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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1876 | 21 |
| 1877 | 11 |
| 1878 | 4 |
| 1880 | 3 |
39 stories matching progress
- 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 Shadow Over Seattle's Growth
A look at the 1876 struggle between the promise of development and the ‘incubus’ of land monopolies.
- The Rising Forests of Belltown
A 1875 dispatch captures a neighborhood in metamorphosis, as the deep woods of Belltown are rapidly cleared to make way for cozy cottages and the expansion of Seattle.
- The Perilous Afternoon of a Seattle Homeowner
A classic tale of a homeowner's frustration with construction progress takes a literal turn when he gets stranded on his own scaffolding, sparking a tense negotiation with a neighborhood boy.
- The Muddy Road to Greatness
As Seattle rapidly expanded in 1877, its editors lamented that the city’s commercial ambitions were literally stuck in the mud, demanding urgent infrastructure for a growing population.
- The Price of Progress: Arson in the Shadow of the Opera House
When an old commercial building was moved to make way for Seattle's new Opera House, a firebug turned the vacated structure into a torch.
- The City's Cruel Moral Crusade
While Seattle’s leadership touted its own 'progress,' a wave of arrests and displacement targeted the city's Chinese population and the vulnerable on the margins of society.
- The Hotelkeeper Who Jumped to Escape Justice
A Port Gamble innkeeper’s dramatic leap from a second-story window reveals the gritty reality of justice in 1876 Seattle.
- Seattle's Muddy Streets Stall Railroad Equipment in 1877
A local editor chronicles the impossible state of the city's thoroughfares, where wagon axles disappear into the muck.
- The Unending Grading of Front Street
Seattle's downtown thoroughfare is locked in a cycle of costly miscalculations, mud, and construction delays.
- The Dangerous Plank Walk of Old Seattle
While the city dragged its feet on street improvements in 1878, residents were forced to navigate treacherous, makeshift wooden planks, causing frustration and daily peril.
- The Professional Pessimists of Early Seattle
A 19th-century editorial takes aim at the 'croakers'—the local doomsayers who claimed the town's prosperity was always on the verge of collapse.
- The Wages of Growth: Seattle's 1876 Economic Anxiety
As Seattle struggled to establish a foothold in a rugged, isolated frontier, local business owners lamented the 'high' cost of labor and warned that economic survival depended on lower pay.
- The City That Couldn't Keep Up: Seattle’s Housing Crisis of 1876
As immigrants flood in from Kansas and beyond, the city's building boom fails to match the demand for shelter, threatening a severe shortage before winter sets in.
- The Great 'Zigzag' of Seattle's Waterfront
In 1876, a frustrated editor took on the city's chaotic street planning, where Commercial Street dead-ended into a 'higgledy-piggledy' row of stores, forcing travelers to detour just to reach the waterfront.
- The Muddy Road to Progress
In 1877, Seattle's city limits were defined not just by law, but by impassable, knee-deep mire that choked commerce and isolated local farmers.
- The Preacher Who Punched a Sinner: A Camp Meeting Brawl in Oakdale
In September 1876, a reverend at an Oakdale camp meeting lost his temper and physically assaulted a boisterous young man, leading to an arrest that highlights the volatile intersection of religion and frontier justice.
- The Wild Fertility of the Sammamish Valley
A local settler reports on the rapid agricultural development and the urgent need for river navigation to bring produce to market.
- The Muddy Arteries of Early Seattle
Decades before modern paving, Seattle’s civic leaders struggled to build a passable road to the Renton coal mines, leaving thousands of settlers and farmers stranded in the mire.
- The Soil-Killer’s Ledger
An 1878 editorial warns that Pacific Northwest farmers are repeating the mistakes of fallen empires by exhausting their land for short-term profit.
- The Brutal Statistics of Poverty in 1880
A report in the Seattle Daily Intelligence uses cold, hard data to argue that the 'reproduction of capital'—human life—is threatened by the crushing weight of poverty and labor conditions.
- The Boom That Busted
Reflecting on the 'mushroom' growth and subsequent economic fallout of 1870s Seattle, a local editor recounts a tale of over-speculation, debt, and the volatile reliance on steamship-driven growth.
- The Struggle for Home Ownership in Early Seattle
An 1877 editorial argues that the city's growth is being stifled by speculative land hoarding, keeping affordable homes out of reach for the working class.
- Hard Times and Scientific Farming on the Stillaguamish
While the local economy struggles under an influx of job-seekers, a Snohomish County rancher embraces the march of progress with new steam machinery.
- The Struggle for the Northern Pacific Rails
As Congress debates extending the deadline for the Northern Pacific Railroad, local settlers face the double-edged sword of promised prosperity versus the loss of homestead land.