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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 10 |
| 1877 | 2 |
| 1878 | 7 |
| 1879 | 2 |
| 1880 | 2 |
24 stories matching log
- The Great Log Boom Break: 800,000 Feet of Timber Set Adrift
A catastrophic failure at Colman’s mill sent a massive raft of logs floating into Elliott Bay, threatening the territory's primary industry.
- The Riverside Hotel and Logging Outfit Up for Grabs
William Romines lists his Snohomish hotel and a complete logging setup for sale in a 1878 advertisement.
- Tragedy at the Runway: A Logger’s Fatal End in Cowlitz County
A routine day at a logging camp near Freeport turns deadly when a log jam triggers a sudden, violent chain reaction, claiming the life of C.C. Howard.
- The Tragedy of the Straddled Log
A valuable horse owned by Schwabacher Bros. & Co. is found dead in the woods after a bizarre and fatal encounter with a fallen tree.
- The Logging Camp Cougar Standoff
A Christmas-season encounter on a trail near Snohomish leaves a local hotelier shaken when his revolver fails him.
- The Great Sailor Shortage: Why Seattle’s Labor Market Was Starving for Hands
In December 1876, the city faced a paradoxical crisis: despite the suspension of summer logging work, sailors were vanishing from the docks. Commissioner Ballou reported that a single crewman was worth more than a pair of jacks in poker, as wages had to be inflated just to secure basic maritime labor.
- The Industrial Peril of Early Seattle
A newly established hospital opens its doors on Commercial Street to treat the rising toll of injuries from the region's expanding sawmills, coal mines, and logging camps.
- The Tragedy on the Beach
A grim discovery near a logging camp raises questions of foul play in 1876 Seattle.
- The Promised Land on Puget Sound
An 1878 booster letter to the Midwest paints a portrait of Washington Territory as a temperate, fertile frontier where anyone willing to work a log house could find independence.
- The First Census of a Boomtown: Seattle’s Population Swells to Nearly 4,000
A newly published directory reveals the explosive growth of the Pacific Northwest's frontier city, detailing a population surge driven by logging camps and coal mines, while highlighting the stark racial demographics of 1876.
- The Pioneer Hospital of the Puget Sound Frontier
In an era of dangerous labor and little social support, Dr. G. A. Weed opened a hospital in Seattle designed to serve the 'sick and disabled who have no homes' in the growing mill and mining industries.
- The Laws That Built the Frontier
A look back at the 1879 Territorial Assembly's agenda, from banning wandering hogs to regulating the earliest salmon canneries.
- The Dog in the Manger: How Seattle’s Landlords Are Killing Its Future
An editorial in the 1876 Puget Sound Dispatch warns that greedy real estate owners are pricing out workers with usurious rents, comparing their tactics to Shylock and urging them to lower prices before the city stagnates.
- The Solitary End of a Salmon Bay Logger
A lonely worker’s death by suicide at a cabin in Salmon Bay highlights the hidden struggles of the frontier laborers who built the region's early economy.
- 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 Waterfront Fugitives of Milton
When two men were caught butchering stolen beef, a routine arrest at the water's edge turned into a desperate aquatic brawl.
- Seattle Miners Rush to Sultan River Gold Claims
When a chance discovery in the dry bed of the Sultan River sparked a desperate dash for fortune, the town of Snohomish was left nearly deserted as laborers abandoned their jobs to try their luck in the mud.
- The Jail That Wasn't: A Tour of Port Madison’s Fortress
While Seattle’s own jails were often little more than wooden rooms with locks, the new facility on Port Madison was built like a fortress—iron spikes, windlass doors, and a view of the sound. But its warden faces a grim reality: no work for his prisoners.
- Tragedy at the Sawmill: A Father’s Grief
A young sawmill worker loses his life in a horrifying industrial accident near Vancouver, Washington.
- The Great Thaw: Mountain Snows Turn Every River Into a Rampage
An unusually cool spring held a winter's worth of snow until a few hot days sent it all down at once, flooding the Skagit, Cowlitz and Columbia, drowning farmland and putting Portland under water.
- The Lumber Barons Are Starving Themselves: Why Puget Sound Should Be Feeding Its Own Cows
A local editorial argues that Washington’s reliance on imported dairy is an economic absurdity, urging farmers to switch from beef to Devon and Jersey cattle to capitalize on our unique climate.
- The Day the Pigs Needed Life Jackets: Seattle’s Great Duwamish Flood of 1876
As the Duwamish River swells and farmers flee to their attics, local merchants rally to clear the Skagit River, betting on a waterway that could transform the territory's economy.
- The Great Timber Heist: Federal Law Cracks Down on Puget Sound Loggers
In 1872, the U.S. government enforced a strict new law protecting live-oak and red-cedar from unauthorized removal, threatening massive fines and ship seizures for anyone caught logging federal lands without Navy permission.
- 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.