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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1871 | 2 |
| 1876 | 7 |
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| 1880 | 2 |
| 1882 | 1 |
| 1883 | 5 |
| 1884 | 1 |
| 1885 | 12 |
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| 1889 | 34 |
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| 1924 | 1 |
188 stories matching devast
- The Great Lake-to-Sound Canal Dream
A century-old proposal to drain swampy lands and connect the Seattle lakes to the Puget Sound, fueled by fears of devastating floods and the need for new shipping channels.
- The Fire That Built a City: Seattle's Timber Boom Rises from the Ashes
Three years after the Great Fire of 1889 devastated the waterfront, Seattle’s lumber mills are running at full capacity, shipping millions of feet of wood to Hawaii and beyond to rebuild not just this city, but the Pacific.
- The Kaniksu’s 1908 Fire Season: 40 Blazes, $3,569 Spent, and a Warning in the Young Timber
Federal rangers and local crews kept the Kaniksu National Forest from another Alispel-scale conflagration, but the season still burned 700 acres and cost an estimated $15,000 in damaged reproduction.
- A Wall of Flame at Newport's Doorstep
Wind-driven fires jump trenches in the Pend Oreille timber country, threatening Scott's Addition and costing ranchers and mills thousands in cordwood and logs.
- The Real Estate Auction That Built Seattle’s First Suburbs
In March 1889, just months after the Great Fire devastated downtown, executors of James Crawford’s estate sold off dozens of city lots in a public auction at Occidental Square. These parcels would become the foundation for neighborhoods like Judkins and Bellevue.
- He Sailed Around the Horn in '49. Thirty-One Years Later, He Went Home.
S. S. Bassett, who farms at the mouth of the Snohomish, has come back from six months east — a boyhood village he could no longer read, a Centennial he will not stop describing, and a hard-times East that sent him home more convinced than ever about Washington Territory.
- The Ground-Squirrel Plague and the Bomb That Sent Them to 'Squirrel Heaven'
Whitman County farmers hoped a mysterious disease would wipe out the pests. Then came strychnine, arsenic and patented giant-powder bombs.
- 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.
- The Dry Crusade Meets in Seattle, and Admits the Room Is Half Empty
King County Prohibitionists adopt a sweeping platform against the liquor traffic, name delegates, and set a September convention—despite a light turnout.
- The Caucus That Wouldn't End: Olympia's 1895 Senate Deadlock
Republicans balloted again and again in a stormy Olympia caucus, while Spokane businessmen and Union veterans warned that nominating John L. Wilson would wreck the party in Eastern Washington.
- The 1898 Sales Pitch That Called the San Juan Islands a 'Klondike at Home'
A judge's promotional essay promised apples, prunes, sheep, fish, limestone and health in Washington's island county—and complained that the outside world had not yet noticed.
- The Poor Man's Stump Burner: Newport Farmers Pack Kelly's Hall
In 1909, 150 farmers crowded a Newport hall to hear a state expert explain how to clear land by charring stumps—a low-cost method that promised to open Pend Oreille County fields.
- The Judge Who Warned Seattle Not to Sell Its Waterfront to a Canal Company
In 1894, Judge John J. McGilvra urged Congress to build the Lake Washington Ship Canal and warned that a private company's tideflat scheme would put tolls on the water and enrich speculators at public expense.