886 | 1 |
| 1888 | 2 |
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41 stories matching magic
- The Mayor’s Raid: Seattle’s Gambling Houses Shut Down in One Night
Mayor Hume and Police Chief Sullivan execute a council resolution, closing every known gaming parlor in the city. Was it moral reform or a power play against saloon owners?
- The Shell That Survived the Fire: A Seattle Man’s Close Call with a Civil War Artifact
An eccentric local resident discovers a live cannonball in his firewood, leading to a terrifying explosion that sends him tumbling down a hillside.
- Two Miles Perched on the Lower Circle of a Rainbow
A Shelton legislator's private letter describing a steamer passage up Hammersley's Inlet becomes the best prose in the paper — a circle of prismatic color, starfish, glaciers and one awestruck captain.
- The Confidence Man’s Tears: How a Thief Fooled His Victim and the Court
In May 1877, Seattle confidence operator Dowd was granted a change of venue after moving his robbery victim to tears with a sob story about his destitute family. The District Attorney’s lenient stance sparked outrage among citizens who feared the law was too soft on crime.
- The Cross-Threaded Nozzle That Cost Ellensburg the Race
In an 1889 hose-cart contest, North Yakima’s fire team beat Ellensburg—but the day’s real drama was a stuck coupling and a heartbroken nozzleman.
- The Miracle Doctor of Pine Street: How One Man’s ‘New Science’ Tamed Seattle’s Sickness
In the winter of 1890, Dr. J. Eugene Jordan’s 'Histogenetic' remedies were curing everything from scrofula to neuralgia, drawing testimonies from desperate locals who claimed conventional medicine had failed them.
- The Night Colfax Built an Opera House
A secret crew of Spokane masons raised the walls of a new theater in a single night—while the town's electric lights conveniently failed.
- The Boy Who Stole a Horse to Earn His Keep
A 17-year-old’s desperate attempt to fund his future ends in jail, sparking a local debate on juvenile justice and the harsh realities of poverty in early Seattle.
- The Coal Miner Who Took the Capitol: Labor's 1911 Push in Olympia
Four hundred union delegates descended on the legislature, and a soft-spoken miner made the case for workmen's compensation — while the federation set its sights on women's eight-hour work and direct legislation.
- Whatcom Wakes Up, and Every Town Wants the Railroad
A Walla Walla correspondent surveys the 1883 Puget Sound boom: Whatcom's lots double, a wharf reaches deep water, and Seattle, Tacoma, Bellingham and Fairhaven all claim the coming terminus.
- When the Skagit River Swallowed Mount Vernon: The Great Flood of 1894
A sudden heat wave melted mountain snow, sending rivers over their banks and putting whole towns underwater. In Mount Vernon, 300 men fought a losing battle against the rising Skagit.
- Forty Young Olympians Become Company A — and Veto the 'Governor's Guard'
A new National Guard company musters at the capital, elects its officers, and then debates what to call itself — until one young soldier warns that a governor might someday misbehave.
- A Murder Trial Ends in Tears and a Whispered Verdict
After eighteen months in a felon's cell and a second trial, William Wilcox walks free — and a courtroom erupts.
- The Healing Lake That Hid a Walking Fish
On the Columbia plateau near Spokane lies a strange saline lake with no inlet and no outlet — credited with curing rheumatism, foaming like soap in the wind, and home to an axolotl that fooled the naturalists.
- The Temple of Thought: Snohomish Builds Its Own Athenaeum
A visiting orator declares the new Snohomish Athenaeum a 'temple of science, literature, and art,' rising from the wilderness to preserve the intellectual legacy of the Pacific Northwest.
- 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.