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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1859 | 1 |
| 1864 | 1 |
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| 1877 | 2 |
| 1878 | 6 |
| 1882 | 2 |
| 1883 | 14 |
| 1884 | 4 |
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| 1908 | 7 |
| 1909 | 3 |
| 1910 | 1 |
113 stories matching width
- The Canal That Never Was: How Island Residents Tried to Cut Through the Sound
In 1892, residents of Vashon and Maury Islands held a rally to propose digging a canal through the portage between their islands, aiming to shorten travel times to Seattle and Tacoma.
- The Great Cow Standoff: When Seattle’s Streets Were Held Hostage by Livestock
In September 1878, a herd of cattle and horses blocked the wharf district, forcing pedestrians to halt in their tracks. The city council was forced to intervene as commerce ground to a standstill.
- The Railroad Came for the Tenant Farmers
A Washington Supreme Court ruling in Seattle said a railroad owed a tenant for the leasehold, crops and buildings its tracks destroyed—not just the landlord for the dirt.
- Don't Tear Down the Mineral Palace
A Seattle booster exhibit built to dazzle Great Northern investors sits empty after the Panic of 1893 — and a reader begs the city not to wreck the one thing that proves Puget Sound is worth their money.
- The South End's Schoolhouse Fight
A letter to the editor accuses Seattle's school directors of stalling on a promised south-end school block while the north end already got its building.
- The Navy's Giant Dry Dock Needed One More Appropriation
A $200,000 federal appropriation rescued the Port Orchard dry dock from a year's delay, a rare bit of good news for Puget Sound's naval future.
- The Power Station That Bet on Newport’s Future
A Chicago engineer brings plans for a fireproof power station at Washington and Pine—and a 30-mile line meant to electrify Newport’s future.
- A Monorail on a 'Bicycle System': The 1892 Plan to Ride One Rail from Seattle to Tacoma
A company promised a thirty-mile elevated railway — cars balanced on a single steel rail, steadied by rubber wheels on an overhead guide — running across the tide flats and reaching Tacoma in forty minutes.
- Monte Cristo’s Residents vs. the Placer Claim
A federal commissioner orders a new hearing in the fight over whether a mining claim swallowed a Snohomish County townsite.
- The Great Assessment Scam: How King County Taxpayers Were Fooled by 'Blunders'
A local reporter exposes the absurdity of county tax assessments, where landowners receive notices for huge back-taxes on property they already paid off, forcing them to chase down exhausted commissioners in a cycle of bureaucratic error.
- The Gold Bonanza Beneath the Palouse
On the headwaters of the North Palouse, two Farmington brothers struck a quartz ledge they say assays at more than $6,000 a ton — and they swear not one inch of it is for sale.
- Olympia’s Fight for a Deep-Water Harbor
Citizens tell the harbor-line commissioners to claim Budd Inlet’s tide flats for public wharves—not a narrow waterway that would hand the waterfront to private owners.
- Calispel Valley Ranchers Move to Dike Out the Pend Oreille
A petition for a new diking district would protect 11,000 acres from annual floods—and add thousands to Stevens County's tax rolls.
- The Glasshouse Farm That Fed Seattle's Hotels
In 1898, an editor toured a Lake Washington model farm where seven greenhouses and a prize Jersey herd supplied the city's finest tables.
- The State Draws a Line Along Seattle’s Waterfront
In 1896, Olympia fixed the harbor boundary from West Seattle to Meadow Point, mapped new Duwamish and Salmon Bay waterways, and cleared the way to sell tide lands.
- The War on Narrow Wagon Wheels
Seattle's Chamber of Commerce wants the legislature to force wider wagon tires — to save the city's wooden sidewalks and brick streets from being chewed to pieces.
- The Valley Nobody Surveyed: Pioneers Wait for a Government Pen
A settlers' advocate returns from the surveyor-general with promises and a rapturous account of a hidden valley where poor young farmers are hewing homes out of the forest without so much as a title to their land.
- Something for Something: The Salvation Army's Beds, Baths and Basket Looms
At South Second and Weller the Salvation Army feeds and houses 150 jobless men — and makes them earn it, in half-hour shifts at a spruce basket factory and a bathhouse run on posted rules.
- 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.
- Spokane Falls Council Tackles Charter, Cash, and a Dead Horse
In August 1883, the Spokane Falls City Council met to discuss a new city charter, unpaid bills, street assessments, and the problem of a dead horse. The meeting offers a glimpse into the challenges of a growing frontier town.
- 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.
- Steaming Through the Puget Sound Boom, Town by Town
A Seattle traveler’s 1883 voyage aboard the Idaho finds crowded wharves, railroad dreams, and real-estate prices high enough to check the very boom they fed.
- The Cave at the End of the Boundary Trail
A 1908 Newport writer follows a blazed trail north of Metaline into a limestone cavern of bath-like basins, a 'Guardian of the Baths' and a music room already being vandalized.
- The River That Swallowed a Steamboat: A Brave Attempt to Reach Snohomish Falls
Twenty-five passengers and tons of freight battled the treacherous Snoqualmie River on the steamer *Columbia*, only to be stopped by a massive landslide just miles from their destination.
- A Palace on Rails Arrives in Newport
Idaho Washington Northern's new Pullman coaches—steam-heated, electric-lit and brass-trimmed—began service out of Newport, promising a new through line to Spokane.