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| Year | Stories |
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78 stories matching newcom
- The Gentleman Forger of North Seattle
A dapper newcomer claiming to be a real estate mogul is revealed as a wanted Colorado bank swindler.
- Branding Season in the North
A vivid, firsthand account of the dangerous and dust-filled work of a cattle drive and roundup in the Pacific Northwest.
- The Laundries of Lenora Street
A cat-and-mouse game between Seattle authorities and Chinese migrants navigating the exclusionary landscape of 1892.
- Rainier’s Shingle Boom and the Road Olympia Forgot
A Rainier correspondent reports new shingle mills and warns that Olympia merchants are losing rural trade to Tacoma by ignoring the roads that feed the city.
- The Daily Parade of Moral Rottenness
A fed-up Seattle resident petitions City Hall to end the brazen practice of parading sex workers through the city's main streets by carriage and brass band.
- Hellfire and Fainting: A Celebrity Preacher Packs Seattle's Jubilee Hall
The English broad churchman drew such a crowd that two people fainted and latecomers were turned away from Jubilee Hall.
- The Unlikely Swimmer of the San Juans
A stylish newcomer to the island society set shocks locals at the natatorium with a startling reveal about her supposed physical disability.
- The Old Settlers' Legislative Fantasy
In an 1871 satirical 'Act,' a Seattle newspaper mocked the arrival of ambitious newcomers by proposing that long-time residents receive supreme, legally mandated authority.
- The Nativist Gatekeeping of the Grays Harbor Boom
An editorial from the Aberdeen Herald argues for stricter federal controls to preserve the local labor market and favor specific immigrant groups over others.
- The Great One Thing: Seattle’s First Bid to Stop Strangers from Leaving Empty-Handed
In 1876, a group of local citizens proposed an 'Immigration and Labor Bureau' to help newcomers find work and land, recognizing that Seattle was losing potential residents because they didn't know where to start.
- Thirty Men Want One City Job as Olympia’s New Council Takes Over
A patronage scramble greets Olympia’s incoming administration, with a crowd of applicants for street commissioner and a proposal to cut the police force while adding more streetlights.
- The Skeleton Bridge: A Warning to Newcomers
A local correspondent details the perilous state of the Pill Chuck bridge in Snohomish County, describing it as a 'monument of goshend ativeness' that forces travelers to crawl on all fours across a single stringer.
- The Boomtown That Stretched Itself Thin
A local builder’s report from 1889 reveals how rapid development and land speculation transformed Snohomish into a fragmented town of 'additions,' while warning of an impending labor downturn.
- The Man Who Spent Like a Lord—and Might Have Been Nobody
A mysterious newcomer at Seattle’s Northern Hotel flashed gold and convinced much of the lobby he was Lord Sholto Douglas, brother of Oscar Wilde’s lover—until a skeptic began asking questions.
- The Employment Agents Who Sold Phantom Jobs
Seattle's labor commissioner wants City Hall to crack down on agents who charge workers for jobs that don't exist—or pay them in worthless due bills.
- Selling the Pend Oreille Valley as an Agricultural Eden
A booster’s tour of bench land, clover, and bumper potato crops—and why the railroad and Spokane cream market changed everything.
- The Well That Killed Twice
A promising new homestead a few miles east of Whatcom became a death trap when a pocket of gas swallowed John Kidwell and the neighbor who tried to save him.
- The Ghost of Marysville: A Town That Forgot It Was Dead
In 1886, the once-thriving settlement of Marysville (now Snohomish) was still trying to convince itself it existed. A local correspondent reports on a town struggling with identity, mail routes, and real estate in the shadow of its neighbor, Seattle.
- The Condemned Murderer Who Ran the Jailhouse Court
Thomas Blanck, awaiting execution for murder, was unanimously elected to preside over the county jail's prisoner-run tribunal—complete with fines, lashes, and a Bible in his cell.
- The $12.50 Gold Rush: How a Railroad Rate War Flooded Seattle with Hope and Skepticism
As Canadian Pacific slashes fares to half the price of American lines, local merchants debate whether the coming wave of homeseekers will build the city or break it.
- Spokane Falls Finally Gets Water Works
After years of relying on water carriers and wells, the city council grants a franchise to two newcomers to build a water system, promising fire protection and an end to the water famine.
- The Blind Doctor’s Lethal Prescription
Dr. William Campbell, a blind pioneer and one of Olympia’s oldest residents, was charged with manslaughter after a 14-year-old epileptic girl died under his lobelia-and-capsicum treatment. A justice set bail at $2,000 and sent the case to the January superior court term.
- The Snohomish Land Grab: How Original Owners Inflated Prices and Plotted in the Dark
A scathing review of the town's growth reveals a community divided by greed, where original plat owners are accused of hoarding land and manipulating records to squeeze newcomers out of the real estate boom.
- Wenatchee Growers Told a Railroad: Give Us Water and We'll Fill Your Freight Cars
A delegation of Wenatchee Valley orchardists met Great Northern officials at Seattle's Hotel Butler to argue that irrigation—not mines or timber—would turn eastern Washington into a freight-producing countryside.
- The Colony Train Bound for Whidbey Island
Eighteen Michigan farm families arrived in Seattle to take land near Oak Harbor, part of a Dutch-led colonization push promising dairies, fruit farms and a thousand new households on Puget Sound.