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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1871 | 1 |
| 1872 | 13 |
| 1876 | 19 |
| 1877 | 14 |
| 1878 | 17 |
| 1879 | 4 |
| 1880 | 14 |
82 stories matching back
- The Unlikely Tale of the 'Pull-Back' Train Stopper
A small-town mechanic's wild invention—a massive rubber cable designed to hook trains that left without their passengers—actually worked.
- The Mule-Mounted Howitzer Fiasco
An ambitious Army experiment at a Western fort goes hilariously and dangerously wrong when a cannon-strapped mule decides to take matters into his own hooves.
- Startled Horse Backs Off City Wharf and Drowns
A valuable horse, spooked by the city's sudden bustle, backs off a Seattle wharf and drowns.
- The Shoe That Could Save Seattle: Why We Must Stop Exporting Our Hides to San Francisco
An editorial in the Puget Sound Dispatch argues that Seattle’s economic survival depends on manufacturing its own boots and shoes locally, rather than shipping raw hides south for a 10% premium.
- The Jail That Took Too Long
A Snohomish correspondent laments the bureaucratic foot-dragging that delayed the construction of the county's first lock-up.
- The Audacity of the Midnight Knife: A Burglary Attempt on Fourth Avenue
Two men risked everything to crack a store's back door in the dead of night, only to be thwarted by a vigilant clerk and the sound of sawing.
- The Pig That Pays the Bills: How Swine Became Puget Sound’s Secret Wealth
In 1876, while Seattle looked to timber and fish for its future, a local article argued that raising hogs on wheat stubble was the most reliable path to prosperity.
- Thrown Into a Saw at Colman's Mill — and the Law Looked the Other Way
When Peter Feeney attacked a Chinese coworker in a Seattle sawmill, the man's foot was mangled beyond repair. The justice of the peace declined to hold Feeney, the prosecutor dismissed the case, and the town's paper argued the injury was just an accident.
- The Frontier Pulse: Seattle in 1871
A look back at the origins of the city, from the arrival of the first families and the Indian War to the rise of coal, sawmills, and the hope for a transcontinental terminus.
- The Siege at the St. Charles Hotel
A young woman recounts a harrowing night of confinement after a local man tricked her into his room, only to be met with a public denial and claims of 'blackmailing.'
- The Centennial That Saved Seattle: How 8,000 Souls Turned a Territorial Mist into a City
On July 4, 1876, despite being late to statehood and lacking federal funding, Seattle’s pioneers pulled off a spectacle of flags, steamers, and speeches that proved the town was here to stay.
- The Floor Gives Way: Panic and Death at Seattle’s Morris Opera House
A grand opening night turns into a nightmare when the second-story floor of the newly converted theater collapses into the stables below, killing several and injuring dozens in one of the city's earliest major disasters.
- Hanged on a Doubt: Washington Territory's First White Execution
When John Thompson was hanged in Seattle in 1877, many believed he was guilty of manslaughter, not murder. The Dispatch made the case that the law had taken a life it should have spared.
- Unidentified Man Found Slain Near Seattle
A young immigrant worker is found brutally murdered in the woods, highlighting the dangers facing newcomers in the rugged economy of 1880s Washington.
- Betrayal and Bloodshed on Whidbey Island
A ranching partnership ends in a fatal, cold-blooded ambush near Useless Bay.
- The Horror on Fifth Street: A Seattle Tragedy in 1877
A prominent local businessman, once a logger and grocer, descended into a violent, drug-fueled psychotic break that devastated his family and left the community reeling.
- The Knife in the Carriage
A young woman’s train ride turns into a life-or-death encounter with an escaped asylum patient.
- The 'Pitiful Hedizzened Hurlots': Seattle's Moral Panic Over the Steamship Brothels
In September 1872, a furious editorial in the *Seattle Daily Intelligencer* condemned the floating red-light districts on Puget Sound, accusing steamship lines of carrying 'pollution and death' to every port while politicians looked away.
- The Seattle Lottery Scandal of 1876
A local editor confesses his regret for backing a 'legal' lottery that turned the city into an open gambling hell.
- The Great Emigration Heist: How Oregon and California Stole Washington’s Future
A territorial report reveals that aggressive agents in San Francisco are actively sabotaging settlers bound for the Pacific Northwest, leaving only one man from a Nebraska colony to tell the tale.
- Billy Fife: Self-Taught Caricaturist of Frontier Seattle
A biography of Billy Fife, a sailor and self-taught caricaturist whose sharp wit and rare artistic skill captured Seattle's frontier life.
- The Mother, The Child, and The Purser’s Zeal
A desperate mother is arrested in Seattle after a daring escape from the hospital, exposing the cruelty of rigid legal intervention in the 1870s.
- 7,000 Miners Head for the Skagit, But High Water Halts the Diggings
Spring freshets wash out the wingdams on Ruby Creek while hundreds of men wait at the Portage for a trail and pack animals — and California newspapers predict a stampede of thousands.
- The Penitent Lion-Tamer
A quiet laborer in a traveling Seattle menagerie finds redemption through a final, fatal sacrifice.
- The Fight Against the 'Two-Percent Shylocks'
A fierce 1878 constitutional debate in Washington Territory pits anti-monopoly reformers against banking interests.