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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1876 | 405 |
| 1877 | 280 |
| 1878 | 64 |
| 1880 | 75 |
824 stories
- The Raggedy Ball: Seattle’s First Great Social Scandal
In September 1876, the city’s elite donned rags for a masquerade at Yesler’s Hall, turning social climbing into a contest of who could look the most destitute.
- The Circus Comes to Town: Montgomery’s Queen’s New Brings the 'Wonderful Kenebels' to Seattle
In October 1876, the largest and most brilliant circus company in the West descended upon Seattle, offering a night of acrobatics, animal acts, and high-flying daredevils for just one dollar.
- The Price of a Legacy: The Forced Sale of the Foster Ranch
A legal decree from 1876 reveals the cold mechanics of property loss, as a King County court orders the auction of a local homestead to settle a debt.
- A Frontier Home on Second Street
In the winter of 1876, a simple advertisement captures the rapid development and domestic churn of a burgeoning Seattle.
- The Waterfront Real Estate Gamble of 1876
A modest land offering on M Street captures the ambition of a growing frontier town.
- The Forgotten Pioneer Hospital of Seattle
Before modern medical complexes, the city’s sick and homeless were cared for in a modest, private facility on Commercial Street.
- The Pioneer Baker of Seattle
A rare glimpse into the early daily life and food infrastructure of a growing Seattle.
- The Miracle Man of the Tremont House
A Seattle sawmill worker recounts his miraculous recovery from a mysterious 'general nervous debility' thanks to a touring medical lecturer.
- The City’s First Big Job: Who Will Build Madison Street?
Seattle Mayor Thomas D. Sealth issues a call for contractors to pave the city's most important new artery, signaling a shift from dirt trails to urban infrastructure.
- The Opium Dealer Next Door
In the early days of Seattle, a Chinese merchant operated not just a grocery, but an 'intelligence office' and opium den on Washington Street.
- The Pioneering Female Physician of Seattle
Dr. S. D. Hewes, the first woman graduate in medicine to establish a practice in the Washington Territory, brings a decade of experience to the frontier.
- The Fairview Dream: Installment Housing in 1878 Seattle
A real estate advertisement for the 'Fairview Addition' highlights the city's early embrace of the installment plan to help working-class families buy land.
- The Art of Boosting: How Early Seattle Built a Territory
In an era before mass media, Seattle’s newspaper editors viewed themselves as the primary architects of immigration, using booster journalism to lure settlers to the Pacific Northwest.
- The Looming Financial Chasm of 1877
As Seattle navigates a national economic crisis, editors reflect on the precarious transition from paper 'greenbacks' to gold, revealing the anxieties of a frontier town tethered to a shifting national currency.
- A Victorian Manifesto for Seattle’s Youth
A rare 1876 editorial in the Seattle Daily Intelligencer rebukes the rigid, performative parenting of the era and calls for a more compassionate approach to raising children.
- The Silent Dangers of Seattle’s Early Boarding Houses
A 19th-century public health warning reveals the grim reality of sanitation in early Seattle, where overcrowded and poorly drained boarding houses became breeding grounds for typhoid fever.
- The Laundry Business Boom of 1870
A local editor observes the financial success of Chinese laundries in California and urges Seattle entrepreneurs to claim the market.
- The Art of Student Management in 1876
Before high-tech school discipline, a Seattle professor resorted to canine bait and geometry to manage his unruly charges.
- The 'Agricultural Wonder' of the Skagit Valley
A local farmer promises to transform the economy of the Territory with a miracle oat that promises to outgrow all others.
- The Radical Defense of Sweat Equity
In an 1876 editorial, a fierce local voice challenges the city’s idle wealthy to stop 'illustrating fashion's caprices' and embrace the dignity of physical labor.
- British Co-operative Building and the Goal of Homeownership
Before the age of the modern mortgage, Seattle’s early pioneers looked toward international cooperative building societies to help working citizens plant roots in the city.
- The Persistent Business of Superstition
An editorial from 1877 examines why, despite the march of progress and the printing press, humanity remained obsessed with palmistry, spiritualism, and bad omens.
- The 'Pretty Man' at the Seattle Theatre
An 1878 local columnist offers a biting, satirical takedown of a local dandy, mocking his grooming habits and public vanity at the theatre.
- The Iron Will of the Puget Soundry
How a local iron works became the pride of a young Seattle, forging the industrial future of the territory.
- The Unsung Genius of the Barrel
A deep dive into the history of an everyday object that the 1880s public took for granted, tracing its utility from Egyptian antiquity to modern Seattle.